SPIDER directed by David Cronenberg, written by Patrick McGrath from his novel, produced by Cronenberg, Catherine Bailey and Samuel Hadida, with Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Byrne. 98 minutes. An Odeon Films release. Opens Friday (February 28). For venues and times, see First-Run Movies, page 75. Rating: NNNNN Rating: NNNNN
He’s made 14 feature films in the past 27 years, but davidCronenberg’s pictures aren’t getting any easier on their viewers. Or any easier to make.We’re sitting in a Toronto photo studio discussing how Spider, Cronenberg’s new movie about a man (Ralph Fiennes) haunted by his own memories, almost didn’t get made.
“It takes me about three years to make a film now. It seems to get harder, partly because of the kind of movies I insist on making, but partly it depends on the vagaries of world finance. When the Deutschmark dropped and the dot-coms collapsed, I was surprised that we kept going, because a lot of movies were falling apart.”
Shot in England with a stellar cast — Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne and Lynn Redgrave — Spider locks the viewer into a dark, sunless world of auditory hallucination. It’s the kind of film that makes you wonder, “Exactly how many shades of grey-green are in this picture?”
I mention this to Cronenberg and he laughs. “A lot! We also shot on a low-contrast stock that intensifies the shades of grey-green. In a strange way, the wallpaper is the movie is the wallpaper.”
The wallpaper in the cheap bed-sitter where the hero finds himself is so redolent of English dank, you can understand why he wears multiple layers of clothes. Fiennes’s character displays the symptomology of schizophrenia — the auditory hallucinations in particular — but Cronenberg doesn’t like to be that specific.
“I prefer not to mention the word “schizophrenia.’ Spider is more universal if you don’t think of him as the victim of a neurological disease. It’s really a movie about memory retrieval, but the act of remembering is always creative. There’s the paradox. Memory is identity, but our memory is constantly being rewritten.”
Spider didn’t originate with Cronenberg. The script, adapted by Patrick McGrath from his own novel, arrived with Ralph Fiennes already attached in the title role.
“I was very interested in working with him. While I was reading the script I started to get that tingle, and I realized that Ralph had cast himself very well.”
Cronenberg seldom gets sufficient credit as an actor’s director, even though a number of very high-profile actors have given their best performances in his films Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers and Jeff Goldblum in The Fly come to mind. Perhaps they like the challenge.
“Gabriel (Byrne) told me this was the toughest role he’d ever played, because most of the time his character, Bill, Spider’s father, isn’t Bill but the demonic projection of Spider’s memory. But sometimes he’s the real Bill. I had to keep him on track as to who he was at any given time.
“What we (non-actors) don’t realize is that for actors it’s not a psychological process — it’s physical. Miranda kept track of who she was through her wardrobe. Each of her three characters has different shoes, Yvonne has that push-up bra….”
Unlike A Beautiful Mind, Spider resists reducing schizophrenia to adventures with imaginary pals. Ralph Fiennes stars as a recently de-institutionalized man thrust into a world of continuous auditory hallucination. The voices in his head will not shut up, and they lead him on a journey where past and present bleed into one another.
Cronenberg’s style is unusually austere, and the performances shred the film’s elegant compositional perfection. When they were handing out acting Palmes at Cannes, Fiennes was robbed, as was Miranda Richardson, who has the technical prowess to gradually take over all three female roles as Fiennes’s dementia grows. Like most of Cronenberg’s later films, Spider improves with repeated viewings.
Unlike A Beautiful Mind, Spider resists reducing schizophrenia to adventures with imaginary pals. Ralph Fiennes stars as a recently de-institutionalized man thrust into a world of continuous auditory hallucination. The voices in his head will not shut up, and they lead him on a journey where past and present bleed into one another.
Cronenberg’s style is unusually austere, and the performances shred the film’s elegant compositional perfection. When they were handing out acting Palmes at Cannes, Fiennes was robbed, as was Miranda Richardson, who has the technical prowess to gradually take over all three female roles as Fiennes’s dementia grows. Like most of Cronenberg’s later films, Spider improves with repeated viewings.
