Review: Spider

David Cronenberg has made a career out of depicting the seedy side of mankind, in such films as Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch. With Spider, based on the novel by Patrick McGrath, Cronenberg has crafted his most personal and, quite possibly his best, film.

Spider (the remarkable Ralph Fiennes) has just been released from a mental hospital. He returns to the neighborhood of his childhood and begins his life anew at a boarding house. But his past has never drifted very far away from him, and he begins reliving what he remembers as a nightmarish childhood, sleepwalking through his memories and remaining isolated from the world around him.

Though the film never makes a technical reference to schizophrenia, Spider's behavior lives and breathes the illness. It's difficult to discuss the ways Spider's illness manifests itself without giving away some of the film's most potent and affecting secrets.

Cronenberg and his remarkable cast (including Miranda Richardson playing three roles, Gabriel Byrne, Lynn Redgrave and John Neville) have delivered one of the most stirring portrayals of mental illness that I can remember. Fiennes' powerfully introverted performance is almost completely silent, with mostly unintelligible mutterings passing for his character's dialogue. Rather, he carries out Spider's journey through bodily expression: the way Spider walks, writes, smokes cigarettes.

Spider is a stunningly expressionistic film. Cronenberg has never had a more masterful control of filmic space than in this visionary film. Spider is constantly hanging in the balance, lurking in the shadows of his memories. Cronenberg is careful to frame Spider just so, so as not to give away his hand too early.

The film does have a twist at its end, though not a gimmicky one. Rather, Cronenberg's film ends ambiguously. I believe that it could be read in several different ways, as does the director, according to interviews he's given. Either way, Spider is a remarkable achievement, a major work by one of cinema's most distinctive filmmakers.

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