Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) is a nebbish living an invisible life at work, where he is a low level bureaucrat. He is ignored by his dream girl Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), scorned even by his mother (Phyllis Somerville), and alienated from everyone and everything. Even machinery torments him, The company boss is a mysterious power named The Colonel (James Fox). A new colleague James Simon (Jesse Eisenberg) looks exactly like Simon but is his complete opposite: confident, popular, effective, admired, crooked. He starts to take over Simon’s life. James impresses superviser Popadopoulos (Wallace Shawn) with Simon’s ideas, seduces Hannah, P’s intern niece and the waitress, and steals his apartment. He even displaces him at Simon’s mother’s funeral. Waking up from a head bash, near an empty grave, Simon is ready to take control of his life by ending it.
Consider the following questions:
- Why doesn’t anyone else notice the two men’s physical resemblance?
- One might say the film is about “regression analysis.” How?
- “I dunno my Dostoevsky but this sure feels like a Kafkaesque comedy to me.” Discuss.
- To put it another way, the inflection of reality throughout makes it seem like a dream. How do the events or processes that happen reflect upon our reality? e.g., Could it be about things like self-defeat, self-projection, etc.? Could its undertaking be our psychological rather than our physical reality?
- What’s the point of the two main characters’ names? Plus the palindromic Hannah?
- Consider the narrative’s frame. The first shot is a closeup of Simon’s face in the lateral moving train. The last is in the ambulance when he’s lying presumably dead but fantasizing Hannah’s and The Colonel’s regard, again moving sideways. His fatal fall starts with his face in closeup, now dropping.
- What’s the point of the first suicide?
- Lonely Hannah makes sanguine drawings/collages, which she rips up, tosses, and Simon collects. What’s the point? The one we see most clearly is her Magrittean image, where we see the back of her head, which she also sees in the mirror in front of her.
- How is the film possibly coloured by what we know of the director? (Director Richard Ayoade is a Norwegian-Nigerian born in London, who studied law at Cambridge where he was president of the musical comedy drama club. He is best known in Britain as a comic actor. In his previous feature, Submarine (2010), based on a novel by Joe Dunthorne, the 15-year-old hero aspires to break up his mother’s resumed affair and to lose his virginity before he turns 16.
- How are we helped by the director’s explanation of this film: “Darth Vader is within all of us. And I remember that every time I shower.”
- What’s the metaphor in Simon in his apartment watching Hannah through a telescope? In Hannah being a “copyist”?
- What’s the film’s colour scheme? The set design? The music?
- I gather Dostoyevsky’s “Simon” goes insane at the end and sees his double everywhere. Why the difference here?
- In the opening train scene a man complains Simon is in his place, in an empty car. What’s the point? The man’s paper, The Daily Page, is headlined “COLLAPSE.”
- As this film follows Enemy, are we in some kind of doppelgänger season? Why?
- What does the factory make/do? So?
- Why are all Simon's drinks blue?
- What’s the point in the factory guard turning up as the hospital nurse?
- What’s the point of the TV clips? How do they reflect upon the kind of film we're watching?
- Does Simon die at the end or does he survive? Does he kill his double or realize himself by incorporating some of his Shadow side?
- What are the implications of casting the one black actor as both the security guard and the doctor?
What is the significance of the following quotes:
1.”Nothing personal, mate, but you’re pretty unnoticeable. Bit of a non-person really."
2. James: ”leave her wanting more." Simon: ”I just don't know if it is me”. "That's why it’s so good.”
3. ”How can we get caught? We have the same face.”
4. “I don't know how to be myself. It's like I'm permanently outside myself. Like, like you could push your hands straight through me if you wanted to. And I can see the type of man I want to be versus the type of man I actually am and I know that I'm doing it but I'm incapable of what needs to be done. I'm like Pinocchio, a wooden boy. Not a real boy. And it kills me.”
5. “I have all these things that I want to say to her, like... Like how I can tell she's a lonely person, even if other people can't. Cause I know what it feels like to be lost and lonely and invisible.”
6. James: You can't be doing anything gay. No ice-cream cones.
Simon: I like ice cream.
James: Of course. It's delicious. Ice cream is fine in a cup, but in a cone is gay unless you're with a woman at the time.
Simon: Anything else?
James: No riding on a motorcycle with another man. Exceptions are drive-by shootings, bomb throwings and purse snatchings. Anything else is gay.
Simon: You seem to know a lot about this.
James: Defense wins championships.
7. It's terrible to be alone too much.
8. You don't exist anymore.
Simon: Excuse me?
Workers' Services Executive: You're no longer in the system.
Simon: Well, just put me back in the system.
Workers' Services Executive: I can't put you back in the system.
Simon: Why?
Workers' Services Executive: Because you don't exist. I can't put someone who doesn't exist in the system.
Simon: But I used to be in the system.
Workers' Services Executive: Not according to the system. In fact, according to the system, you've never existed.
Simon: How reliable is the system?
Workers' Services Executive: Hey, it's completely reliable.
Simon: Yes, but I used to exist. I do exist! I'm standing in this room, aren't I?
Simon: So how do I get back in the system?
Workers' Services Executive: You need a card.
Simon: Right. So can I please get a new card?
Simon: Why?
Workers' Services Executive: Because you're not in the system.
9. Mr. Papadopoulos: Simon, give Rudolph his arm back!
10.Simon: I don't want to be a boy held up by string.
11. James: I would tear the asshole off an elephant for a piece of trim I wanted that bad.
12. “Put him down as a maybe.”
13.The Colonel There aren't too many like you. Are there Simon?
Simon: I'd like to think I'm pretty unique.
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