Trauma and Denial

SPIDER (2002)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

David Cronenberg's "Spider" is not your usual Cronenberg fare, whatever that might mean because in some ways, it is as heavy-going and as morose as his other films. He has occasionally stepped away from his body-modifying tropes and slimy bodily fluids emanating from unimaginable orifices to make films like "M. Butterfly" or perhaps "Dead Ringers" (in latter years, he directed one of the phenomenally great films of the 2000 decade, "A History of Violence"). "Spider" exists on some other level of consciousness, one about parental abuse and neglect and how that can shape a child into a misshapen mess of a broken man. It is also how the perception of reality can be altered through denial. It is also one of his most eye-opening films in years.

The opening sequence is a stunner as we watch passengers exiting a London train as the camera swoops by them at a low-angle, eventually arriving at Spider Cleg (Ralph Fiennes) who can't walk straight, has yellowish fingernails, grabs a bag from inside his pants, and mutters to himself while carrying a briefcase. He has a destination and it is at some English boarding house which looks about as inviting as a rundown shed in the middle of the woods. He stays in a bare, ugly room with a rug where he can hide his notebook. Spider keeps writing in his notebook (and it looks like pure gibberish) and revisits the places of his troubling youth, whether it was a local pub his father (Gabriel Byrne) attended nightly, or his own house. Spider, in an Ingmar Bergmanesque touch (that Woody Allen later borrowed), sees himself and his family from the early years, often repeating phrases his father or mother used before they utter them. It is essentially as if Spider is stepping back in time, only slowly do we realize that the basis of his trauma is not what we thought it was.

Some reviewers felt as if the ending was nothing special. I disagree, though it is not without its obviousness. The difference is that Fiennes, despite his stuttering and his emotional indifference, still makes us feel sympathetic for him and for the loss of his mother at an early age. The predicament that his mother (Oscar-caliber performance by Miranda Richardson) faces when she loses her life is presented twice, both alternately different scenarios. One is presented in a slightly garish, almost Hammer Horror-like manner, and the other is far too eerily realistic. Clues are presented early on about Spider's affection to his mother, was it unhealthy or did he just love her so much that he could not stand to see her go? When the boarding house landlady (Lynn Redgrave) suddenly becomes the visage of Spider's mother, it begins to overtake him, psychologically and physically. . Spider also imagines his mother as a blonde prostitute whom his father picks up at the bar. Fiennes often shows a man who can barely stand on his own two feet, always disheveled and disoriented. Are there separate realities or is it all the same trauma that began with his mother's death?

Based on a novel by Gothic novelist Patrick McGrath, "Spider" is a grimy, relentlessly bleak movie that will make you feel uncomfortable and uneasy. In that sense, it is typical Cronenberg yet it also has a dark heart at its center where we never lose focus on Spider. This is a broken man and we feel emotionally broke by the end.