Denis Villeneuve directed and Jake Gyllenhaal stars in Enemy so I think that it is a must see, mind frack of a film, but would caution potential viewers that there are some rapey scenarios, spiders and implicit crushing, but nothing adorable gets hurt. Enemy’s premise is doppelgangers discover each other’s existence or do they?

I heard about Enemy two ways. First, I saw a preview and am slightly fascinated by the doppelganger concept since I know that I have at least one, and she has a daughter. I also love Jake Gyllenhaal. I was not familiar with Villeneuve’s work at the time when I saw the preview. Second, a friend highly recommended it. I am really happy that she did.

Enemy really has two story lines: who you really are and your place in society. Implicitly Enemy suggests that you have little control in either case. Enemy also seems to be particularly directed towards how men’s sexual compulsions make them less unique or essential to the world and insures that they stay on their predestined track. Men want to be in control, but in the end, mothers are more aware and seem to be pulling the strings of actual human existence by deciding who lives or dies, whose genetic material gets to continue or not.

I have no idea what I think of Enemy or even if I completely get it, but I am completely fine with that because I am confident that the filmmakers know. Enemy is beautifully shot, has a complex narrative and features a brilliant cast. Enemy had me wondering about the characters and what Enemy’s broader philosophical statement was about society. Snowpiercer was at least optimistic that it is possible for people to get off track, but Enemy suggests that we are simultaneously aware and unaware of the track, which makes getting off of it impossible. We are part of an assembly line and easily replaceable, or we live some fractured existence that even when we do diverge, divergence is also part of that track. There is no way out.

Enemy is a fascinating movie that will leave you somewhat unsettled in a provocative and intelligent way. I regret not watching it repeatedly. If you want to read more about spoiler elements of Enemy and have already seen the film, keep scrolling.

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I am going to answer the two questions that I posed earlier. Who you really are or who is really the main character in Enemy? What is his place in society? Then I am going to theorize what the answers say about society.

Who is he? Adam, the professor, &/or Anthony, the actor, are the same person, two different people or all of the above. WHAAAAATTTT! Yes! When we are at the beginning of the film, we hear a mother calling her son, and she does not like his apartment. I would need to see Enemy again to make sure that it is just a voiceover over a black screen, and that the viewer does not see the home of the person. At this point, the viewer has no idea who she is referring to.

Then we see a guy at some Neon Demon club with naked girls crushing spiders. Again we have no idea who he is, but because we end up following the boring professor for the first half of Enemy and get used to his routine (teach, sleep with his girlfriend), I assumed that Neon Demon dude was the actor. The pattern gets disrupted when the professor unconsciously sees his doppelganger in a film that is suggested by a colleague. Adam usually avoids movies because entertainment is used to control people, but the movie ends up having an immediate revolutionary effect on his personality by breaking his routine.

Adam does something sexual in bed that the girlfriend does NOT like, and considering that everything was fine before, it is the first time that Enemy seems to suggest that crossing paths makes their personalities permeable and less fixed than we assume. Adam wakes up with an epiphany and realizes that he saw himself in the movie and has a doppelganger. He then begins to awkwardly investigate Anthony’s life. When he encounters the tower, Anthony’s home, he holds his head. The scenes with the tower reminded me of High-Rise, and how the place had a weird effect on its inhabitants.

At this point, Enemy flips like a coin or is turned UPSIDE DOWN to follow Anthony. If we traced the story arc of Enemy with a pencil, the image would be an infinity symbol. We find out that they both like similar looking women, but the differences in personality, interior design and lifestyles are completely different. For instance, Anthony loves blueberries. He is a cheater so I began to assume that he was the one in the Neon Demon club. Anthony’s wife, Helen, is pregnant. When Anthony calls Adam, Helen is observing Adam unaware that Adam is talking to her husband, and Adam casually greets Helen, unaware that she is his doppelganger’s wife. Helen is the only one who realizes that they look the same and calls her husband to confirm that THEY ARE NOT THE SAME PERSON.

The viewer is not sure which man it is, but one of the two men have a dream about walking down a hotel corridor while a naked woman with a mask is walking on the ceiling, i.e. UPSIDE DOWN. I could be wrong, but I think that Enemy flips perspective AGAIN to Adam’s point of view until they meet in the hotel room. I would need to rewatch again to figure out who enters the hotel room, and who is already in the hotel room waiting for the other. When the two men meet, they have the same scar. Adam gives Anthony an unopened letter that Adam received when he was trying to find out more about Anthony and others mistook Adam for him. We follow Anthony’s perspective as Anthony stalks Adam, sees Adam meeting his girlfriend and becomes obsessed with Adam’s girlfriend. It is like Anthony wants to get all the girls pregnant and dominate the gene pool.

Anthony visits his mother, who is played by Isabella Rossellini (related side note: she appears in Green Porno, a series on animal and insect sexual behavior). So I began to think that she must be the person who left a message in the opening scene. She offers him blueberries, but he does not like them. Wait, what!?! WE KNOW THAT ANTHONY LIKES BLUEBERRIES, BUT ADAM DOES NOT! She mentions that she is happy that he is no longer acting and likes his apartment. If he is an actor, he is definitely Anthony, but if he suddenly does not like blueberries, he suddenly has one of Adam’s traits! ISN’T SHE THE SAME MOTHER AS THE ONE IN THE VOICE MAIL? According to IMDb credits for Enemy, she is, but that person did NOT like her son’s apartment. WHAT IS HAPPENING!?! When he leaves, a huge spider is looming over the cityscape, but Enemy did not become Big Ass Spider! I later discover that it is modeled on a famous sculpture titled Maman, which means mom!

It was at this point in Enemy that I realized several things. First, Anthony and Adam are different people. Second, it does not matter if they are different people, because their characteristics are transferable, and they are unaware of this fact. They can literally be absorbed into the other person’s life, and the transfer occurs each time they cross paths. Third, pardon the vernacular, but mothers be knowing. THE MOTHER of the two men is somehow a knowing part of it, denying it and not lying. Enemy seems to suggest that this scenario is not only natural, but an essential part of life, which I will further elaborate on this point in the section regarding the men’s role in society.

After meeting with his mom, Anthony confronts Adam, accuses Adam of sleeping with Anthony’s wife, Helen, to manipulate Adam into letting Anthony sleep with Adam’s girlfriend. Anthony is rapey and awful, but there is also some biological prime directive gene survival thing going on. Anthony wants to be the only one who survives. Adam shockingly goes along with it and finally enters the tower.

I think that this scene is the point of no return. The doorman references the club, which we assume is the same one from the opening scene, so it feels like confirmation for our earlier assumption that Anthony is the one at the club. When Adam goes to Anthony’s place, Adam sleeps with Helen, who TOTALLY KNOWS AND SEEMS TO PREFER ADAM!!!!!!!! She tries to get him to trick him into admitting that he is Adam, but does not. Considering that Adam is not confident in his manner and usually monogamous, it seems odd that he would suddenly successfully lie. There are several options: the transformation is taking hold, and/or he is unaware or he is happy to transform because he would rather be a husband and father with a routine as exhibited in the beginning of the film. If he never saw the movie, he would have kept going around on that wheel of lecture and girlfriend, but now that he knows, he can no longer stay on that track, he is settling into another.

We see the naked, pregnant wife on the bed. In contrast, Anthony thankfully fails to deceive the girlfriend who is rightfully furious at the sexual assault. While they are screaming in the car, they die in a car crash. The next morning, Adam wakes up content. He opens up the letter that he gave Anthony in the hotel room. There is a key inside. Is it a key to the club? IS ADAM THE ONE IN THE OPENING CLUB SCENE!?! But Adam is not usually sexually adventurous, it is Anthony so is he completely transformed? He calls out to his wife, but when she does not answer, he goes back to the bedroom, and instead of a naked, pregnant woman, we see a giant tarantula who chitters at him from the corner of the ceiling.

So what does Enemy say about these men’s place in society? They are replaceable, and their genetic material, sexual prowess and personalities matter less than how well they adhere to the criteria that the mothers lay out for them. Keep mother happy, and you will live. If mama isn’t happy, no one is happy. A negative side effect of their replaceable nature is that they will always be drawn to the idea of revolt: destroying the mother, divorcing sexuality from responsibility and reproduction, but it triggers the replacement once more. The new mother wants Adam, but in order to get Adam, he has to become Anthony, and Anthony is a horrible human being and will soon dominate Adam’s personality. Adam is the (intellectual) mind, but Anthony is the body or id.

So what is Enemy trying to say about society? Initially, Enemy explicitly says a lot about society through Adam’s lectures. There are patterns in chaos, and the goal of any dictatorship is to remove uniqueness. Routine and control are parts of dictatorships. The great world events happen twice. The first time that an event occurs, it is a tragedy, and the second time, it is a farce. Curiously Enemy does not seem to be either. Adam understands how the magic trick of fascism works and obeys it. Adam is all about his routine. Anthony is completely unaware while subconsciously revolting by being sexually titillated at the idea of killing the spider, the mother, and having anonymous, inconsequential sex.

Enemy superficially seems to suggest that male ego is ultimately a fragile thing, and women are really in control of life and death, who gets to be a father and who does not, whether or not you even know basic aspects of your life such as if you have a brother, the right life, a child. Only the women, and ultimately the mothers, are unique individuals with more awareness than the men, but they are just as trapped and shocked by this cycle, which is why I also think that the mother and spider imagery is also a broader statement about society, not just another vagina dentata fear on screen.

Enemy is saying that society is cyclical and infinite. Enemy has a circular logic and way of being that makes it inescapable and similar to Predestination. “All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.” We are simultaneously unique and not unique. If we obey, we have a place in society, and if we don’t obey, we also have a place in a society. There is no way out even if we are aware of our predicament. Society has already created an infrastructure that we cannot escape from, but we can only perpetuate and move forward primarily by reproduction, but also through transformation.

Perhaps the only free person is the fellow, unnamed professor who watches movies and sees the patterns, but maybe he has a doppelganger too? Enemy concludes that the most that we can hope for is awareness, not escape from society trying to obliterate our souls.