BEFORE: How about this for a coincidence, I've got back-to-back films where the same actor plays multiple roles - this was NOT planned by me, at least not intentionally. It seems that my subconscious kind of took over, or else the chain has a mind of its own, I can't be sure. Robert Pattinson played Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 and both were on screen at the same time, tonight I think we've got a similar situation with Jesse Eisenberg playing the main character AND his double, using this advanced "split-screen" sort of technology, which probably isn't that advanced at all, like they were doing this in Charlie Chaplin movies back in the day, probably not much has changed, as of 2013 anyway. In 2026 they'd probably film two actors and use face-swap software to make them look the same, but when this was made they probably just filmed the same actor twice to get the reverse shots they needed.
It suddenly occurs to me that January is named after Janus, the Roman god who had two faces, or a double-sided head. This seems about right. Janus was also the god of duality, beginnings, transitions, passages, time and endings. Well, that just about covers it, right? "Deep Cover", "Freaky Friday", "The Out-Laws", "A House of Dynamite", every one of my January films fits into one of those themes, so maybe Janus the god has been in charge of selecting my movies?
Tim Key carries over from "Mickey 17". But it's Jesse Eisenberg who's going to get me into the February chain, and since the new "Now You See Me" film still is not available, I'm going to get there in exactly the right number of steps. Why, it's almost like I know what I'm doing.
THE PLOT: The unenviable life of a government-agency clerk takes a horrific turn with the arrival of a new co-worker who is both his exact physical double and his opposite otherwise - he's a confident, charismatic ladies' man.
AFTER: This film is a modern update of the Dostoyevsky novella "The Double", in which a low-level bureaucrat is having trouble advancing at work, due to his anti-social nature. After getting thrown out of a party for his office manager's daughter, Yakov Golyadkin meets a man in a snowstorm who looks exactly like him - at first they are friends, but eventually become bitter enemies after "The Double" tries to take over his life, using all of his charm and social skills, which Yakov lacks. Yakov then begins to see replicas of himself everywhere, has a psychotic breakdown and ends up in an asylum, which, for a Russian story, counts as a happy ending. Free room and board for the rest of his life, plus probably a lobotomy coming at some point, then the sweet release of death. Really, when it came to writing stories about depressing circumstances, Dostoyevsky was second only to Kafka - probably the only scenario worse than getting replaced at your job by your evil twin would be waking up after being turned into a giant cockroach. But maybe Dostoyevsky was just the Scott Adams of his day, or vice versa.
"The Double" focuses on Simon James, who's been working at the same job for seven years and has difficulty getting noticed, his boss calls him "Stanley" and the guards still won't let him in without looking at his ID, he is essentially very forgettable, nearly invisible. He is infatuated with Hannah, a co-worker who works in the photocopying room, and he won't get his printer fixed because he needs an excuse to go and spend time with her, however he has not taken steps to ask her out, and prefers to spy on her at night using a telescope. This is a little bit odd, I mean what are the odds that he would have an apartment that could look into hers, was this a happy (creepy) accident or did he choose the apartment based on the view? Either way, it's not a good look. Simon's hobbies also include going through her trash and piecing together drawings she made and tore up.
One day, while creeping on Hannah with his telescope, Simon thinks that he sees a man in another apartment who looks just like him. But then he sees a man standing on a ledge who waves to him, as if he KNOWS he's being watched, and then he steps off the ledge and falls to his death. The jaded detectives who interview him just say that his happens more often than one might think, like all they do is investigate suicides like this, just in a five-block radius really. It seems life really sucks all over and people can't wait to get out of it. Simon resolves to improve his life by asking Hannah out, and even trades in his TV set to get money to buy her a gift, but then he decides to not give it to her, that would be too forward - well, she did mention that there was a guy who was obsessed with her and moved too quickly so Simon doesn't want to do that.
Then there's a new guy hired at the company, James Simon, who looks exactly like him, though nobody else seems to be able to notice the resemblance. But James is everything Simon isn't, he's confident and likable and knows how to navigate office politics and get ahead - he has Simon take an aptitude test for him and then he steals all of Simon's proposals and presents them as his own - James starts dating the boss's daughter and also Hannah, at this rate he's going to get everything that Simon wants and probably push him out of the picture, and yet somehow they're still FRIENDS, umm, until they aren't. Really, there's a case to be made here for killing your double straight away if you should happen to meet them, like don't wait on this, just kill them before there's a reason and then maybe nobody would suspect you of the crime.
Instead James starts using Simon's appearances for his sexual encounters, using blackmail of photos of HIMSELF with the boss's daughter, because everyone will think that Simon's the one in those photos. Suddenly James doesn't have a key to his own apartment and is forced to sleep on the bus, he's fired after going on a tirade bad-mouthing the very successful James, and he's about ready to kill himself when he sees that Hannah has overdosed, after being depressed because James cheated on her and also got her pregnant, but now she's miscarried. Instead of being thankful that Simon saved her life, Hannah suggests that he should now kill himself - OK, wow, maybe next time somebody sees you in trouble they should just let you die, how about that?
Then things get really weird - Simon's mother dies and he rushes to her funeral, which is held right away and also at midnight outside the nursing home. This makes no sense and probably also reveals to the audience that this whole adventure is really just one giant office stress dream, and trust me, I know a few things about those. (I woke up screaming while we were on the cruise in December, I was sleeping more deeply than usual, and guess where THAT took me...). But Simon finds James at the funeral, impersonating him, no doubt. When he punches James he finds that his own nose bleeds, the two men are somehow connected to the point where they share injuries. What does this mean? Are they really somehow the same person, or twins who were separated at birth that share psychosomatic feelings? This is never really made clear, but I guess it doesn't really matter.
Simon's ultimate "solution" is to handcuff James to the bed while he's sleeping in Simon's apartment, then to go to the ledge in the other building and jump off, much like the man he witnessed at the start of the story. Only Simon knows from the detectives how to jump off the building and hit the awning and probably survive, however he'll be inflicting injury on the sleeping James and nobody will arrive to give him medical attention. What a terrible cruel world it is when his only recourse is a suicide attempt that will also potentially kill his doppelganger who has taken his job and his apartment and his girlfriend away from him. Like, double WOW. All because HE couldn't hack it and he had to take out his competition to remain unique. I have a NITPICK POINT here because eventually Simon is going to have to explain the dead body in his apartment, right?
We've all heard about twins or triplets who get separated and end up working in the same industry, or living a few miles from each other or marrying spouses with the same name. But one of the weird things about social media these days is that is has allowed a few people to find their own doppelgangers, people they are not related to, they just happen to look exactly alike, because of how many people there are in the world, and how few configurations there really are for facial features, if you think about it. It's just math and probability in the end - I don't think we have a word for this, but if you google "strangers who met their real-life doppelgangers" you can see what I'm talking about. The odds of meeting your doppelganger are estimated at being one in a trillion, yet it DOES happen.
I had a couple experiences where I (almost) met my doppelganger. I remember being at Symphony Hall in Boston one time, watching a choral performance. I was in the balcony, sure, but there was a bass singer who I thought looked like me - big guy, glasses, ponytail. And I sing bass, too - so I went down after the show and tried to look through the singers for my exact double, and I was just a bit too late, I did see someone with a ponytail leaving the building but I was just a bit too far behind him to be sure. Another time a guy came to our booth at San Diego Comic-Con and he was also wearing a baseball cap and a Hawaiian shirt over a t-shirt and we were total twinsies, except I was a bit taller. That photo is still in my old office, I should probably try to drop by and get it. The third time was when my BFF took a photo of someone at a chowderfest in 2007 who looked a LOT like me - big guy, Red Sox cap, comic-book t-shirt - and I was AT that event, but missed bumping into myself. Probably a good thing, because I know the best course of action for when that happens, and, well, it's not pretty.
Or, you know, just putting this out there, if you find that you have met your doppelganger, and that person has taken over your life, your job and your apartment and the love of your life, maybe just let it go? Maybe it was time to give up that life anyway, I mean, what were you really DOING with it? Just pack a bag and move to another city, don't tell anyone where you're going, especially your Double, and just start fresh. It's the only move that makes some sense and also doesn't land you in jail for murder or bring bad karma your way. If some other monkey takes over your circus just go find another one somewhere else.
Directed by Richard Ayoade (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme")
Also starring Jesse Eisenberg (last seen in "The Hummingbird Project"), Mia Wasikowska (last seen in "Stoker"), Phyllis Somerville (ditto), Wallace Shawn (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), Yasmin Paige (ditto), Noah Taylor (last seen in "Skyscraper"), James Fox (last seen in "Cleanskin"), Cathy Moriarty (last seen in "Matinee"), Gabrielle Downey (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Jon Korkes (last seen in "Riding in Cars with Boys"), Craig Roberts (last seen in "The Current War"), Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (last seen in "Wonka"), Susan Blommaert (last seen in "For Love or Money"), Bruce Byron, J. Mascis (last seen in "Grace of My Heart"), Tony Rohr (last seen in "The Long Good Friday"), Karima Riachy, Andrew Gruen, Morrison Thomas, Sally Hawkins (last seen in "A Brilliant Young Mind"), Lloyd Woolf, Lydia Fox, Christopher Morris, Chris O'Dowd (last seen in "Calvary"), Donal Cox, Kierston Wareing, Paddy Considine (last seen in "Deep Cover"), Dirk Van Der Gert, Liam Bewley, Gemma Chan (last seen in "The Creator"), Nathalie Cox (last seen in "Father Christmas Is Back"), Martin Crossingham, Joanna Finata, Steve Saunders, Rade Serbedzija (last seen in "The Fog" (2005)), Chuen Tsou, Natalia Warner.
RATING: 6 out of 10 episodes of "The Replicator"
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