Iris van Maanen 10529667
Supervisor: A. Geil
Second reader: M. Baronian 22 June 2017
19.157 words
Abstract
Through Richard Ayoade’s The Double (2013), I will look at the figure of the double as an externalization of the main character’s consciousness. Through the shifting of the outer and inner world of the character, the film creates a multiplicity of consciousnesses, which has a noticeably uncanny effect. Through the figure of the double that is the foundation of this externalization, I will look at the doubling and repetition of elements in the film, and, from the perspective of suture theory, the extraordinary number of different consciousnesses, gazes, and perspectives, it creates at different layers of the film. A complex number of subjectivities created by these gazes, adds to the uncanny whole that is the film. I will argue that the film functions as a reflexive consciousness. I will look further than the subjectivity of a film shot as a representation of an object, an objective world, but look at the construction of film itself, and argue that the multiplicity of consciousnesses created by this externalization of subjectivity creates a reflexivity that problematizes the cognitivist conception of unity.
Table of Contents
Abstract 2
Introduction 4
Chapter 1: The Uncanny Figure of the Double 10
Freud’s Uncertain Uncanny 10
The Figure of the Double 12
The Object a and Literature 15
Chapter 2: Repetition, Mise en Scène, and Repetition 19
Doubling the Double 19
The Visual Representation of the Mind 25
Time, Place, and the Inescapability of Death 30
Chapter 3: Suture and Subjectivity 34
Multiplicity of Consciousnesses 34
Subjectivity in Film 40
Subjectivity and Film Theory 42
Conclusion 46
Introduction
If there is a dark power, hostile and treacherous, which lays within our inmost being a thread, by which it can then catch hold of us, and draw us forth on a dangerous and fatal path which we should not otherwise have taken – if there is such a power, it must, within us, take our own form, and indeed become our very self; for only in this way can we believe in it and give it the room it needs to carry out this secret task. If we have sufficient firmness of character, strengthened by the buoyancy of life, always to recognize the outside enemies’ interference as such, and to follow steadily the way in which inclination and vocation have guided us, then this uncanny power perishes as it vainly strives to assume the form of our own mirror-reflection. (Hoffmann 65) 1
In this passage from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ‘The Sandman’, Klara tries to soothe her fiancée, Nathanael, who slowly loses his grip on reality, terrified by his childhood terror, the Sandman. As Nathanael’s fears materialize in front of his eyes, he recognizes the Sandman in two characters he encounters, who appear to be doubles of the same man. Klara’s wisdom in this passage entails the human ideal of unity of character, from which Nathanael is far removed. He sees no unified world as a reflection of himself. Instead, his world is split into duplicated fragments of fear, an ‘uncanny power’. The fear of the loss of the unity of character, the loss of one’s distinct identity, is a theme quite popular in modern cinema. According to Walter Benjamin, modernity — a time of distraction — disables contemplation, the foundation of traditional bourgeois identity (267). Film is especially apt to convey such crises, as the loss of the sense of one’s self, and, more precisely, the loss of one’s grip on the distinction between imaginary and real, lends itself to visual representation.
Richard Ayoade’s The Double (2013) is a film that employs such visual representation in order to establish a loss of the distinction between imaginary and real, between the inner and outer worlds of a character. The Double confronts its protagonist with his doppelgänger, physically indistinguishable from him, but quite his opposite in character. This split, which is established from
‘Gibt es eine dunkle Macht, die so recht feindlich und verräterisch einen Faden in unser Inneres legt, woran 1
sie uns dann festpackt und fortzieht auf einem gefahrvollen verderblichen Wege, den wir sonst nicht betreten haben würden – gibt es eine solche Macht, so muß sie in uns sich, wie wir selbst gestalten, ja unser Selbst werden; denn nur so glauben wir an sie und räumen ihr den Platz ein, dessen sie bedarf, um jenes geheime Werk zu vollbringen. Haben wir festen, durch das heitre Leben gestärkten, Sinn genug, um fremdes
feindliches Einwirken als solches stets zu erkennen und den Weg, in den uns Neigung und Beruf geschoben, ruhigen Schrittes zu verfolgen, so geht wohl jene unheimliche Macht unter in dem vergeblichen Ringen nach
the beginning of the film, externalizes the inner world of the protagonist, Simon. The figure of the double, however, does not allow for a unified externalization. Instead, it is ground for a multiplicity of consciousnesses. There is a plenitude created by this figure of the double, which complicates the unified character, and, therefore, the unified viewer with its appropriate gaze, that is central in cognitivist readings of subjectivity in film.
Numerous lists of the best films in the sub-genre of the psychological thriller made by users of the extensive film database IMDB, show the popularity of films such as The Machinist (Anderson 2004), Black Swan (Aronofsky 2010), Memento (Nolan 2000), Shutter Island (Scorsese 2010) and Fight Club (Fincher 1999) , all inviting the viewer to share in the protagonists’ battles 2 with a steady grip on the reality acknowledged by their surroundings. These films convey a sense of subjectivity, a journey alongside of the mind of the protagonist, figuring out the structures of the world and the mind at the same pace as the protagonist. These films create a narrative that is not an objective reconstruction of a shared world, but, instead, an individual conception of it, filtered through some sort of mental illness.
In a film such as Fight Club, this journey towards mental health takes the shape of the protagonist’s counterpart, his opposite and yet his double. The narrating protagonist of Fight Club (Edward Norton), suffering from insomnia and critiquing the established structure of society to the viewer, encounters the reckless soap maker Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), whose competition he must overcome before realizing it is part of himself he is battling against. Black Swan shows a similar approach to mental illness, having Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) take on the role of both the white and the black swan in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. She competes as the figure of the white swan, pure and elegant, with the passionate black swan, until her sense of reality blurs to such an extent that she herself becomes the literal embodiment of the black swan, painfully growing feathers as she sinks deeper and deeper into her psychosis. In The Machinist, another insomniac, Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale), finds mysterious notes around his apartment, driving him insane. He assumes his co-workers are out to get him, led by the strange Ivan, but as he slowly works out the hanging man game that keeps appearing on post-its in his apartment, he discovers that he is his mysterious stalker, Ivan turns out to be imaginary, and his battle has been his suppression of a hit and run that happened a year before, in which he killed a small boy. Memento follows a same logic, following Leonard (Guy Pearce), who tries to find his wife’s murderer, but is hindered by his short-term
memory loss. As he puts the pieces back together, the storyline both moves further, showing his progress in solving the murder, and back, letting him visit his past and find the murderer, not sure of reality, of his own involvement in the murder, in the process.
Shutter Island might to many be one of the first films that come to mind when thinking of a subjective film narrative, in the sense that it follows closely the perceptions of its main character, refusing to give the viewer an all-knowing perspective until the main character becomes aware of it. Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) investigates the disappearing of a woman from a mental hospital on Shutter Island, and suspects a cover-up of unthinkable acts by the staff of the institution. When communication with the main land is cut off due to a storm, his own sanity is called into question. As Shutter Island takes the viewer through a narrative of confusion, with each hint destabilizing the security of understanding the information from previous scenes, the film reflects upon itself at every turn.
The instability created by the narrative of the mentally ill character, instead of the ‘factual’ succession of events, is one that fits well into the thriller genre. The relationship between the real and the imaginary, is especially significant in films that show a protagonist who suffers from a split personality, something that can be recognized in, for example, Fight Club, creating an antagonist that is not exterior, but interior. This antagonist can, in the instance of the doppelgänger, be externalized in a split, the embodiment of a split personality. The double is, then, an externalization of the subjectivity of the consciousness of the character. This is the case in The Double. The aforementioned films utilize elements of suspense that are external. For example, Shutter Island creates its narrative tension through the detective work that Teddy has to do on the island, solving the mystery of the events taking place in the mental hospital, before realizing the internal structures these events were grounded in — Teddy was, in fact, already a patient at the facility. These same narrative structures of external conflicts drive Fight Club, The Machinist, Memento and Black Swan forward in their plot development, giving the subjectivity that was surrounding the protagonist all along, merely the role of a plot twist. What distinguishes The Double from other films in its genre, is the internal conflict that lies beneath the successions of events taking place on screen. There is no other conflict than that of the two doubles, the split in the protagonist’s internal world being the only thing that needs resolving.
Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) is lonely and shy. Every day he rides the train to work, processing information about faceless people. He gets no acknowledgement from his bosses, cannot ever present his ideas to the head of the company, ‘The Colonel’, and is left pondering over Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), an attractive girl from the copy department and apparently the only other young person in the company. He calls his mother, who is in a retirement home and sees Simon as a disappointment. When he gets home, every night, he stares at Hannah, who lives across the street, through his telescope. He is invisible. When he gets off the train to work, his briefcase gets stuck between the doors and the train rides off with it. He is left with no identification and, to the company he has worked at for seven years, no identity. He has to sign in as a visitor, his name misspelled, every day. He has to babysit his boss’s teenage daughter Melanie, which he does not dare to refuse. His mother does not recognize him in a promotional video for the company he shows her, and the fees of the retirement home have gone up because of ‘improvements’, to which Simon tries to argue, but fails. As he gets home to his empty apartment, his loneliness has been established.
This loneliness is mirrored in Hannah, who he longs for, but cannot approach. As he watches her through his telescope, his eyes fall on a man, standing on a ledge just above her window. Waving at Simon, the man jumps to his death. He talks about him with Hannah, who was bothered by the man, apparently stalking her, just before he jumped, but when he comes back from a phone call, she has left. Closer to her then ever, Simon tries to meet her at a mandatory company ball, but as he has no identification, he is removed with force before she notices him. Now, at his lowest point, he is suddenly faced with his double. A man, looking exactly like him, walks by as he stands in the courtyard of the apartment complex. Stunned, he rushes to his telescope and can, for a moment, see his double across his window, just above Hannah’s apartment.
At work, this uncanny stranger is introduced as James Simon, the new and highly praised colleague. Their similarity is not, however, acknowledged, because Simon is practically invisible to his surroundings. The doubles go to a bar, where it becomes clear that James is Simon’s opposite in every way, but their appearance. He is buoyant, extravagant, and charming. Simon cares for him, seeing in James everything he longs to be. He does not have to sign in at work, because ‘a friend of James is a friend of mine’. James babysits Melanie, who he quickly seduces, and Simon takes a test for James, something he is good at. James seems to be everything Simon needed. He helps him talk to Hannah, but she is only interested in James. James proposes that they switch, so Simon can go on a date with Hannah. When this plan fails, as Simon cannot hold a conversation with his love
interest, James comes to the rescue and sweeps her off her feet. He kisses her, as Simon can only watch it happen.
Heartbroken, he now realizes that James takes over his role at the company, taking credit for Simon’s work. The double is getting evil. Planning revenge, Simon sees James and Melanie enter James’ apartment, and Simon decides to call Hannah, pretending to be James, and ask her to come over. When James rejects, her, losing Melanie as well, Hannah, too, is heartbroken. James blackmails Simon into giving him the only key to his apartment, so he will not be interrupted by Hannah again, using their identical appearances as a means of blackmail. Simon loses Hannah, his apartment and the little recognition he had at his job — he cannot be put back into the system, as, to the system, he never existed. He breaks down and writes a suicide note, but before acting on it, sees Hannah, who has taken an overdose of pills, unconscious in her apartment. He rushes her to the hospital, where he finds out she has miscarried the baby that was probably James’. Hannah now loathes Simon, for not letting her die in peace. He gets a call from the retirement home, saying that his mother has passed away. Rushing to her burial, he finds that James is already there. They fight, and notice their wounds are the same. They are unmistakably connected, yet so very opposite. Back home, Simon clears things up with Hannah, ties James to the bed and stands on the same ledge the jumper stood on before. He jumps, and is taken to the hospital, as James’ skull bleeds out in Simons apartment, tied to the bed, without medical attention. Lying in the ambulance, he sees Hannah and The Colonel, who finally acknowledges him, saying that he is ‘one of a kind’.
The Double is a highly stylized thriller, which takes the split personality so far as to a point where the film can be said to be an externalization of a character’s consciousness to a large extent, though not a unified one. It is the changing of the outer world of the character through his inner world, that constructs a filmic subjectivity, which has a noticeably uncanny effect. Before delving into the subjectivity of the character, however, it is useful to look at the figure of the double that is the foundation of this externalization. Through Sigmund Freud’s ‘The Uncanny’, I will look at the figure of the double and the doubling and repetition of elements in the film, that makes the film an uncanny experience in the first chapter. Next, through an analysis of the film text, I argue that, from the perspective of suture theory, The Double can be seen to create an extraordinary amount of consciousnesses, gazes, and perspectives, creating a complex network of subjectivities that ultimately add to the uncanny whole that is the film. Taking this to the field of film studies, I will
look at the film as a reflexive consciousness, and finally argue that the figure of the double, as an externalization of subjectivity, entails a filmic construction that goes further than the discussions about the subjectivity of a point of view shot often in the spotlight in film theory. As Mladen Dolar argues that the uncanny in the creation of Frankenstein’s monster is the bridging of the gap between nature and culture, creating not a lack, but a plenitude of something, the figure of the double bridges the gap between imaginary and real, between inner and outer world. This is the horror plenitudis at play in The Double. There is a multitude of consciousnesses, not a unity of either the consciousnesses portrayed on screen, or of the implied consciousness of a unified viewer. I will look further than the subjectivity of a film shot as a representation of an object, an objective world, but look at the construction of film itself, and argue that the multiplicity of consciousnesses created by this externalization of subjectivity, complicates the cognitive approach to subjectivity and its conception of unity.
Chapter 1: The Uncanny Figure of the Double
Freud’s Uncertain Uncanny
The Double shows a world built on uncertainty. Encountering one’s double entails both a sense of familiarity, the vision of oneself as one sees oneself in the mirror, and a strangeness, as it is not just a mirror image, but a person with another consciousness, standing in front of you, distancing you from that mirror image through a lack of unity. The experience of both familiarity and dissonance can be recognized in the concept of ‘the uncanny’. I begin this investigation into the uncanny figure of the double with Sigmund Freud, as his article ‘Das Unheimliche’, or ‘The Uncanny’ lays the groundwork for further investigations into the figure of the double. It is a text about uncanniness, about a lack of unity, which in itself lacks the unity often found in written text. The uncertainty that surrounds the different filmic layers of The Double can be partly explained through Freud’s theory, but this uncertainty can simultaneously be recognized in the text itself. This makes Freud an appropriate starting point, as his text is often thought of as the foundation of the concept of the uncanny, but also because reading his article gives us a starting point into exploring the complexity of the subject matter at hand.
The first sentence of Freud’s ‘The Uncanny’ starts with: ‘only rarely does the psychoanalyst feel impelled to engage in aesthetic investigations’ (1919, 123). This specific formulation of ‘the psychoanalyst’, meaning Freud himself, in the third person, is interesting in the context of the theory he presents. It is clear that Freud is presenting his own observations and arguments. He introduces the concept of the uncanny as something that is widely known and can be recognized by every reader. His introduction to the arguments presented in the text functions not only as a quick introduction to the author, since the generalization about ‘the psychoanalyst’ makes clear from the start in which light to place these arguments and how the author relates to the texts he references, but his use of the third person also contains a hint of the uncanny. There is an uncertainty surrounding this all knowing psychoanalyst, who splits himself in two: the I from which he speaks about his experiences, and the persona, the image of the psychoanalyst, representing the theoretical field of psychoanalysis in its entirety. There is a definite split between the two, emphasized by Freud’s emphasis on the rarity of the engagement of the psychoanalyst in aesthetic investigations. He divides himself in the psychoanalyst who is usually concerned with other aspects of the psyche, not with the discourse of sense that bring about aesthetics, and himself, Freud, who does in fact
delve into the uncovered grounds of the uncanny (ibid). The uncanny is thus introduced as an area of aesthetics, a discourse of feeling, particularly one that appears in literature, but ‘one that has been neglected in the specialist literature’ (ibid) and, at the same time, one that has not been explored by psychoanalysis. To Freud, this legitimizes his reasons for delving into the unknown uncanny. Why, then, does Freud press upon the rarity of aesthetic investigations in the work of the psychoanalyst, before fully committing himself to these aesthetics in ‘The Uncanny’?
Hugh Haughton explains in the introduction to his translation of Freud’s ‘The Uncanny’ how the psychoanalyst to Freud is a solver of riddles (ix). Originating in The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud approached dreams as riddles which are to be solved by the psychoanalyst. Dreams are puzzles, created by the mind, that need to be solved in order to understand that mind. He continued this approach in his studies on the conscious and its mysterious companion, the unconscious. In his essays on dreams, everyday life, jokes, and sexuality, all written around the turn of the century, well before he wrote ‘The Uncanny’, ‘Freud presents himself as tackling human phenomena hitherto resistant to meaningful interpretation’ (ibid), approaching these phenomena as riddles to be solved. These phenomena are unconscious processes, and they have been resistant to meaningful interpretation because the unconscious has not been understood. Haughton shows how in these texts, Freud ‘seeks to demonstrate that [these phenomena] […] are ultimately intelligible’ (ibid) and ask to be interpreted. In the process of interpretation, however, the mind shows itself to be unintelligible to itself. Here, again, we can speak of a split: the psychoanalytic split between the ‘commitment to interpretation and resistance to interpretation’ (ibid).
‘The Uncanny’ is mostly based on interpretation. Apart from the first section, which explores the linguistic duality and uncertainty of the German word ‘Unheimlich’, Freud interprets human behavior, his own experiences, and the experience of the uncanny as described in literature and as experienced by the reader. His psychoanalytical analyses of dreams have, according to Haughton, influenced not only the interpretation of art, but also its production at the time of its publication, and well after. ‘The Uncanny’ is definitely not Freud’s only aesthetic essay. He wrote, for example, extensively on art in ‘Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood’. It was after he had explored the clinical areas of psychoanalysis, that he became more and more interested in its cultural value (x). In ‘The Uncanny’, Freud aims to show that ‘the unconscious mechanisms familiar to us in the “dream-work” are […] also operative in the processes of imaginative writing’ (Freud “An Autobiographical Study” 40). Freud does delve into the field of aesthetics, but
not those of beauty. He, instead, explores ‘an aesthetics of anxiety’ (Haughton xli). ‘Only rarely does the psychoanalyst feel impelled to engage in aesthetic investigations’ indicates a certain hesitation towards the study of aesthetics within the field of science, and it is through this sentence that Freud legitimizes his approach as a psychoanalyst in a field that is positioned between aesthetics and science. The sentence creates not only a split between art and science, but also between the aesthetics of beauty and the uncanny.
The first section of ‘The Uncanny’ is limited to a linguistic analysis of the German words ‘das Heimliche’ and ‘das Unheimliche’, which technically should be opposites (‘The Uncanny’ 124). The chapter consists mostly of dictionary definitions. The construction of the essay is as strange as the theory itself. The uncanny comes with uncertainty, and so does Freud. The introduction creates expectations about the structure and function of the chapters to come, mainly aesthetic investigations. These investigations do eventually take place, but only after the linguistic exploration of the German definitions. Freud shifts between science, interpretation, excerpts from the dictionary, letters to and from the past, and what can be seen as diary entries, each form creating more uncertainty about what is still to come. In the first chapter, Freud explains how ‘Heimlich’ can be defined as familiar and intimate. That which is intimate, is hidden and secret. By extension, that which is secret can be threatening, or ‘unheimlich’. Somewhere in between the linguistic definitions of the two German words, they meet (132). The uncanny, the translation of ‘das Unheimliche’, is not just the feeling of strangeness, ‘it is a peculiar commingling of the familiar and unfamiliar’ (Royle 1). It is the questioning of one’s own identity, one’s own name (ibid). In the process of questioning one’s own identity, a differentiation is made between the thinking self and the identity that is being questioned. The self is confronting the ‘self’ with itself, positioning two sides of the self, two doubles, opposite each other. It is in fact, according to Freud, the things that have been laid bare, out in the open, that should have been kept hidden, to which ‘uncanny’ applies (132). One’s own identity and sense of self should ultimately be hidden from the world, as they are the most private. Facing one’s double is, then, the revealing of all of the aspects of the self which should only be known to the individual and is perhaps the most uncanny experience of all.
The Figure of the Double
Freud touches upon the origins of the figure of the double. The motif of the double finds its origins in the figure of the double as a way to preserve the living. The first double of the body was the
mind, which has been believed to be more lasting than the physical body (142). The mind would be preserved in art, writing, and other preservable expressions of individuality, creating a double of the individual that would outlive the body. Deceased bodies were mummified and copied in lasting materials. But the creation of a double as a preservation of life is, according to Freud, inherently narcissistic, based on self-love. The minds of both the child and the primitive man are dominated by this primordial narcissism. This primordial stage is one which we have to evolve from. When this phase is surpassed ‘the meaning of the double changes: having once been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death’ (ibid). This double as an object of terror reminds us of the narcissistic, primordial stage that we have surpassed. The motif of the double entails the duality of the human mind in the immortalization of the self through the figure of the double, but at the same time ‘threateningly announcing his death’ (Tucker xvi). How this double announces death, will be discussed later.
The concept of our own mortality remains incomprehensible to humans. Freud argues that the uncanny is often related to death, dead bodies, or ghosts, because of the unreceptiveness of the unconscious to mortality. Our own mortality is something we cannot fully comprehend. As far as we know, everyone who does no longer walk the earth has died, bus there is no certainty that this is a guarantee. Death is not as much a part of life, as it is something separate. The only thing we know is that, up until now, and with various causes, an individual’s physical life has ended, and we named that end ‘death’. What exactly death entails, and what shape it has in our own lives, is not quite clear. This contributes to the persistence of the belief in life after death (148-149). The uncertainty surrounding these significant aspects of life - is death even an aspect of life - is what fuels the uncanny. Not knowing or not being able to explain something important, something we cannot go around, is unnatural, hence we try to find ways to explain. This explanation is, however, still surrounded by doubt. So when something behaves out of the ordinary, in a way that does not fit our explanations - rising from the dead, for example - opportunity arises for the uncanny.
A living person can be perceived as uncanny only ‘when [the] intent to harm us is realized with the help of special powers’ (149), powers, or an aspect of behavior, we cannot comprehend. Madness can stir the same experience of the uncanny in the perceiver, as he recognizes ‘a manifestation of forces that he did not suspect in a fellow human being, but whose stirrings he can dimly perceive in remote corners of his own personality’ (150). The uncanny in itself is a split. One between attraction and dissonance. There is something familiar about that which is completely out
of the ordinary. The stirring of something familiar, is, according to Freud, the familiarity of those aspects of ourselves that have been suppressed, for example, the fear of castration. These fears are buried so deep that, in our everyday lives, we can ignore their presence. It is when a fellow human behaves in a way that vaguely reminds us of these fears, that the uncanny signals the dissonance - something isn’t right, but we cannot explain what exactly that is.
The presence of the figure of the double is a confrontation that exemplifies these uncanny encounters. The boundaries between doubles are permeable, finds Katherine H. Burkman in The Drama of the Double. An infant cannot tell where he ends and his mother begins. But as we surpass this phase, the child begins to search for his own self (2). It is when we have surpassed this phase and have established our own identities, that discovering permeable boundaries between the self and someone outside of the self, becomes an uncanny reflection of a phase that was left behind. Freud gives the example of the uncanny quality of repetition, based on an instinctive, deeply rooted compulsion to repeat. ‘Anything that can remind us of this inner compulsion to repeat is perceived as uncanny (145). Seeing your own double must be the ultimate uncanny repetition. Freud concludes with: ‘the uncanny of real experience […] can be traced back every time to something that was once familiar and then repressed’ (154).
The uncanny in fiction is, however, a different story. The aesthetics of fear, as Freud has introduced the uncanny in his introduction, take shape quite differently than the experience of the uncanny in real life. The uncanny in fiction is an externalization, a literalization of a real experience, that can be enhanced, pulled apart and blown up. It is not just describing an uncanny experience that stirs something in the reader, as Freud finds in literature. This is where Freud’s aesthetic investigations take place. He brings up two examples of stories about a severed hand. The uncanny effect of the hand is based on a repressed castration fear. The first example is Herodotus’ story of the treasure of Rhampsenitus, the second Hauff’s ‘Story of the Severed Hand’ (158). Herodotus’ story does not leave the reader with an uncanny experience, but Hauff’s story does. The reason is, according to Freud, that the first story is focused on ‘the superior cunning of the master-thief’ (ibid), while in the latter, the reader experiences the story through the eyes of the princess, who faces the uncanny. It is thus the perspective, the experience of a character that can be felt by the reader, which is the basis for the experience of the uncanny by the reader of a given story. The identification of the reader with the experience of the character, calls for the presence of a character subjectivity, since the uncanny is based on experience. The reader does not see a severed hand, but
reads about how someone else sees the hand. It is the identification with a character, that enables the writer to cause these effects. This is, however, complicated in Richard Ayoade’s The Double (2013).
The Object a and Literature
The introduction to Simon’s ordinary life in The Double, before the double trouble starts, is short. He sits in a seat in an empty carriage of a train with his eyes shut, when a faceless stranger suddenly stands before him, asking him to move because it is his seat he is in. The powerless Simon moves, and, standing in the aisle, he spots his love interest, Hannah. She is in another carriage, in her own thoughts, unreachable to Simon. He cannot get off the train, as two men stack boxes into the doorway. When they are done, however, one of the men enters the train holding a single box. This is the first instance of an uncanny experience in The Double. The man is seen repeating the movement of placing a box from outside of the train into the carriage, but the repetition is negated when he leaves with a single box. The uncanny experience of this repetition is mirrored in Simon’s disconnectedness to the shared reality of his surroundings, not able to get past the man stacking the boxes each time he turns to take another box. The obstacle of asking someone to move is, to Simon, so significant that it repeats itself. The subjective perspective through which Simon’s story is told, his inner world that filters the view of the outer world that is presented to us, is established in this very first scene.
Simon is easily forgotten, but keeps hold of the few things he knows about himself. That is, until James is introduced. The charming womanizer instantly wins over Simon’s workplace and his love interest. James seems to have all of the capacities Simon desperately wants. James invades Simon’s life for his own benefit, stealing his girl, using his apartment to meet with her, forcing Simon to do James’ work tasks on top of his own. ‘The double is […] the figure of jouissance’ (13), says Mladen Dolar in ‘I Shall Be with You on Your Wedding-Night’. It is the double who does the things one desperately wants, who ‘indulges in one’s repressed desires and makes sure that the blame falls on the subject’ (14). The double is, according to Dolar, that which you see in the mirror. Looking in the mirror and recognizing oneself, is already creating a double. There is no way to recognize yourself and be one with oneself at the same time (12), something Freud does in his formulation of himself in the third person in his opening of ‘The Uncanny’. The ‘normal’ mirror image is, however, lacking something that Lacan has called the object a.
The object a is, contrary to the object A, the other that is not entirely other. It is part of the self, ‘coupled with the ego, in a relationship which is always reflexive, interchangeable’ (Evans 128). It is tied closely to the specular image of the self and cannot be detached from the ego. Its counterpart, the object A, is the big Other. In the Lacanian mirror stage, the infant sees itself in the mirror and sees something that is whole. The reflection is a complete image, not fragmented, like the infant experiences the lack of mobility of its own body. The wholeness of the reflection creates conflict in the infant, and to resolve this, the infant identifies itself with the reflection. From that point onward, the mother holding the infant is Other, object A. The Otherness of the mother contrasts with the identification with the mirror image of the self, and the narcissism that comes with it (117). The object a is a part of the individual which cannot be seen in the mirror, and the lack of this object is what makes the reflection a mere reflection, not another human being.
The object a is the object of desire in others, which is never attainable. It is as much an object of desire, as a cause for it, since it is that which one seeks to achieve. It is ‘both the object of anxiety, and the final irreducible reserve of libido’ (129). It would be extremely uncanny if your reflection would wink or nod at you, which would be adding the object a (ibid). The fear is, in Lacanian theory of anxiety, not one necessarily of loss, but one of gaining too much. The doubling, Dolar states, ‘cuts one off from a part, the most valuable part, of one’s being, the immediate self-being of jouissance’ (13). Simon is cut off from this jouissance because his split has moved it to James’ character. Simon is left with no jouissance, no pleasure or satisfaction, while it is the driving force behind James. James’ presence in Simon’s life is not one of a lack, but of a plurality, the doubling that is uncanny. Simon’s perception of his double, his subjectivity and the quickly fading reality around him, are motifs which can be recognized in the German Romantic literature Freud speaks of when he analyzes the aesthetics of the uncanny.
In ‘The Uncanny’, Freud delves into E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ‘The Sand-Man’. Freud’s analysis of the uncanny in his essay is, however, fairly limited. Connecting the anxiety in the uncanny to the castration fear Freud is well known for, he limits himself to these sexual constructions and overlooks other primordial fears that are connected to being. The figure of the double can, for example, be connected to the fear of death, the element of the eyes in ‘The Sandman’ can also be grounded in a primordial vulnerability of exposing one’s eyes, not just their physical vulnerability, but their intimate function as ‘windows to the soul’ as well. In Doubles in Literary Psychology, Ralph Tymms looks at the dissociation of personality, a recurring theme in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s
writing, in which he explores ‘the forms in which the unconscious self reveals its presence to the waking mind’ (54). What is seeping through from the unconscious, that which has been repressed, pushed deep into the unconscious, is what Freud recognizes as ground for the uncanny. What Hoffmann has most noteworthily contributed to the motif of the double, is the physical embodiment of the secondary, hostile component of the personality. It is the crossing of split personality from the ‘teeming subconscious into the outer world of sensuous perception’ (55), that makes Hoffmann’s stories stand out in German Romantic Doppelgänger literature.
The mystery of his stories comes largely from the reader’s uncertainty about the reality of interactions between characters and events, since subjective accounts of evens are intertwined with reality. The process of the creation of the double is successive: the characters’ experiences are disconnected from this everyday reality. They imagine themselves to be people from different times, in fantastical tales of composers, martyrs and pupils of the greatest masters. ‘From this’, Tymms states, ‘it is an easy step to transfer one’s identity to a physical double’ (55), not bound by time or place, since time has become relative (56). In ‘The Sand-Man’ there is no physical double of the main character, Nathanael. Instead, the doubling takes place in the figure of terror from his childhood – the Sandman, who would rob children of their eyes – who comes to life as both Coppelius, a lawyer, and Coppola, a lens salesman. Both figures keep reappearing and dislodge Nathanael further and further from reality. He has fallen in love with a girl he watches through her window, Olimpia, but during a struggle between the double, Coppola, and Olimpia’s father, Nathanael finds out Olimpia is an automaton. As her artificial eyes lay on the floor, Nathanael loses his mind. Somewhat recovered, he decides to marry his fiancé Klara, but looking at her through the spyglasses he had used to watch Olimpia, he loses his mind again and tries to harm Klara. When the figure of the double, Coppelius, appears again, reaffirming the pattern of repetition and doubling, Nathanael commits suicide, overcome by his fear of the Sandman.
Although the figure of the double appears not as the main character, but as versions of the same antagonist, there is a duality in the character of Nathanael. As can be seen in the opening paragraph of this thesis – Klara’s analysis of Nathanael’s hallucinations in ‘The Sandman’ – the projected portion of Nathanael’s mind ‘is regarded as a Doppelgänger […] and the dualism is explained once again by the obscure doctrine of an outside self magnetizing the victim, and assuming his form’ (Tymms 64-65). The doubles of the Sandman, Coppelius and Coppola, are projections originating in the mind of Nathanael. Klara’s analysis of Nathanael’s hallucinations, in
which he insists that Coppola is the same person as Coppelius, pulls this projection towards Nathanael, suggesting that it is a darkness within the mind of Nathanael that is causing him distress. ‘If we have sufficient firmness of character […] always to recognize the outside enemies’ interference as such […] then this uncanny power perishes’ contrasts the strength of the minds of the healthy with Nathanael’s delusions. It is thus Nathanael’s subconscious that invades the reality portrayed in Hoffmann’s story.
This same exploration of the crossing of the subconscious into reality plays part in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s writings. The traditional, evil double in Dostoevsky’s work is, according to Tymms, an embodiment of the dissociated other self. The theme he often represents is ‘the emergence of half-formed emotional reactions into the conscious mind’ (98). Without the supernaturalism from Hoffmann’s work, but inspired by it, Dostoevsky plays with the uncertainty of the reader through realism. Subjective accounts of the characters are alternated with ‘objective descriptions of the enclosing world of reality’ (99), representing the mental process of suppressed thoughts being pushed into the conscious mind. This is noteworthily at play in Dostoevsky’s novel The Double, on which Richard Ayoade’s film is based. Just as ‘The Sandman’ creates an interplay between real and imagined, between the reality outside of the person, and the suppressed impulses from his subconscious, The Double stays thematically close to Dostoevsky’s novel in the interplay between unconscious and sensuous perception.
The double is a source of anxiety because it is the merging of the Imaginary and the Real. The mirror image should not, in our knowledge of everyday life, gain the Lacanian object a, and the double should not partake in our everyday lives. But the case is that the self has been split and we are dealing with a double, as Simon has to deal with James. Simon cannot achieve jouissance in his relationship with Hannah. The lust and longing for the girl is not a substitute for the jouissance the double provides (Dolar 14), since it is only the merging of the doubles, the merging of the two halves, that can make the split person whole again. The girl is, according to Dolar, merely standing in the way of the reuniting of the doubles. The double has to get rid of the girl, standing in the way of the doubles being together, something James does by seducing and then betraying Hannah. ‘But of course joining one’s jouissance, regaining one’s primordial being, is lethal’ (ibid). Therefore, the figure of the double is the harbinger of death. They cannot unite in life. The double is a repetition, a multiplicity that bridges the natural gap between imaginary and real, and a source for the uncanny.
Chapter 2: Repetition, Mise en Scène, and Repetition
Doubling the Double
James, the first repetition of Simon, is not the only repetition. His appearance, his behavior and that of Simon, all keep repeating. Their interactions and the situations Simon finds himself in, keep doubling, ‘both as an irruption of the unexpected and with clockwork precision, totally unpredictable and predictable in one’ (ibid). James pops up in the apartment above Hannah’s, which Simon obsessively watches, again and again, each time adding something that disturbs Simon more and more. It is this repetition, this circularity of thematic and plot related elements, which adds to the estrangement of the viewer, the eeriness of the story and the portrayal of the uncanny, not just for Simon, but in the film as a whole. It is in part this repetition, that creates a multiplicity of consciousnesses and a disconnectedness from time that makes possible the merging of imaginary and real in The Double.
As said before, Simon is introduced as a nobody, someone who is easily forgotten and has little identity to hold on to. His routine revolves around work and his lonely home life. He rides the train everyday from home to work and back. On it, he watches Hannah, who is supposedly always one carriage away. The opening scene of the film is out of the ordinary for Simon, as he cannot get off the train and loses his briefcase. As he gets to the front desk of the office, he has to sign in as a visitor, since his card does not appear to be working. This process of singing in as a visitor becomes part of Simon’s routine. He has to sign a form, get a slip with his name on it, usually misspelled, walk over to the gates, show the slip and wait for access to be permitted. Meanwhile, the desk clerk rolls from one end of the desk to the other and back, moving smoothly through the space that is obviously his, as opposed to Simon’s constant unease in the space that is not inviting to him.
The scene is unsettling through that very duel between ease and unease. When Simon’s card is first rejected, the desk clerk tells him that visitors have to sign in. Simon says he has worked there for seven years, and that he sees the desk clerk every day. The desk clerk replies with: ‘I don’t work weekends, it is therefore impossible for you to see me every day’. These lines of dialogue, which occur multiple times throughout the film, seem out of the ordinary. Simon makes a statement, to which the person in front of him replies in a way that does not seem natural, or even human. The desk clerk does not truly react to what Simon said, which adds to the atmosphere of Simon not being understood. The room is filled with sounds without clear sources. There is a constant ringing
of an old phone, and various beeps, adding an impatience to the unease. The repetition of the element of signing in as if he were there for the first time, becomes familiar after some time. As the montage speeds up, the process of signing in appears to become second nature to Simon, the only way to get in when his identity, and at one point even his existence, is not acknowledged by the company.
As Simon slowly loses his sense of self, his sense of reality and his identity, becoming a non-person more and more, the repetitions surpass the introductory quality they had the first time, not showing the insecurity of the character of Simon as an illustration of the split that has yet to be externalized. Instead, it gains a duality in itself. The more Simon loses his sense of reality, the sense of his place in the world surrounding him, the more his focus shifts from his battle with his surroundings — being acknowledged for his work, approaching the girl he is in love with, getting recognition from his mother, being called his own name, instead of ‘Stanley’ — to the battle with his own split self. The factors in Simon’s life that are introduced as obstacles to be overcome, are in fact the things he accepts as being part of his character in his conflict with James. He takes the position of the shy, forgettable person as opposed to the extravagant womanizer that is James, because those are traits he can use to distinguish himself from his double. The fact that the repetitious scenes of Simon signing in as a visitor at the company he has worked at for seven years, are included in the film when his internal battle takes over his day-to-day life, makes the split in his personality even more distinct.
Simon does the same job, data processing, every day, surrounded by people who are decades older than he is and supposedly have been doing this job for decades. Hannah works in the copying department of the company. As becomes clear from the annoyance of Hannah’s colleague, an older woman with physical pains, Simon comes here every day, asking for one copy, instead of printing two himself. It is during these print sessions, that Simon can watch Hannah at work, while pondering over the love he feels is just out of reach. On the train, he watches her. When she walks home, he stands around a corner, watching her walk away. Finally, at home, he spies on her in her apartment across the street with a telescope. This routine of secrecy adds to the eery quality of the film. It is not just the doubling, facing one’s double, that is a source of the uncanny. It is the repetition, the circularity of elements that seem to be negligible when considered individually, that builds towards a spiderweb of repetitions, creating an uncanny, unsettling and uncertain basis.
The film does not offer a safe haven, an ordinary world, as most narrative structures do . 3 The hero does not have a safe, friendly environment to start in, in which we get to know him, before he has to cross the threshold into the world of adventure. He cannot, after he has overcome the danger, the white wale, return to this ordinary world a wiser and braver man. There is no ordinary world in The Double. Simon starts off as a split character, not yet distinctly split enough to acquire a physical double. Freud’s ‘The Uncanny’ is filled with the same uncertainty, constantly returning to the past, as Haughton describes: ‘Freud tells us in a letter that it is itself a product of his return to an essay of several years earlier’ (xliii). He diminishes Jentsch’s theory on the uncanny as intellectual uncertainty, but ‘constantly returns to it as if haunted by an uncertainty about the uncertainty principle that he claims to have banished’ (ibid). The returning of these elements and the circularity of their patterns, are important factors in the uncanny quality of the film.
Fig. 1 and 2
Before James enters Simon’s life, Simon cannot be seen as a whole, unified character. The split that is later externalized in James’ presence, is there from the start. This double appears as a mere shadow, starting at the very first shot. As Simon sits in a seat on the train with his eyes closed, the lights from outside and those on the ceiling of the carriage sweep rapidly across his face. As his head moves slightly with the movement of the train, the contrast of the lighting of his face changes drastically as the lights on the train flicker on and off. Simon’s face is divided in two, highlighting either side of his face clearly, but separately, not at the same time (Fig. 1 and 2). He has is eyes
See Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) and Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s 3
closed to this division. It is his blindness to the division of himself, the lack of unity he encompasses, which is externalized in the reality that surrounds him. Now standing in the carriage, he spots Hannah, just out of reach behind a door. Simon keeps himself steady by holding onto the railing above his head, which blocks the left side of his face from view. As he watches Hannah with the one eye that is visible, he moves his head slowly from one side of his arm to the other, revealing just the other eye and the left side of his face (Fig 3 and 4). He is looking at Hannah from the two different personas he encompasses, with her in the middle of their relationship. Hannah plays an important part in this duality of his character. She is the one standing in the way of the reuniting of the two halves.
Fig. 3 and 4
The harsh lighting, which creates the contrast and shadows that surround Simon, is continued throughout the film. As Hannah gets off work, Simon stands behind a pillar, accompanied by his very distinct shadow. They stand together as if partners in crime, although at this point James is a mere shadow. At the office, Simon stands in front of a pillar, looking at a picture of ‘The Colonel’, and elderly man who is the face of the company and the embodiment of Simon’s aspirations. He is a man in uniform, confident and tall. Looking at the picture, Simon’s face is reflected in the glass in an over-the-shoulder shot. He measures himself, and is simultaneously measured by the camera, to this figure of authority and success that he cannot achieve. Whenever he has ideas and proposals to show to The Colonel, his boss, Mr. Papadopoulos stands in the way of Simon meeting The Colonel. It is James who is able to impress Mr. Papadopoulos enough to meet The Colonel and present his ideas to him, and it is his jouissance which renders him powerful in these relationships.
When Simon shows a promotional video in which he plays a small part to his mother, who is in a nursing home, she asks ‘which one was you?’, saying that he didn’t look like him. Simon tries to explain to her that ‘we’re the same person’. Through his formulation, his explanation of himself versus the version of him on screen, he divides himself into two, just like Freud did in the opening of ‘The Uncanny’, seeing his reflection as an ‘other’, not a mirror image of himself. The same strangeness through Simon’s formulations occurs when he is thrown out of the mandatory ball at work, because he is not in the system. He repeatedly yells ‘this is not me!’. The duality within Simon becomes clearer with every setback he encounters, up to the point where his physical double James takes shape. His reflections multiply, his shadows become more distinct and when he finally meets his apparent opponent, the split has been made physical.
They share the same wounds, as Simon finds out when James makes a small cut with a blade on Simon’s throat. Physically, they are truly identical, but their minds differ greatly. The more James takes control of Simon’s life, takes over his choices and leaves Simon desperate, the more invisible Simon becomes. On the train, on their way back from partying, Simon opens up to James about his feelings. He confronts his double with his longing for the qualities of that double. To Simon, ‘it’s like I’m permanently outside myself. Like… like you could push your hand straight through me if you wanted to. And I couldn’t see the type of man that I want to be versus the type of man that I actually am, and I know that I’m doing it but I’m incapable of doing what needs to be done’. He feels like Pinocchio, he says, like a wooden boy on strings. When James seduces Hannah, breaking Simon’s heart, James uses this allegory to win her over. When Hannah tells Simon about the sensitive James, how he understands her, repeating the words that were initially Simon’s, he truly is outside himself, looking at himself acting, but not able to intervene. At that point he is the wooden boy. As he finally, at the end of the film, takes control over his part of his life, he says to her: ’I don’t want to be a boy held up by strings’. Again, this is an element that repeats itself circularly, a small part of the story that is set up, becomes an obstacle to be overcome, and is finally conquered or accepted.
Simon himself is doubled in the jumper, well before James appears. As Simon watches Hannah through his telescope, he sees a man, standing on a ledge above her apartment, watching him through a pair of binoculars. The man slowly waves at Simon, who waves back, mirroring the man’s gesture. The man jumps from the ledge to his death. There is no sound from outside. The jump is a silent one, but one of the most uncanny moments of the film. It is unsettling. The camera
looks around and spots the man, seen from his waist to the top of his head, looking straight at the camera through the binoculars. It is a jump scare without sound. He stands perfectly still, as Simon hesitates to watch through his telescope. His eyes approach the lens in a close up. His glasslike eye is vulnerable so close to the metal ring of the telescope. He is unprotected, out in the open and has to watch in order to know. He is too close for comfort. The slowness of the wave is followed by a swift and clean jump. The man keeps his body straight, jumping feet first as though he still stands on that ledge.
It is the combination of the slowness, the anticipation of danger, the eery stillness of the man as he stands there, watching, and as Simon sits there, watching, waiting for something to happen. When it does, it is quick and without notice, unsatisfyingly breaking the suspense that has been built up. The man falls to his death, as Simon finds out from the two detectives who solely focus on suicides in this neighborhood, as they cannot cover the entire city. They ask strange questions, determine that Simon is a ‘maybe’ in their book of suicide victims. As they discuss how the man would have lived if he had just jumped into a net two feet from where he landed — and if he was taken to the hospital in time before he bled out — the camera itself demonstrates how this jump would have occurred. It falls and turns, bouncing off the net and landing on the pavement, as the detective points right at it as a conclusion of where he would have landed. This strange camera movement is not just an illustration of the detective’s words, but simultaneously a subjective portrayal in the form of a point of view from a still unknown consciousness, and a foreshadowing of events yet to come — Simon adopts this point of view at the end of the film, when he rids himself from his double by jumping off the very same ledge. The circularity and the captivity of Simon’s experiences throughout the film are established and reaffirmed in scenes like these.
Simon and Hannah stand outside of the apartment complex, looking at the spot where the man landed. They go to Simon’s regular diner — another part of his routine — where she explains how she knew the jumper. Apparently, he used to follow her around. At work, on the train, at the apartment complex, wherever she looked he would be there, following her. She confronted him just the night before he jumped. As she tells Simon what she said to him, an uncanny familiarity arises in her story. She gets angry, emotional, and yells at Simon how it is not normal to follow someone, to spy at someone, how she does not understand why he could not just talk to her, how he could possibly think it would be flattering for someone to be spied on. As she yells these things, it appears as if they are meant for Simon. She is now more distant from him then ever.
At the end of the film, Simon finds a possible solution to his double trouble — jumping off that same ledge, but landing in the net, bouncing off and getting to the hospital before his brains bleed out, as James goes through the same physical trauma, tied to Simon’s bed with handcuffs, and definitely not getting to the hospital in time. He calls the police while looking at his reflection in the mirror, saying that there is a man standing on a ledge about to jump, and that he is looking right at him. Simon get’s on the ledge, waves at James, who is watching him from Simon’s apartment, tied to the bed, through Simon’s telescope and waves back, and jumps. While he falls, the lights from the apartments he passes glide over his face, creating the same effect as the opening shot did. Different sides of his face are lit separately, before the camera repeats the jump. The shot is identical to the one that took place when the detective told Simon about the jump, except for the lack of people in the courtyard. There is a constant dread of what is to come through these scenes. The repetitions are so close to identical, that it is the subtle differences that make the shots and scenes uncanny. There is an unease in not knowing these tiny details, being surprised in a context of familiarity and not being able to lay a finger on what exactly is different — uncanny.
The Visual Representation of the Mind
As Freud points out in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ‘The Sandman’, there is an uncanniness in the repetition of the eye, of the gaze and the act of watching. This is certainly the case in The Double. Simon’s connection to reality is based on looking, not on his physical presence. The reason why his co-workers do not notice how identical Simon and James are, is not because to them they look different, but because Simon is inherently forgettable, invisible. They are, because of their identical appearances, able to switch places without anyone realizing. Simon obsessively watches Hannah through his telescope and finds in her a loneliness that he too experiences. She draws and then tears up the drawings. Simon then collects the pieces from the trash cans in the building and tapes them back together. One of the drawings is one in which the back side of Hannah’s head is seen in front of a mirror, reflecting the back of her head as well. This drawing is an adaptation of René Magritte’s La réproduction interdite, a 1937 painting with the same image, although in the painting it is a man standing in front of the mirror. ‘Magritte loved to make his audience feel like they were tripping, especially by combining elements that are not normally found together. […] [He] wants to get an emotional reaction from us by freaking us out’ (Bowers n.p.). Hannah thus reproduces an artwork called ‘Not to be Reproduced’, in which her drawn double looks in the mirror but cannot see her
own face. She does not see in herself what she is supposed to see, cannot get in touch with a part of herself, because it has turned its back on her. In Simon, this very act of looking, searching but being unable to reach one’s own mirror image is externalized in his physical doubling.
The use of color in The Double is quite noticeable and serves clear functions in the film as a whole. Most of the scenes are saturated, with tones of yellow and green, creating an old-looking environment that is in its rugged industrialism, hard to place in time and space. The lighting is artificial, it always seems to be night. When Simon meets Melanie, the light hints more towards orange, creating a subtle feeling of lurking danger, unsettling against the calming yellow that lights the scenes before. The copy department of the company also has yellow lighting, but Hannah’s face flashes bright blue in the light of the copy machine. This creates lens flares that, combined with the slow motion of the scene and Hannah’s faraway stare, contrasts her with the world surrounding her. She stands out to Simon, in a world filled with sepia tones. Hannah is surrounded by blues and whites, portraying her pureness, but also her loneliness.
When Simon walks to the company ball, excited to have a chance to talk to her in a non-work environment — albeit at non-work — he walks with a skip in his step across the hall outside of his apartment and with every skip the light changes from red, to yellow, to blue. This is, of course, a highly subjective portrayal of his excitement. All of the colors that are later used for different functions and different states of Simon’s mind and his perceptions of reality, signal that, for now, everything is possible. No color is negative, the possibilities are endless. The light from outside lights Simon’s face blue when he watches her, and later his double, through his telescope, though his apartment is lit in the same color scheme as the office and the train.
It is when Simon and James have first met and are still on good terms, that they go out and party. James is a womanizer, talking to girls and head budding a rough looking man who is rude to Simon. The entire bar is flooded in red light, adding to the discomfort Simon shows so far outside of his comfort zone. After the head budding, they have to run to not face the repercussions. Running in a fast and shaky montage, having the most fun Simon has during the film — as James’ jouissance rubs off on him just a little, before the ultimate dissonance of their relationship prohibits them from living alongside each other — they are surrounded by the blue tones as a contrast to the fiery bar scene. They seem to be ultimately free, where the bar was hostile to Simon.
Fig. 5
On the train back home the two talk about Hannah. As Simon discusses her loneliness, which he recognizes all too well, she stands alone, looking down, while the camera turns around her, in front of a black, empty background and flashed with white and blue lighting (Fig. 5). Her isolation is made visible through Simon’s perception of her, the scene that is portrayed and is the film’s representation of Simon’s thoughts. When they get to Simon’s apartment, Simon lays the already sleeping James to bed in his single bed, he himself sitting on a hard, uncomfortable chair, watching himself sleep, as if in a lucid dream. He wakes up later that night, flooded in blue light from outside, alone on the chair, his bed empty. Was this a hallucination? Is he going crazy?
The new, cool friend that happens to look exactly like him seems to be too good to be true. James appears to help Simon in getting his girl. Sitting on the train, James checks if she looks at Simon while eating a bright red apple. The eating of an apple, bright red within the faded green walls of the train, is a big hint at the evil that is yet to come from James. It is their complete difference, while their faces are identical, that creates an underlying tension, the unease that something bad is about to happen. It is hard to place, and therefore adds to the uncanny, where exactly this disaster is going to happen, keeping us on our toes.
When Simon goes on his date with Hannah, pretending to be James, because James is the one she is interested in, the restaurant is filled with colors. At first the two are surrounded by plants, browns and greens, and brightly colored lanterns, a cacophony of color. When Simon and James switch places again, so James can recover Simon’s inability to hold a conversation, Simon watches
James fight with Hannah and make up, watching them through a sea of reds and oranges, unable to hear. His confusion and inability to act on his own is reflected in this chaos of colors, shapes, and sounds that surrounds him. When James betrays Simon by kissing Hannah, he looks differently at Hannah. She is no longer the lonely, insecure one that he understands.
At work, Hannah is surrounded by an even yellower light than the light in his cubicle. She is part of the life that is being ruined by James. There is hardly anything but yellow when a coworker of Simon’s tells him he cannot be put into the system because, to the system, he does not exist and never existed. As he breaks down and starts shouting and waving an artificial arm around, surrounded by the co-workers that at this point resemble zombies, the walls of the room are orange again, adding to the unease that has been created by this color scheme before. It is even in these details, the subtle color scheme that surrounds the décor, that the doubling, the repetition that saturates the film, is present. As Simon writes his suicide note, the two halves of his face are lit, but one in the sepia light of his apartment, and the other in the blue coming from outside. When he finally decides to jump, the light is neutral. Neither yellow nor noticeably blue. As he lies in the ambulance, his face is lit so rapidly from alternating sides, the street lights and the flashing blue light coming from the ambulance gliding over his face, that it is almost as if it is completely lit for the first time, creating the possibility of either the unity of his character, or the complete fragmentation of it.
The act of looking is closely connected to Simon’s imprisonment, his inability to escape the world in which he is stuck. The décor in The Double seems to enclose Simon everywhere he goes. It is a world of brick and cement. Most of the places Simon goes, seem to be underground. The train station and his office do not appear to have windows. Outside, it is always nighttime. Every time Simon walks across the courtyard in the middle of the apartment complex, the walls surrounding it, the layers upon layers of apartments, seem to reach the sky, for the sky itself is never seen. Inside, every room is compartmentalized. The office and Simon’s apartment have distinct industrial structures, pipes, ladders and wires signifying the mass production that represents the insignificance of Simon as a small cog in the machine. At the office, and at his home, Simon is shown surrounded by walls. He is closed off, framed closely through door openings.
When Simon talks to his mother on the phone, the door of the telephone room closes and only part of his face can be seen through the tiny window in it. Simon repeatedly gets stuck in the elevator. The world around him seems not only to capture him in these small, inescapable spaces,
