Oh The Webs We Weave. Review on Spider Movie

Director David Cronenberg(A History of Violence, The Dead Zone, Naked Lunch) earned a Talma d’Or nomination at the Cannes Film Festival for this captivating character study of a mentally disturbed man nicknamed Spider, caught in a web of traumatic childhood experiences.

When he is released from the Insane Asylum, Spider, who suffers from acute Schizophrenia, follows his written instructions to 71 Kitchener Street, where he will live with other mentally ill men and Mrs. Wilkinson(Lynn Redgrave) who cares for them. The halfway house is not far from where he lived as a boy. Wearing unkempt attire, consisting of 4 button-shirts, dirty pants, a tattered overcoat and shoes, Spider mumbles to himself incessantly as he fidgets, fondling a small metal box, in which nothing seemingly important is stowed .He keeps his smaller tin inside a sock inside the front of his pants. Watching him retrieve it is rather vulgar, but he is just sick, not lewd.With old tattered twine, paper, a photograph in one hand and a leather box luggage with similar belongings inside the other. Well hidden inside his luggage lining is a small notebook in which he keeps notes. With putridly nicotine stained fingers, Spider writes inside as he smokes his rolled tobacco cigarettes.

As Spider unravels his life in a series of vignettes, played simultaneously as Spider was a young boy, we begin to understand the world which he believes that his father killed his mother. The intense acting by Ralph Feinnes depicts a harsh world that he has created in his own diseased mind, his notes are his outlet of his warped reality and is unraveled on paper in indecipherable scribble. Dennis “Spider” Cleg earns his nickname with his acute skill and personality of a spider. All traces of an attractive Feinnes are gone. All we see is a raw, morbid reality while at the same time he delivers empathy. This is what keeps is glued and interested in such a story.

With an outstanding performance in a duel role by Miranda Richardson who plays his mother AND his father’s mistress, Yvonne, we are also wound up in a world of two sides of how he relates to women, one as a loving and inspiring mother and the other, a cheap vulgar tart. Spider’s father(Gabriel Byrne) also relates to his wife and his mistress in an intriguing way and we ultimately believe that he is a drunken philanderer.

With such a stunning cast, we come to expect greatness and with greatness comes patience. I felt a great sense of sorrow for such a pitiful character as Spider, Feinnes captivated him so well as did Bradley Hall, who played young Spider. The set design, musical score(Howard Shore) were very good. The details of costume and cinematography were as convincing and Feinnes portrayal of Spider. Being an avid Feinnes fan, I was fairly certain that I had seen all of his movies and was surprised to see this one, released in 2002. Although critically acclaimed, this was not a blockbuster and unlike some of the mainstream movies he made.