SPIDER A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 2002 David N. Butterworth
** (out of ****)
How, exactly, should one characterize David Cronenberg's "Spider"?
Is it, as would appear on the surface, a psychological drama? If so there's very little drama and even less psychology (other than the obvious "bad parenting can often lead to loopy kids" theorizing).
How about a horror film? Not really. Miranda Richardson--in one of the two roles she plays in the film--gets bonked on the head by a shovel wielded by philandering hubby Gabriel Byrne but that's about the extent of the gore quotient.
Maybe it's a character study then, a brooding, detailed rendering of a listless, shuffling, chain-smoking nobody (played by Ralph Fiennes with spiked hair and more than a modicum of demented detachment) who scribbles strange ciphers in a notebook, keeps his valuables close to his valuables (in a sock stuffed down his pants), and "relives" his disturbed youth by showing up in scenes in which he witnesses himself as a boy (Bradley Hall) interacting, sort of, with good Mum (Richardson) and bad Dad (Byrne).
Probably the best thing to call it, genre-wise, is a period piece, a stark, simplistic, and uninvolving slice of life in 1960's Britain featuring lots of low-angled shots of the creepy Spider man dominated by the hulking gas works of London E1. Mrs. Cleg calls her son (real name Dennis) Spider why exactly? Supposedly because he likes to string strings throughout his room like spider's webs. Or maybe "Spider" simply sounded like a good name for a David Cronenberg movie...
Fiennes is fine, of course, and all the principals give a good accounting of themselves, but these are not highly original characterizations that's for sure (including Lynn Redgrave's proprietor of the halfway house for the slightly batty at which Spider arrives--slowly--at the beginning of the film). Even the most "difficult" role requires Richardson to dress as a prim, proper, and caring mother one minute and a cheap tart the next, fur-lined and very improper, flashing a boob at the young Spider who comes looking for Dad at the Dog and Two Ferrets (or thereabouts).
Clearly the controversial director of such paranoid, psychosexual, creepy scare fests as "Dead Ringers," "Crash," and "eXistenZ" has gone for low-key introspection this time around, taking as his source Patrick McGrath's novel of the same name, but "Spider" is so low-key in its themes of familial dysfunction leading to mental illness that it's almost embarrassing. Disappointing to Cronenberg fans (some will say he's simply gone soft) and just plain dull to everyone else, "Spider" is an earnestly wrought but shallow exercise that never really gets under the skin, either of its central character (nicely realized by Fiennes) or its audience.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
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