Dead Ringers - Lisa's Review

I knew this week was going to be a weird one.  Its's David Cronenberg for gawds sake, so what else could I expect?  He's a director you probably either love or hate.  Oddly I would have said that apart from 'The Fly' I wasn't a fan at all.  That was until I had a look at his credits and realised he was responsible for 'A History of Violence', 'Existenz' and 'The Dead Zone'; all movies I do really like.  On the whole though, I find his movies too obscure and surreal.  I'm not saying for a moment I'm thick, but I don't want to have to have a psychology degree to work out what the hell is going on in a movie I watch.

This movie is one that has me divided.  At times, I think it's brilliant, but then other times, I find myself getting bored and restless.  I find myself wishing certain scenes hadn't been so long and other were longer.

To give a bit of information for anyone who hasn't seen the movie. Dead Ringers is based on a book called 'Twins', the real story of twin Gynecologists.  The movie was to be called Twins but ironically came out the same year as the Arnie/Danny De Vito offering, so it got second choice on the name stakes.  So back to some background.  The movie follows Elliott and Beverly Mantle, identical twins, who both happen to share the same profession.  Elliott is the much more confident, aggressive personality, while Beverly is the shy, deep thinker behind the scenes.  The men are very close and it is suggested several times throughout the movie that one would not exist or would not experience things without the other existing or experiencing the same things.  Sounds wierd right?  It is.

One thing which links the twins is the women they share.  The ever confident Elliott has his way with the lady first and when he has grown bored, Beverly is allowed to continue the romance with the women being none-the-wiser.  That is until someone gets in the way.  Beverly falls for one of the women - an actress, Claire.  She is the first to be aware that 2 men exist.  From this point on, the relationship with the twins is never the same.  The comfortable existence they had led before this is thrown into disarray.

Even though Claire is obviously not amused by the deception, she decides to give Beverly another chance and they continue their relationship.  It's when Claire leaves to work on a new movie, that Beverly starts a rapid descent to new depths.  He becomes addicted to prescription drugs, starts drinking heavilly and begins to have really weird dreams/hallucinations.  Most of these are regarding mutant women.  Beverly even has a friend fashion extremely odd gynecological equipment he can use on these 'mutant women'. These tools are typical Cronenberg and similar design can be seen in other movies, I'm thinking 'Existenz' and 'The Fly' for sure.  There are also some wierd surreal moments where the twins are joined together by a wierd fleshy substance on their abdomens.  This adds even more weight to the constant undertones of their need for each other to survive and 'experience' life.

Elliott tries to help his brother by getting him off the drugs, but he himself takes them to achieve the same state as his brother.  Although Beverly successfully achieves sobriety, his stronger brother Elliott now is the one with the problem and needs his weaker brothers help.

This all builds to the ending which I am not going to include, in case anyone reading has not watched this movie as yet.  It is probably the most powerful point of the movie for me though.

So would I recommend it?  I'm not sure.  Are the thought provoking parts worth sitting through the entire movie for?  I suppose if you have a lot of spare time and don't mind spending a couple of hours watching a movie you may or may not enjoy, then go for it!  I won't recommend it, as I was dying to press fast forward several times whilst watching it, but it's one of those movies, where you know if you do, you'll be completely lost (well, more lost than you are anyway) when you press play again.

People with lots of downtime, go for it.