“Ready to meet yourself?”: The cognitive experience of doubles and doppelgängers in contemporary complex cinema

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“Ready to meet yourself?”: The cognitive experience

of doubles and doppelgängers in contemporary

complex cinema

By

Panos Achtsioglou

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of ARTS

in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS, CULTURE AND MEDIA

Thesis Supervisor: Assistant prof. dr. M. (Miklós) Kiss

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Faculty of Arts Master’s thesis Statement, University of Groningen

Name of student: Panos Achtsioglou Student number: S3025950

Master’s degree program – specialization: Arts, Culture and Media – Film and Contemporary Audiovisual Media

Title of final-year thesis: “Ready to meet yourself?”: The cognitive experience of doubles and doppelgängers in contemporary complex cinema

Name of thesis supervisor: dr. M. (Miklós) Kiss

I hereby declare unequivocally that the thesis submitted by me is based on my own work and is the product of independent academic research. I declare that I have not used the ideas and formulations of others without stating their sources, that I have not used translations or paraphrases of texts written by others as part of my own argumentation, and that I have not submitted the text of this thesis or a similar text for assignments in other course units.

Date: 16/06/2019

Place: Groningen -Netherlands-

Signature of student: Panos Achtsioglou

N.B. All violations of the above statement will be regarded as fraud within the meaning of Art. 7.18 of part A of the Teaching and Examination Regulations

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Abstract

Doubles and doppelgängers as figures or narrative tropes, have made their appearance in movies since the emergence of this relatively new audiovisual medium. It is lately, however, that one can detect a striking increase of films which both deal with narrative complexity and feature some form of character duplication in their fragmented, ambiguous and contradictory plots. The aim of this thesis will be to investigate the relationship between doubled characters that appear in storyworlds and their representation in films belonging to the contemporary complex cinema trend, which has become widespread in the last twenty-five years. Combining perspectives from film studies, narrative concepts and cognitive theories, this study will unpack the ways in which the trope of the double is presented within a complex narrative and also explore its potential as a means which create different forms of experience to the viewers. After a brief historical synopsis concerning the emergence of the motif in literature and film, which will also devote some

necessary recognition to the psychoanalytic theories that approached the trope since the

beginning of the 20th_{century, this study will firstly try to provide an analytical and purely}

“cinematic” taxonomy of doubles and doppelgängers seen in complex narratives and secondly will examine mainly narrative strategies and techniques which accompany, support or exploit the motif of the double presented in these particular films. Doing so, this thesis will look upon the functions or the effects that doubles have within complex narratives and it will mainly argue upon the capacity that this motif has to both contribute to, reveal and foreground the film’s complexity and intensify the sense of the viewer’s engagement. Lastly, the study will closely analyze Christopher Nolan’s film The Prestige (addressed as the typical filmic example which embeds the motif of the double in its puzzling storyline) and argue upon the ways through which

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the notion of duality not only establishes itself in the heart of the film’s plot, but also becomes the epicenter of its narrative complexification.

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Introduction

Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) is an oppressed, emarginated “small man” who lives in an equally bland and impersonal big city and works in an office for seven years, but is constantly ignored by both his colleagues and his boss. The most interesting part of his dull and

insignificant life consists of spying from his pathetic apartment’s window on his secret love, a beautiful co-worker named Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), who also lives opposite him.

Overwhelmed by shyness, the most he can do is to secretly collect bits and pieces of drawings that she throws away in her garbage and admire them in awe. Nothing interrupts his everyday routine except a peculiar incident involving a person committing suicide above Hannah’s apartment. “If he had jumped a few feet to the right, he would have survived”, one of the detectives apathetically informs him.

Suddenly, everything is about to change when Simon’s boss (Wallace Shawn) announces the arrival of a new employee named James Simon (also played by Eisenberg), who looks identical to him but no one except Simon seems to notice. Upon first glance, Simon cannot bear the uncanny resemblance and faints in front of everyone. Despite the physical similarity,

however, James is the polar opposite of Simon. Charming, extrovert and extremely confident, he immediately wins the respect and the friendship from their co-workers. Further on, and clearly out of pity, James decides to befriend with Simon, and gives him advise on how to seduce

Hannah. Things get complicated when Hannah herself asks James on a date, but through Simon. In the end, it is Simon who goes on the date (pretending to be James) but the situation quickly

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goes out of hand. James intervenes, kisses Hannah and infuriates Simon, who swears revenge by revealing to Hannah, later on, that James is cheating on her with Melanie (Yasmin Paige), their boss’s young and rebellious daughter. Furious, James starts blackmailing Simon, asking his apartment keys and using the photos he took of himself having sex with Melanie, knowing that the boss - who hates Simon - will believe that it is actually Simon in the photos. Struggling to keep himself sane and mentally intact, Simon openly accuses James at work for being an

impostor, but he is the one who is fired in the end. After saving Hannah from committing suicide, when she also reveals to him that she is miscarried after her attempt (she became pregnant after a presumed sexual encounter with James), Simon learns that his mother has died and goes at her funeral. To his amazement, he also finds James there, pretending to grieve, with his

characteristic sarcastic look. The two start to fight, but when Simon punches James in the nose, his nose also starts to bleed. The film’s plot eventually spirals into a whirlpool of manipulations and confused identities, as events lose their linearity, logical order and temporal coherence. Meanwhile, after speaking briefly with Hannah, Simon returns to his apartment and finds James already there, sleeping. He handcuffs him, goes on the ledge above Hannah’s apartment, steps “few feet to the right” and jumps. Hannah runs to him as the ambulance arrives. In the

meantime, James appears to be on the verge of death, lying motionless and handcuffed on the apartment floor. As the ambulance drives away, the detective watches over Simon. “You are special” he notes. “I’d like to think I’m pretty unique” responds Simon, with a half-smile impressed on his injured face.

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Richard Ayoade’s 2013 British black comedy The Double is one of the relatively recent examples of an artwork that revolves around the struggle between a character and his or her duplicated identity. The film shows that, encountering your identical self seems impossible to leave you unaffected. Any deviation from the biological fact that every one of us is unique on the face of the earth, could bring to the forefront of our conscience an ontologically threatening situation. It is easy enough for oneself to identify with the protagonist of The Double who (as also seen in the plot’s summary) balances between a sensation of fear and that of curiosity, of interest or even of fascination. Hence, what for many centuries has been considered a harbinger of death, an omen of bad luck or a symptom of psychological derailment, tends nowadays to become a contemporary trend in both our mediatized reality and in pop culture’s consciousness. Strangely enough, the interest in doubled characters or doppelgängers is not focused only in literature or fantasy, but expands to our everyday lives as well. Alissa Wilkinson even speaks of a ‘doppelgänger obsession’, based on the capacity that each one of us has to create his or her own double: a better, worse or even totally different version of our self, through the use of mainstream media (“What's With All the Movies About Doppelgängers?”). Arguably, our everyday experiences with new and sophisticated technologies inspire more and more people to experiment with digital copies of themselves, creating second lives online or maintaining different user profiles in multiple digital platforms, each one of them with different background information, diverse thumbnail pictures and multiple personalities (Kiss and Willemsen, 114). It seems more interesting, more alluring, or even easier, to communicate, express ourselves or experience everyday reality through a manufactured profile on a social network’s website, a multiplayer online videogame or digital footprints that our mediatized persona has left while travelling in cyberspace. In the light of this, the term “digital doppelgänger” has also been

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adopted by the digital media to designate some sort of online presence of identity (Lizama, 165). More importantly, either we fully embrace it or not, it is clear that something intrigues us in relation to the creation of an altered self, a second identity or another version of our existing one.

Whether contemporary cinema reflects this mainstreamed ongoing trend or the engagement with “the double” derives from a diachronically existent fascination of moving images with a character’s duality, it is hard to tell. The fact is, however, that recent film history has seen the emergence of a wide range of films which, one way or another, feature a doubled character, a “multiplied” identity or a physical doppelgänger. Only in the last ten years, films including various forms of character duplications such as Daniel Goldhaber’s Cam (2018), M. Night Shyamalan’s, Split (2016), Dennis Villeneuve’s Enemy (2013), Anno Saul’s The Door (Die Tür, 2009), Christopher Smith’s Triangle (2009) and Duncan Jones philosophical science fiction Moon (2009), have found releases in cinemas or streaming platforms worldwide, together with other films which reflect upon themes such as conscience splitting, hallucinatory doublings, illogical apparitions of physically identical characters or altered versions of self as parts of parallel dimensions and alternative realities. Just to prove this point, during the writing of this thesis, Jordan Peel’s evocative horror Us (2019), another movie dealing with doubled characters, is about to be released. Hence, it cannot be seen only as a pure coincidence the employment of the element of the double also into a specific and distinct group of contemporary movies that offer experiences that revolve around complexity to the viewers. In fact, many of the plots of movies with complex story structures that started to emerge in the last two and a half decades, have as core theme, adopt somewhere inside their convoluted mode of storytelling or merely insinuate the duplication of a character. To enrich Vincent L. Barnett’s accurate suggestion that doubles in cinema are usually employed in order to enhance the dramatical conflict or to reveal

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parts of character’s personality that may remain obscured, I also believe that duplication is an element that adds thin or thicker layers of complexity, disrupting the familiar state of the narrative structure and providing a high degree of unpredictability. This could be one of the reasons that, the theoretical concept of dualism has been excessively studied and analyzed mainly with relation to literary studies and more particularly under very precise theoretical frameworks, namely (majorly) psychoanalytic, philosophical or linguistic. It seems that the motif of the doppelgänger in relation to cinema in general and contemporary complex cinema in particular lacks a proper conceptional approach, a critical analysis or a more solid theoretical discussion. The contribution of this thesis, therefore, would be to provide a fertile academic ground upon which new viewpoints, regarding the correlation between the figure or the motif of the double and narrative complexity in contemporary movies, can be analyzed and theorized. In other words, this thesis will attempt to extend a mostly literary reflection into cinematic works, but at the same time also change the interpretative approach regarding the representation of the double.

Before delving into the aims, objectives and structural presentation of this thesis, I find very important to specify the way in which this dissertation intends to deal with the term

‘complexity’. According to Miklós Kiss and Steven Willemsen, the term ‘complexity’ in fiction film can have various meanings: it can be related to its emotions, to its visuals, to the content of its story or to its form. The focus, however, will be restricted only on the narrative complexity of fiction films, that is the “structural-constructional complexity in storytelling logic” (10). This proves to be a useful restriction for the aims of this thesis because, on the one hand, it narrows significantly the field of research and, on the other, it focuses on aspects of cinematic creation (namely, narration) that could exploit the motif or the figure the double more substantially.

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Under this aspect, contemporary complex films can be addressed as those mainstream filmic creations that formed a certain tendency in the last twenty-five years, featuring unconventional narratives that evoke a sense of confusion or challenge to the viewer, but also demanding a more intense cognitive workout from their audience in order to unravel their convoluted storylines. Different terms have been given by scholars trying to describe this cinematic tendency, such as puzzle films (Warren Buckland) mind-game films (Thomas Elsaesser) or multiform narratives (Mathew Campora), but in this thesis it will be mainly referred to as contemporary complex (narrative) cinema. Some characteristic examples of contemporary complex films (besides the one’s cited above, that relate to doubled characters) include David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001), Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) or Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001).

That being said, the main aim of this research will be to investigate the potential - use and effect - of the motif of the doppelgänger within contemporary complex cinema. In this thesis, I will try to unpack the relation of the figure of the double with narrative complexity and explore its affordances, as a means to create complex narrative experiences to the viewer. My study will be based on a cognitive standpoint, as the thematic and narratological value of the motif of the double will be analyzed mainly in relation to its effects upon the audience’s viewing experience. In other words, my core interest will be, firstly to sketch the ways in which the motif of the double or the doppelgänger is represented in contemporary complex cinema and secondly to elucidate to what extend it contributes in reinforcing or even enhancing the complexification of the narrative in contemporary complex films and further obfuscate meaning-making from the part of the viewers. In order to achieve that, my thesis will be divided in five chapters, an introduction and a conclusion.

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After this brief introduction - the intention of which is to present the subject, set the precise model of research, and argue about the academic relevance of the study -, the first chapter will be dedicated to a historical overview of the motif of the double as presented in literature. This will be followed by a brief summary of the conceptual framework that mostly accompanied the motif, regarding psychoanalytical theories, firstly presented by the psychologist

Otto Rank and further elaborated by Karl Jung and Jacques Lacan, but mostly by Sigmund Freud

in his 1919 seminal essay on The Uncanny (‘Das Unheimliche’). Although, as I already

specified, this will not be my interpretative perspective, I believe that I have to devote some kind of recognition on a theoretical field that systematically approached for the first time the trope of the double seen in art, and tried to extrapolate its relation with one’s inner world, but also its psychological effects.

The representation of the motif of the double in cinema can be subjected to different argumentations related to the content, style, narrative structure or genre conventions that a complex film might employ. Moreover, mostly literature scholars adopted different modes and perspectives of categorization, obfuscating even more an already broad and rather vague subject matter. This is the reason why the second chapter of this thesis will be dedicated to an analytical taxonomy of the types of doubles, particularly seen in narratively complex films. After

presenting some of the categorizations, achieved by different scholars (Gry Faurholt, Paul Coates and Pilar Andrade among others), and highlighting their inconsistencies, gaps or discrepancies regarding the representation of doppelgängers in cinema, I will perform a personal subdivision of doubles (utilizing at the same time some elements adopted from other theorists) which are

presented as being part of a complex and ambivalent narrative structure. My taxonomy will include three main categories and subcategories and I will enrich each one of these with

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examples chosen from contemporary complex films (in one case, also a television series). It is within the context of complex narrative films that I will be looking to taxonomize the double, although, I have to point out that an important number of categories may apply just as well to films that do not fall within this cinematic tendency.

The objective of the third chapter will be to present and shed light into the strategies and techniques that contemporary complex cinema employs in order to present and incorporate elements of character duplication related to its form, style and content. My main emphasis will be given to narration and narrative techniques which accompany and disclose the trope of the doppelgänger in complex films and I will mostly entangle with matters of style, genre

conventions or sound to the degree that these - more or less explicitly - can be adhered to the narrative structure of each filmic case. In order to investigate and try to extract some recurring patterns regarding this subject, I will base my research on film poetics by cognitive film theorists such as David Bordwell but also on academic researches by Matthew Campora, Eugene J. Crook, Jefferson Kline and others. Each strategy analyzed will be also applied to examples of sequences taken from both contemporary complex films and (to a lesser degree) narratives that conform more to art-cinema or modernist approaches of filmmaking.

The bigger part of my academic research will be dedicated to the fourth chapter, in which I will attempt to perform a functional analysis of the motif of the double presented in complex narratives. In other words, I will explore the potential of this motif related to the cognitive effect based at the viewer’s side. Under this perspective, I will propose a relatively novel approach, namely to look at the relation between the duplication of a character as a contributor to the narrative complexity of a film. The result of such unity is a cognitive effect which emerges from the viewer’ engagement with the film at hand. The chapter will be divided into two smaller

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sections. The bigger one will hypothesize upon the capacity that the use of the doppelgänger in contemporary complex cinema has, to foreground or add an extra level of complexity and puzzlement to the viewer, further challenging his or her cognitive capacity. The second and smaller one will theorize upon the presumed appeal of these cognitive struggles that result from experiences with complex narrations that contain character duplications. In short, and always under a cognitive perspective, I will try to argue about the reasons that viewers may find fascinating, or at least engaging, confusing stories with doppelgängers. After all, the recurrent theme of the double, which emerged since the first steps of cinema as a form of art (as early as

1913, with Stellan Rye’s The Student of Prague) proves at least a constant interest of both the

film industry and the audience regarding this peculiar motif. Kiss and Willemsen’s cognitive study, Impossible Puzzle Films, will be my main source regarding this chapter, although I will also incorporate other theoretical notions related both to cognitive perspectives and narrative complexity.

The last chapter will include one case study that, in my opinion, represents the most characteristic, critically acclaimed and commercially successful example of a combination between a contemporary complex film and a plot which hosts a doppelgänger, a character duplication or even both tropes, at its thematic epicenter. Christopher Nolan’s Victorian psychological thriller The Prestige (2006) will serve as a case study to test out the theoretical work laid out in the previous four chapters . The selection of this film is based on two facts. Firstly, Christopher Nolan’s filmmaking, in general, but also the aforementioned film, in particular, are commonly used as examples of contemporary complex storytelling by both academic and popular texts. Secondly, since its first viewing, it becomes extremely evident that

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placing the character multiplication not as a side effect of the story’s intricacy, but as a driving force at the center of its narrative and formal structure. Through a close reading and thorough analysis of some emblematic sequences of this film, I will try to unpack the formal and stylistic strategies that Nolan uses (in his own, idiosyncratic way) in order to present the theme of the double in his artwork. In addition, I will contemplate upon the ways in which this movie exploits both its content and the motif of the doppelgänger, in order to create an additional level of

complexity to the viewer.

Finally, in the thesis’ conclusion, I will finalize my dissertation by presenting the results of my analysis and comment upon the importance of the attention given to cinematic ‘cognitive poetics’ (Kiss and Willemsen, 23), an academic treatment regarding the relationship between complex cinema and the motif of the double which seems to lack the proper scholarly attention or, (to phrase it lighter) which represents a topic that so far has remained relatively untheorized. Hence, I will also comment upon ways for further academic elaboration, underlying the fact that this study represents merely a starting point and not a complete and exhaustive examination of the trope of the doppelgänger in cinema or, more appropriately, of the correlation between doubles in contemporary complex cinema and its varieties of viewing effects.

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Chapter 1. Historical Background and Psychoanalytic Theories

1.1 The Double in Literature and Fiction

The duplication of a character is a motif that became very prominent in literature with the

emergence of the Romantic or Gothic prose, in the 18th_{century. Its roots, however, can be traced}

back in time, at the beginnings of the written word in Western civilization. In what is considered to be the earliest surviving literary work, the ancient Akkadian epic poem of Gilgamesh (written in stone on 2100 BC), the homonymous hero first battles and then befriends with his counterpart, Enkidu (Hui and Fall). Furthermore, anthropological data offered evidence upon primitive culture’s beliefs that twins were magical, the shadows were fearsome, the reflections hide some sort of mesmerizing power and the soul can be transported outside of one’s carnal self (Hallam, 6). In Aristotelian and Platonian philosophy, the concept of dualism is thoroughly described as well. In the “Symposium”, Plato amused his guests by stating that each human had a double to whom was once physically attached, and since then is trying to find it in order to complete him or herself again. The ancient mythological figure of Amphitryon, adopted in a Latin play by Titus Maccius Plautus, includes also the figure of the double, when Zeus, by taking the form of Amphitryon, seduces his wife Alcmene and gives her a son, Hercules (qtd. in Rosenfield, 326). The concept of dualism appears very prominent in Christian theology as well, which is

prevalently built upon the Manichean distinction between good and evil, light and darkness or body and soul. The Biblical text itself, also offers many doubled figures, not only of characters but of spaces as well, such as Cain and Abel, Jesus and Judas, or the twin cities of Sodom and

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Gomorrah. Turning back to literature, doubles can be encountered in various works, from the Renaissance period to Shakespeare. As Hui and Fall comment, experiments with duality or character duplication played an important role in fictional literature, leading to a real proper

explosion in the late 18th_{century, when a more explicit and distinctive double motif can be found}

in the prose fiction of the Romantic period. In fact, Clifford Hallam points out that a most common mistake non-scholarly researches do is to identify the motif almost exclusively with the

Gothic novel, or even worst, to recognize the trope of duplicability only in 19th_{century authors,}

such as E. T. A. Hoffmann, Hans Christian Andersen, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. He traces the reasons for that belief on two aspects. The most obvious reason of the preeminence of the double as literary convention during that era was due to the motif’s enormous popularity in prose fiction (idem., 10). Also, in 1796 the literary term

“Doppelgänger” appeared for the first time, in Jean Paul Richter’s novel Siebenkäs. The German word which literary means “double-goer”, was barely defined in a one-sentence footnote as “so heissen sie Leute die sie selbst sehen” (“So people who see themselves are called”) (Hui and Fall). The general vagueness of this term and the poor explanation given by the text helped the term acquire various meanings, referring to a non-biologically related identical double of a character, a ghostly counterpart of a living person (usually seen as an omen of bad luck or a harbinger of death) or also used to describe the biologically related evil twin who wants to bring uneasiness and destruction to his “normal” counterpart. The second reason Hallam detects, can be related to one of the main features of Romanticism, that is “the concern with the creative, passionate and transcendental self” (10). Related to the aforementioned notion, Rosenfield also observers that the Romantic fiction transformed the inner self of the individual (his or her fears, doubts, thoughts or spiritual and metaphysical explorations) in something fashionable and

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fascinating, allowing larger audiences to accept more easily works which depict or reveal opposing halves within the human personality (327). Finally, Friedrich Kittler suggests that the emergence of the motif of the double in Romantic literature was based on both the spread of literacy among people and on the possibility of identifications that those narratives offered to their readers. He even uses an episode of Goethe’s second novel Wilhelm Meister’s

Apprenticeship (1796) in order to argue about the presentation of the hero as a common person

with general characteristics applicable to anyone (90). Several decades after, during the 19th

century, the motif of the double was able to abundantly establish itself in literary fiction,

conforming to many genres and styles, but more prominently in romance, fairy tale and mystery. Especially in Gothic, a branch of the Romantic writing, the double or doppelgänger was heavily exploited, portraying the figure as closely as a supernatural entity that mirrors and threatens the self. Appearing as a grotesque and terrifying element and serving as a harbinger of evil and calamity, the double evokes fear and anxiety to the characters within the novel, revealing its ominous and most of the times supernatural potent (Lizama, 166). The primitive fears of identity loss or (as cited above) of disembodiment of the soul, come on surface, as the boundaries

between dream and reality, desires and duties, or madness and sanity are constantly blurred. Examples of famous novels of that period can include the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Edgar Allan Poe’s short story William Wilson (1839) and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s archetypical doppelgänger novel The Double (1846). For Gry Faurholt, what unites those (and many more) artworks

represents also the central premise of the motif of the double, that is the paradox of encountering oneself as another. Either coming from far away, being constructed by evil machineries or

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sprouting from the depths of a troubled mind, the logically impossible notion that the ‘I’ and the ‘not-I’ are somehow identical, shall be expressed (1).

1.2 Rank’s Doppelgänger, Freud’s Uncanny and Lacan’s Mirror

Although it becomes now clear that the motif of the double majorly influenced the Romantics, it is not said that it was only restricted to that specific period or that it did not

undergo changes and developments, in the decades to come. The 20th_{century found both new}

writers eager to bring the motif into new levels of psychological complexity (James Joyce, Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka, just to name a few), and new technological innovations ready to explore or exploit the potential of the double, reworking or adapting already well-known works. Almost since its emergence, the art of cinema appeared to be fascinated - practically as much as

literature - by the concept of the duplication of a character. As early as 1913, Stellan Rye’s silent

film The Student of Prague contemplated upon the idea of the doppelgänger. Using the old theme of the image in the mirror addressing to the soul of a person, the film depicts the struggles of a young student named Balduin (Paul Wegener) as he has to deal with his double who appears from the former’s mirror image, as a price to be payed due to a financial deal made between the poor student and a sorcerer. Unfortunately, Balduin finds himself haunted by his doppelgänger who murders the girl he is in love with. As to be expected, Balduin meets his fate when, trying to kill his demonic double, kills himself instead.

The advent of the first film including a double nearly coincided with one of the first extensive theoretical treatments, which attempted to systematically comprehend the phenomenon and correlate it with one’s personality and emotions. In 1914, psychologist Otto Rank published his essay entitled “Der Doppelgänger” that gave birth to an approach which influenced for many

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decades to come the understanding of the peculiarity of the motif of the double, especially in literature. To be more precise, it was five years later, when psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud

elaborated some notions related to Rank’s study and responded with his provocative small article entitled The Uncanny (‘Das Unheimliche’), which meant to determine the theoretical way

through which the motif would be further interpreted and analyzed. As Hallam puts it, “any Double figure in prose fiction which can be explained by anthropology (including folklore), spurious scientific theories, philosophy, or some other system, can in most cases be understood more fully, more clearly, and, in crucial ways, more convincingly by depth psychology” (12-13). Although Rosenfield appears more restrained, she also agrees with the importance of the rapid rise of Freudian psychoanalysis that, in relation to the gradual decline of the influence of religion, shed a different light in the comprehension of this figure in literature (336).

Trying schematically to identify the main points of Otto Rank’s theory, it is important to mention that the Austrian psychoanalyst and one of Freud’s closest collaborators was the first to relate the theme of the double to anguish and fear towards death and loneliness (Andrade, 2). In his effort to analyze the various examples of Doppelgängers in anthropology, folklore or

literature from a psychological viewpoint, he sees the motif as a manifestation of the ancient belief in the soul and the association between the duplication of the body in its shadow or the legends that accompany the concept of duplication and the celestial objects, mostly the Sun. His study sometimes assumes the character of an ethnological research, as he traces the double as a cultural phenomenon which appears in German superstitions, Greek myths (such as the one of Narcissus, also interpreted by Freud) and Indian beliefs and religious practices (Schweigert, 21-22). According to Rank, all these appearances, explanations or interpretations of the double in human history stem from one’s universal belief in the immortality of the self, or the impossibility

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of the acceptance of death. When a sensually immature individual denies the inevitability of death, develops either an excessive love or an excessive fear for him or herself. The

psychological answer in both cases is the creation of another identical self, which works as a protector, a benevolent entity or (more usually) as a destroyer, an omen of death (qtd. in Andrade, 2).

The realm of emotions remains also a central subject to Freud’s article as well, trying to approach the doppelgänger in relation to the stages of evolution of the human psyche. The psychological experience of meeting your double (an effect that sometimes is recreated in literature) falls under a specific category of feelings, or quality of feelings that belong to the realm of frightening but somehow cannot be characterized as merely horrific. For him the ‘uncanny’ (hence, the title of his article) is something different. Freud does not omit to identify the difference between his approach and other aesthetic philosophers that treat fear, which consists in the fact that the uncanny feeling, in contrast to pure fear, strikes unexpectedly and overwhelms when encountered. Based both on empirical observation and through psychological analysis of E.T.A Hoffman’s short story The Sandman (1816), Freud defines the uncanny as “[…] that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar” (219). As he explains in the introductory section of his essay, the word “Heimlich” (translated from German as ‘homelike’ or ‘familiar’) can sometimes mean the exact opposite

(“Unheimlich”, that is ‘strange’ or ‘dreadful’), depending on the circumstances or the context of the conversation. For him, this linguistic curiosity derives from a particular psychologic reason, which resides in the mechanism of repression. The uncanny is not something new, but something which exists in the mind but became alienated and estranged due to the process of repression. In his words, “the unheimlich is what was once heimisch, homelike, familiar; the prefix ‘un’ [‘un- ’]

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is the token of repression” (244, emphasis on the original). It is also worth to be mentioned that Freud does not identify something as universally uncanny. What might appear as uncanny to someone might leave someone else unaffected. His emphasis is given to the mechanisms that trigger that sensation and also to the different ways something can materialize as such.

Therefore, in order to explain the uncanny emotion, he uses Hoffman’s short story and focuses on the Oedipal conflict between the main character, Nathaniel and his father, whom Nathaniel wished dead. Although for many scholars this interpretation seems rather arbitrary and biased, allowing Freud to bring to the story his Castration Complex theory (qtd. in Schweigert, 12), one of the themes that clearly emerge from his analysis is the relation of the uncanny with the motif of the double. For Freud, what makes an event, a situation, an object or a person uncanny, is repetition. As he points out, “These themes [of uncanniness] are all concerned with the

phenomenon of the ‘double’, which appears in every shape and in every degree of development” (Freud, 233). Correlating the event of repetition with what in French is called “déjà vu” (literary translated as “already seen”) he believes that an earlier experience of something mundane and ordinary, filtered through the uncanny emotion, can be transformed into something dreadful, can “become a thing of terror” (idem., 236). Related to that, he suggests that the human psyche has an inner compulsion to repeat, bringing out feelings of uncanniness during this process, because usually the repeated object is a repressed one, a residue of some old and debunked beliefs. That situation cannot have any other result but to make us wonder whether our new beliefs are in fact correct, or sense that some valid beliefs that guide our everyday life (such as the existence of ghosts, the living dead or the omnipotence of the mind) might not be so valid after all

(Schweigert, 14). As Hallam contends, Freud’s notion of compulsion through repetition - something which is introduced in The Uncanny but is analyzed in greater detail in a later

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publication with the essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) - provided an in-depth psychoanalytical knowledge to the phenomenon. Addressing the concept also from an

evolutionary standpoint, Freud thinks that the inorganic state precedes the organic. Thus, in all human beings there is an unconscious impulse to return to a condition where there is no tension, namely that of death. Since the uncanny is a feeling which is clearly associated with a fearful sense of repetition (such as splitting, duplication, fantasies of recurring characters and dreams) he arrives at a conclusion that the uncanny experience has something to do with the fear and discomfort that accompanies those experiences which remind us of death (15). Reflecting upon Freud’s notions, Andrade also asserts that, whereas the motif of the double in relation to death appears mostly during childhood, the double as symbol of castration or mutilation (that is, repression) comes later on, in instances in which the self generates an excessive Superego. Her assertions are based on Freud’s suggestions that the formation of conscience is strongly related with the uncanny, because under its influence, the Ego (that is, the realistic part of the self which stands as some form of mediator between the irrational desires of the Id and the restrictive moral laws of the Superego) is capable to split itself and thus is able to express judgments upon itself (2). In this manner, the literary motif of a doubled figure that persecutes the hero can be

explained under the viewpoint of a tyrannical form of Superego, or can be also present in some real-life medical cases which involve delusions of observation, when the conscience is

pathologically dissociated form the Ego (Freud, 234). Moreover, in adult stage, the double can be generated under the psychoanalytical term of “alter-ego” which surfaces to disrupt the Ego’s existential trajectory, expressing unfulfilled conscious or unconscious desires. Lastly, the double can appear also as a form of self-punishment inflicted upon the person’s impotence.

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As becomes relatively evident, psychoanalysis treats the double as something which resides within the psyche and emerges when the stability or the emotional coherence of the self is disrupted. This theory became the most prominent method of analysis of the motif of the double, especially presented in Gothic literature, somewhat obfuscating other interpretative possibilities of the trope. The overarching position of psychoanalysis became even more stable and

undisputable in the years to come, with both C.G. Jung’s theory of the shadow and especially with Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage. In the latter’s approach, the mirror represents a crucial object (such as in Rank’s theory, in which the mirror refers to both death and the embodiment of one’s soul) in the formation of the self-consciousness. In the age of 18 months, when according to Lacan this stage takes place, the child needs to see him/herself in the mirror, as the way others see him/her, in order to perceive his or her existence as an autonomous entity. Hence, the double becomes a vehicle of the formation of the self. The problem arises when the mirror image (which can also be addressed as a symbolic mirror) is confused with the actual self and thus, the “other” takes the self’s place. Lacan distinguishes two opposing forces in this stage, namely integration and alienation. In fact, the “other” in the mirror guarantees the wholeness and the existence of the self but also wants to take over, to assume the identity and take away the autonomy

(Schweigert, 26-29). Needless to say, that many narratives that include doubles or doppelgängers can also be interpreted or analyzed through the above theoretical prism. The undoubtable

importance of all these psychoanalytical readings led some (even contemporary) theorists in strong affirmations that scholars are unanimous in stating that the understanding of the motif of the double is inextricably linked to psychoanalysis’ breakthrough of deciphering the human personality (Hallam, 11). However, the need of a diverse approach towards the figure of the doppelgänger in fiction incited other scholars to emphasize the importance to distance oneself

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from Freud, Jung or Lacan’s influence, in order to give space to other theoretical perspectives that will try to read this motif differently and understand its importance in relation to different structural, formal or medium related aspects. As Andrew Hock Soon Ng puts it “[…] to privilege psychoanalysis over other theoretical and philosophical directions is to construct a kind of meta-theory for the investigation of the double, which would severely limit its signification, however far-reaching a psychoanalytical interpretation may be” (4). In this chapter, I tried to perform a small historical overview of the most important aspects of the appearance of the motif of the double that led to the proper explosion of the figure in literature of the Romantic period, which

also continued its influence in 20th_{century. The emergence of the double in cinema, at the}

beginning of the century, was also accompanied with theoretical contemplations upon one’s perception of reality. Questions like “who are you” were quickly transformed to doubts about one’s identity (“who am I?”) which, in order to answer them, the reader/viewer had to embark on a journey through the convoluted paths of the mind or abandon him/herself into the intimidating

world of fantasy. As Gry Faurholt writes “The excessive sameness or contrast of the

doppelgängers […] momentarily subverts our notion of personal identity by taking to a terrifying extreme two means of identity formation: identification and othering”. Based on that note, I also found important to devote some paragraphs in a schematic summary of the main points of

Freud’s theory of the uncanny that became the standardized conceptional framework through which critics and scholars attempted to interpret this recurrent trope. Although the significance of this approach remains undisputable, this thesis will now abandon this theory and devote its attention to a narratological and cognitive viewpoint related to the cinematic representation of the motif of the doppelgänger in contemporary complex cinema. I could also add that this shift in theoretical focus seems necessary in order to bring a much-needed academic space for theories

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that focus primarily on the viewer’s filmic experience and not at presumable symbolisms or repressed emotions that an artwork might hide in its content. The systematic taxonomy of the types of doubled characters seen in those films, will be the purpose of the next chapter.

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Chapter 2. Categorization of the motif of the double

2.1 Doubles, an Elusive Trope

Gordon Slethaug, literary theorist and scholar of the motif of the double, in the introduction of his book states clearly that “[d]espite [his] or anyone’s attempts to categorize, elucidate, [...] [the double] will always remain duplicitous, dialogic and relativized” (8).

Concurring with his assertion, Nils Smeuninx and Kate Macdonald also believe that the element of the double in fiction resists both definition and a proper taxonomy, because it either presents itself in a very abstract and versatile mode or is considered too vague and irrational to be

interpreted under a canonical and solid theoretical prism (20). Nevertheless, academic studies in literature and literary criticism attempted several times to both present with as much detail as possible, and analyze in a thorough and systematic way this uncanny but alluring motif.

Accordingly, when it comes to the representation of the notion of duality in cinema (let alone in contemporary complex cinema), scholars, film critics or filmgoers mistakenly adopt taxonomies which usually belong to film-affiliated academic disciplines, but lack an exclusively cinematic approach. Moreover, although the motif of the double can be diachronically encountered in stories of fiction films, transcending styles, specific time periods or genres, a proper

characterization or a clear and unformalized taxonomy of doubles observed in films seems to avoid scholarly attention. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter will be to try and fill this gap. Firstly, I will seek to present some taxonomies achieved (mostly) by literary scholars and reflect

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films. Secondly, I will attempt to create a subdivision of the doubles presented in contemporary complex cinema (adopting at the same time elements from other theorists) keeping in mind that this endeavor can be considered far from complete. At this point, I find pertinent to specify that this chapter will deal exclusively with character-based doubles and not with place-doubles or doubled objects (such as twin cities, for example). Moreover, extradiegetic forms of doubling, such as those who operate more philosophically within the implied dialogue between the author and the viewer and serve less in the formation of the narrative structure, will also be left outside of this categorization. My interest will be devoted only to duplication of characters within the complex and ambivalent narrative of the fiction film. Lastly, although this categorization will be based on contemporary complex films, many of the types of doubles presented can be also encountered in films that do not apply to this context.

To begin with, in his essay “Self as Other: The Doppelgänger”, Gry Faurholt merely divides the double or doppelgänger in two basic types. The first consists of the psychoanalytical

alter-ego or the identical double of a protagonist, who is created under psychopathological

instances (such as pathologies which include schizophrenic events or present paranoid

hallucinations as symptoms) or mimics some form of supernatural entity. The second involves situations of split personality, in which the dark half of the protagonist appears as a manifestation of a dissociated self. Strongly influenced by Freud and Lacan’s theories, Faurholt examines the apparition of the doppelgänger under the perspective of a character’s identity crisis, correlating, on the one hand, the alter-ego with the mirror stage (schematically explained in the previous chapter) and, on the other, the split personality with the Oedipal stage which demonizes the parts of the self that are considered socially unacceptable, such as the desires or needs. For him, the doppelgänger motif still remains under the interpretative influence of psychoanalysis, which in

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turn will also impose its categories. The hero’s struggles (he mainly uses examples based on Gothic literature such as The Double, Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde) are constantly elucidated under psychoanalytical terms and the actions acquire allegorical

meanings, referring either to repressed emotions or to internal conflicts of domination between the Freudian three main structures of the psyche. Although this categorization has its strong points, it still remains unidimensional and does not take into consideration other features beyond the symbolisms uncovered through this specific theoretical lens. On the other hand, reflecting upon the incomplete definition and categorization of doubling in cinema attained by Vincent L. Barnett, theorist Paul Coats uses different analytical tools in dividing the double into (also) two main categories. Addressing mostly to formal elements that could eventually help him define and distinguish diverse instances of character duplication, he firstly speaks about the explicit

doubling, in which he (rather arbitrarily) unites two quite different variations. On the one hand,

we find instances of exact reproductions of a person’s form, such as those presented in 1956’s American sci-fi/horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel). In this example, the extraterrestrial invasion beginning in the fictional town of Santa Mira resides on the alien’s capacity to reproduce a replacement copy off each human, assimilating not only one’s physical appearance, but also acquiring the memories and personalities of each human being who went to sleep near the spores fallen from space and planted into Earth’s ground. The only thing that differs between these duplicates and their human counterparts is the absence of human emotions. On the other hand, this category also includes instances in which the doubled character differs visibly, employing some sort of disguise which can be generated deliberately, but also

unconsciously. This rather specific subcategory can include examples such as Alfred Hitchcock’s

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double identity and transforms himself into his dead mother, or Rouben Mamoulian’s adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), in which the respectable English doctor Henry Jekyll

(Fredrich March) is accidentally transformed into the impulsive and violent Edward Hyde (again played by March), under the influence of strong chemicals which are meant to unleash his evil side. What allows Coats to unify these two distinctive and, in my opinion, rather dissimilar variations under the same category, is the fact that in both types there is some form of division within one personality. As he puts it, the definition of both the two forms of explicit doubling resorts in “their common element: a distancing of the near that can only be partly conscious, as it involves projection of an otherwise invisible aspect of the personality, establish[ing] the self’s blind spot as a separate vantage-point” (13). Before advancing to Coat’s second big category, I would like to point out to one element that becomes instantly unclear. Since the common attribute that unites the two sub sections under the same category is the diversification in the inner self, the example involving the Invasion of the Body Snatchers can be watched only under a symbolical perspective, because otherwise becomes rather unsuitable. During the film’s storyline it becomes clear that, although human beings and their alien doppelgängers appear almost identical, they are not the same entity. The human citizens of the small town are being replaced with different forms of life that merely imitate humans but, in fact, are not one and the same thing; hence they do not represent variations within a unified personality. Moving on, the second category refers to the implicit doubling which stems upon some form of allegorical or symbolical dualism and presents two distinct characters as complementary opposites. Within this category it is possible to distinguish noticeably different characters which endorse antithetical life-decisions or even heroes with familiar characteristics such as common upbringing (in this situation we can encounter also brothers or even twins), but this common element is used to

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bring the contrast of their distinctive identities to the narratorial forefront (ibid.). Examples include the complementary identities of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories or the contradictions and affinities in the relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in Miguel de Cervantes 17th_{century famous novel Don Quixote}

(1605). However, even Coats himself reacts with skepticism upon the lack of precision that those two categories entail, underlying the need for further elaboration, in order for those terms

(explicit and implicit doubling) to be able to encompass all the distinctive possibilities and different forms of representation of the motif of the double, that are included within them. Furthermore, I could also argue that it becomes hard to set a “threshold” between elements that could or should not be considered as implicit doubles, exactly due to the vagueness of such term.

Attempting to investigate the figure of the doppelgänger in cinema, Pilar Andrade decides to categorize types of doubles deliberately excluding those who, in her words “[are] considered merely as clinical case with no mystery” thus inexplicably leaving aside a significant category of doubled characters encountered in cinema in general, and in complex narrative films, in particular. Her aforementioned affirmation even contradicts Thomas Elsaesser’s arguments regarding complex films or “mind-game films” as he defines them. Trying to bring some clarity in the relation between the figure of the double and the fantastic, she opposes against the fact that abnormal mental states of the protagonist of a story that lead to character multiplication - such as the oppressive relationship between the anonymous protagonist played by Edward Norton and his alter-ego Tyler Durden, in David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999) - can be addressed as an element which provide ambiguity in the narrative structure (2). On the contrary, Elsaesser finds in these “productive pathologies” (such as such as schizophrenia, paranoia or amnesia) that afflict the protagonist’s mind, crucial features that put the viewers on a different state, as they

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enhance the mystery and increase the incongruity of the narrative strand, which in turn will lead to an eventual reduction of mimetic clarity (“The Mind-Game Film”, 24-29).

A rather different and surely more analytical approach regarding the categorization of the double is adopted by Søren Landkildehus, based in philosophical theories that regard the concept of one’s fundamental change of mind. After arguing about the necessity in literature to identify some character as the original one, which in turn automatically transforms the “other” as his or her double figure, he denotes that this conception entails arbitrary decisions exactly because there is not a precise criterion that ascribes an ontological priority to one character over the other. In his words, “An individual […] belongs to, is part of, the double; the double, in this sense, denotes a whole in which the individual participates” (67, emphasis on the text). His main distinction is between the outward or manifested double and the inward or experiential double. The main characteristic of the outward double involves similarities in physical appearance, whereas the inward doubles share common or antithetical features internally, such as moral or spiritual values and beliefs. In addition, the bifurcation of the mind can also apply to inward doubling. To complicate things even further, these two main categories are also taking part into other three distinct sub-categories, namely identical, symmetrical and asymmetrical (idem.,68). More precisely, the most common example of outward double, according to Landkildehus, is twins. He uses the example of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit (1857) in order to demonstrate that indistinguishable twins fall under the category of outward identical doubles. In the case of outward symmetrical double, however, the resemblance is weaker, such as, for instance, a son’s inheritance of his father’s characteristics. Usually, symmetrical outward doubles are employed by the authors to emphasize their similarities or differences on character, which stem from the influences of the presence (or absence) of the emotional bond within the family. Thus,

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Landkildehus contends that the outward double in most of the cases stresses the differences between the almost identical exteriority and the distinctive personalities of the characters involved (70). When it comes to inwardness, the doubling occurs mainly in relation to a

character’s interiority, desires, emotions or values, but also can reflect the “dissemblance of the mind: one part of the mind is subverting, hiding or ignoring another” (idem., 72). This latter affirmation applies to the inward asymmetrical double, whereas the former situation involves symmetrical inward doubling. Lastly, it can also exist an identical inward double, something encountered very rarely in literature or cinema. Landkildehus identifies such an occurrence in Essays written by the Renaissance philosopher Michel Montaigne in 16th_{century, in which he}

describes his strong friendship with the French judge Étienne de La Boétie as two bodies sharing the same soul or “soul mating”, as he defines it (ibid.).

2.2 Natural or Physical Doubles

As seen in the previous section, the categorization of the motif of the double, or even the overall definition of doubling in literature and cinema, is rather problematic. In response to these incomplete, inconsistent, generalized or reductive categorizations regarding the representation of the doppelgänger in literature and film, I shall now attempt to propose a more medium-specific, analytical taxonomy of the figure of the double or doppelgänger as encountered only on

narratively complex films (or television series), loosely based on Jan Boyle’s typology. Before starting, I find important to stress that this taxonomy cannot be considered complete or

exhaustive, due to the fact that, on the one hand, new instances of character duplication appear extremely often in narrative cinema, and on the other, the amount of already existing films is immense, in order for a study to be able to scrutinize each particular case. Moreover, doubles (as

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all characters in a filmic creation) are subjected to the creative mind and strategies that each filmmaker employs, and this may generate new and distinctive categories or may blend and overlap diverse types of doppelgängers, creating the need of a reconceptualization of some of them. Also, before starting, it becomes important to specify that my intention here is to present the various categories of doubles that may appear in narratively complex films. The way through which these types of doubles (as a whole, or individually) add to the complexity of the

experience of contemporary complex films will be thoroughly analyzed in the next chapter. That being clarified, my taxonomy consists of dividing the motif of the double in three main

categories, each of them containing different sub-categories.

The first big category can be named natural or physical doubles, containing all these instances of doubles that present themselves as physical duplications of what the narrative of a film dictates as an “original” character. As said above, this category can include various sub-groups. Maybe the most common of all is the biological double, namely those doubled characters who are simply twins. A classic example in complex cinema, embedded in a film which

constantly crosses among extradiegetic and purely diegetic narrative levels, can be seen in Spike Jonze’s meta-comedy Adaptation (2002). The plot features Nicolas Cage in a double role, impersonating the film’s actual screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who is hired to write an adaptation for Susan Orlean’s novel The Orchid Thief (1998), and his identical twin brother Donald, also an aspirant screenwriter, who becomes extremely convinced and confident (unlike his already accomplished, but insecure and socially awkward brother) after attending one of Rebert McKee’s (Brian Cox) seminars. Commonly, a characteristic feature of the biological double involves the evil tween, that is someone who works as an active antagonist on character’s story and impersonates the “original” protagonist in order to undermine his/her capacities or

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sabotage his/her actions. In other instances, however, we can encounter the good twin (like the one cited on the above filmic example) who will help the protagonist achieve his or her goals impersonating him/her, due to unrecognizable physical differences. For instance, also in

Adaptation, Donald helps Charlie by pretending to be him in an interview with the book’s author Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep). The fact that this film plays with embedded levels of narration, introducing not only an existing character - such as the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman - but also a presumed identical twin, adds to the overall complexity by cleverly mixing fictional identical protagonists with traits of a real-life character, leading to a puzzling effect which, among other elements, is also expressed through the employment of a doubled role.

Next, it is possible to encounter what I call the technologically constructed double. Under this sub-category we find any form of clones or doubles created by genetic manipulation, or by the help of advanced technology. The clones can either recognize the fact that they are produced in a genetic laboratory or they can be completely unaware, believing to be an original entity. As an example, here, we can use the restrictive narrative structure experienced in 2009

contemplative sci-fi Moon (Duncan Jones). The film tells the story of Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), an astronaut that suffers from hallucinations near the end of a three-year solitary mission on the far side of the moon. After a small accident while harvesting the precious alternative fuel helium-3 from the lunar soil, the astronaut finds another identical character who also believes he is the “original” Sam. The two Sams start to wonder if one is the clone of the other, when it turns out that they are both clones of the original Sam Bell, who died long ago, while the company responsible for this, unethically manufactures and uses his clones in order to continue their harvesting of the rare fuel and send it back to Earth. In fact, they also discover a secret vault in the facility containing hundreds of identical clones waiting to be awaken after the three-year

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period expires and the previous clone is self-destructed. As seen also in this example, most of the times the clones are perceived as disposable objects, although sometimes may present their own memories and emotions. The most prominent feature of the technologically constructed doubles, however, consists of their inescapable need to research for their identity. Therefore, the puzzling effect form the use of a technologically constructed double in Moon, becomes quite evident: at a certain point of the plot seems impossible for the viewers to comprehend which character

appears as “their” Sam, which one is a presumably original entity and which is the copy. Another prominent subdivision is what can be named as the temporal double. This type can be frequently employed in contemporary complex cinema or more prominently in a specific subset of extremely difficult to solve (or even unsolvable) narrative riddles, defined by Kiss and Willemsen as impossible puzzle films (21). The films that include the temporal double

incorporate science-fiction elements in the evolution of their plot, because these doppelgängers are referring to the same main character that arrives to the film’s diegetic present from a different timeline. As becomes clearly understandable, most of the times, the construction and (deliberate or non-voluntary) usage of a time machine or some other object which will transport the

character back and forward in time is necessary, although there can be found narratives which employ a rather different mechanism. In these, usually looped narratives, an event, place or a specific temporal moment in the storyline can act as reference point in the character’s travels and meetings with his or her past or future self. Shane Carruth’s Primer (2004) is a characteristic example. The film revolves around two engineers, Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan) who by accident invent a time machine. The film’s confusing (and for many viewers immensely challenging) plot structure plays with the characters going back in time and coexist with alternative versions of themselves who, in their turn, are about to go back in time. A simpler

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version of the narrative strand of this puzzle film can be also found in Nacho Vigalondo’s Spanish sci-fi thriller Timecrimes (Los Cronocrímenes, 2007) when an ordinary man named Héctor (Karra Elejalde), while trying to escape from a mysterious persecutor, enters a secret facility and embarks into a time machine which brings him an hour back in time, facing the consequences of his violation of time-space continuum.

Lastly, an also possible motif encountered in complex cinema comprises the unknown or pseudo-double. These doppelgängers can look extremely similar to the original main character but they are absolutely not related to him or her. Frequently, they tend to appear out of nowhere, with the film’s plot either investing upon paranormal phenomena or presenting it as an extreme form of coincidence. Additionally, they can emerge as entities coming from a different planet which will eventually supplant the protagonist or even arrive from a parallel universe, the existence of which usually involves expository sequences with pseudo-scientific explanations related to quantum mechanics, the existence of black holes or alternative realities. As an example, we can include many episodes of the second and especially the third season of the narratively ambivalent sci-fi television series Fringe (2008-2013) produced by J.J. Abrams, in which much of its story arc involves a narrative universe that mainly mirrors events, objects and characters of the prime universe, but also presents some particularities. Moreover, the major protagonists are also represented in this parallel reality having done different choices and followed different lives. Nearly the entire third season presents episodes that alternate between the two universes in which Walter Bishop (John Noble), the mentally unstable scientist of the fictional Fringe Division of the F.B.I., meets with his doppelgänger (or “Walternate”) who is the U.S. Secretary of Defense, while “Fauxlivia” (Olivia Dunham’s eerie double) replaces the real

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Olivia (Anna Torv) in the prime universe and becomes also pregnant with “real” Peter Bishop’s (Joshua Jackson) child.

2.3 Mental Doubles

Abandoning the category involving physical duplications, we can now enter into the second big typology of the representation of the double in complex narratives that we can define as mental doubles, that is characters that appear on screen as byproducts of some sort of mental process. In this category we should firstly encounter the transformative double. This particular case of doppelgänger usually emerges after a protagonist’s traumatic event, which radically transforms his or her personality. A sudden death, an extremely painful break-up or the unbearable guilts over an unwanted accident can transform the hero’s perception of reality creating an alternative self which most of the times embodies a rather opposite personality but identical physical appearance, without, however, excluding the fact that the double can also appear physically diverse. A classic example of a transformative double can be observed in Brad Anderson’s complex psychological thriller The Machinist (2004) in which Trevor Resnik

(Christian Bale), an anorexic machinist with chronic insomnia, is haunted by an unfamiliar co-worker named Ivan (John Sharian), who firstly makes him cause a serious working accident, then starts leaving everywhere mysterious series of notes depicting a game of hangman and lastly appears to compromise Trevor’s romantic relationship with a single mother named Marie (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), who works as a waitress at an airport dinner he visits often. As it turns out, during the films major climax, Ivan is nothing more than a double created in Trevor’s mind because of the repressed but incessant guilts he experiences after a car accident he caused some

“Ready to meet yourself?”: The cognitive experience of doubles and doppelgängers in contemporary complex cinema