Spider
| Year: | 2002 |
| Studio: | Capitol Films |
| Director: | David Cronenberg |
| Producer: | David Cronenberg |
| Cast: | Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Lynn Redgrave, John Neville |
There's only one reason to watch this otherwise uninteresting mystery/drama; Ralph Fieness, playing another character that's as far removed from Justin Quayle, Lord Voldemort, Harry Waters, Frances Dolarhyde and Amon Goeth as they are from each other.
He plays a shuffling, muttering, mentally disabled man who spends his days in a decrepit bedsit run by a cold hard woman while he tries to piece together the fragments of his childhood, where his sainted mother, salt of the earth father and the floozy he shacked up with after his wife's death all coalesce into a whirl.
But we're living Spider's reminiscences, and he often gets them confused, resulting in a Lynchian world of the imagination where we're as at the mercy of the characters thoughts and memories as they are. It's slow and drab but becomes more immersive as you realise what's going on as it builds steam towards the end.
As such, there's very little to engage you throughout most of it except for some of the cream of UK acting talent with nothing to support their performances.
He plays a shuffling, muttering, mentally disabled man who spends his days in a decrepit bedsit run by a cold hard woman while he tries to piece together the fragments of his childhood, where his sainted mother, salt of the earth father and the floozy he shacked up with after his wife's death all coalesce into a whirl.
But we're living Spider's reminiscences, and he often gets them confused, resulting in a Lynchian world of the imagination where we're as at the mercy of the characters thoughts and memories as they are. It's slow and drab but becomes more immersive as you realise what's going on as it builds steam towards the end.
As such, there's very little to engage you throughout most of it except for some of the cream of UK acting talent with nothing to support their performances.