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  Anthony
  
Cox
Spider
UK, 2002
[David Cronenberg]
Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, John Neville
Thriller
  
So here it is, the film David Cronenberg always threatened to make, a brilliantly twisted, dark and creepy treasure of a movie, Spider. Entirely devoid of vampirism, telepathy, exploding heads, warped fetishism, bodily mutations, and indeed special effects, Spider is a brooding, slow-paced, muted masterpiece. Adapted from the novel by Patrick McGrath, it is the story of a young boy, Spider, in 1960s East London, who hatches an elaborate plan to kill the ex-prostitute (Miranda Richardson) living as his father�s lover, believing her to have killed and usurped his mother. Many years later, Spider (Ralph Fiennes) is released from the mental health asylum he has been kept in for around 20 years, fractured, confused and tormented by the trauma of his childhood. During a stay in a bleak, unwelcoming halfway house, he revisits the haunts of his past, attempting to piece back together the fragments of his shattered life.

The films main themes are of perception, reality, and an alternative post-Freudian conception of unresolved Oedipal envy. What becomes clear, slowly, is that we are seeing Spider�s own delusions and memories of his childhood, which are not necessarily real or accurate, to him however they are perceptions rather than delusions. Without adding spoilers unnecessarily, suffice to say we are given clues and learn more about what really happened only as the protagonist does himself. His nickname is most appropriate as, obsessed by the crime of his mother�s murder, he has spun a web of falsehoods and illusions around himself to protect himself from the truth, a web he is now caught in and struggling hard to free himself from.

Fiennes is utterly tremendous in the title role, conveying the precarious mental state of his character perfectly, his eyes pouring forth a powerful cocktail of confusion and sadness throughout, his movement all hunched and cautious, his speech lying on the border between mumbled delirium and comprehensibility. Miranda Richardson too excels in three different roles, the plain, straight-laced mother, the lewd, often inebriated prostitute, and the unsympathetic landlady of the halfway house, bringing something special to each of the characters. For those with little patience, the slow pacing may irritate and it is clear that some may even find the film a little drab. It is certainly bleak and cold, with little comic relief, and the sets portraying a dismal, dirty, grey, mostly rain-soaked East London. To others, myself included, it is a mesmerising piece, with a clever plot and a pervading sense of haunting melancholy and a great portrayal of mental dysfunction. For those with some knowledge of the psychoanalytic theories and themes it encompasses, a thrill also lies in the interpretation. Whether a fan of Cronenberg�s previous work or not, this is a whole different beast, and an early contender for one of the films of the year.
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