An adaptation, though apparently a somewhat loose one, of a Dostoevsky story, The Double is the second film to be directed by Dean Learner, albeit under his ‘Richard Ayoade’ alias. This is a lie, incidentally. Which bits? Eh, a couple. While people generally label 2010’s Submarine as his feature debut, it’s not strictly true; he directed a concert film of the Arctic Monkeys a few years before that. He also directed a recording of a stand-up show by Tommy Tiernan between Submarine and this. Do such things count? Ah, mysteries.

Also, apparently Ayoade is the real one and noted publisher and chat show host Learner is the fake one. Who knew?

Anyway, this is in some ways perhaps a more ambitious film than Submarine. It’s also probably a larger budgeted film than Submarine given the presence of some moderately sized names in the cast. Then again, given the presumed ambition, I suppose it might have to be. It’s also, incidentally, the last film that Ayoade’s directed, at time of writing. Whether or not there’s anything to that, I don’t know.

Yeah, so, Jesse Eisenberg, not exactly fresh but certainly still warm off of The Social Network (2010), stars as corporate drone Simon James. He’s a hapless and downtrodden young man who’s scarcely recognised at work, except when they want something of him; his boss (Wallace Shawn) doesn’t know his name after seven years and is disdainful of his general work efforts except when there’s something to take credit for, but is happy to volunteer him to tutor his daughter (Yasmine Paige). I wouldn’t feel too sorry, mind; he is creeping on Hannah, his attractive neighbour in the flat opposite (Mia Wasikowska), another employee of the inscrutable company headed by the mysterious and elusive ‘Colonel’ (James Fox). I don’t mean regular type creeping either; he’s, like, Rear Window-ing her. Anyway, during his voyeurism, he spots her upstairs neighbour and also stalker; she has a bit of a problem apparently; top himself jumping off the cornice, allowing for an out-of-hours meetcute! With the promise from that conversation of getting to see her at the mandatory office party, he soon fails to get into said mandatory party due to a card reader error. exciting adventures in bureaucracy, and a failure to crash despite the party’s mandatory nature, and so he goes home alone… except on his way, there’s an oddly similar looking person striding confidently into Hannah’s building. The next day, this doppelgänger turns up at work. Introduced as James Simon, he immediately captures the hearts and minds of his co-workers with his charm and assertiveness and generally being the complete opposite of his counterpart.

So… if you noticed the credits, there’s maybe some nepotism going on here, with the film being made by Ayoade’s sister-in-law’s production company with his wife and said sister-in-law acting as producers, and his father-in-law and said wife managing to appear on the pointy end of the camera as well, the former in a prominent secondary role. Ayoade’s connections perhaps made assembling the cast relatively easy; aside from the aforementioned people, the bulk of the main cast from Submarine reappears in some capacity and a large portion of the minor characters are portrayed by notable figures in the British comedy and film industries.

Case in point: multi award winning actor/writer/director Paddy Considine plays a Flash Gordon-esque hero on a cheesy TV show that Eisenberg’s character likes, slightly uncredited (he’s under pseudonym). We get occasionally snippets of him doing bizarre hammy stuff that vaguely comments on the action in the main film, while also being sufficiently disparate and devoid of context that it’s basically impossible to follow whatever story that’s supposedly telling. It’s all very odd.

Anyway, the other thing you might notice from the credits in the gamut of nationalities. It doesn’t bother trying to cohere these into a consistent whole, with the bulk of the cast just using their own accents. The only real exception is Mia Wasikowska who seems to be veering all over the place between American, English and her (presumably) native Australian, sometimes within the same sentence. Maybe she speaks like that anyway, how would I know? Get off my case. It still kind of works in context. The upshot is that the film takes place in some sort of dystopian neverland, simultaneously everywhere and nowhere at once, assuming ‘everywhere’ and ‘nowhere’ are both Anglophone. Compare it to Brazil (1985) which was similar on that front, right down to having an English accented character (Jonathan Pryce’s there, Yasmin Paige’s here) somewhat inexplicably parented by an American one (Katherine Helmond’s and Wallace Shawn’s roles respectively).

Actually, the film kind of seems to want to evoke memories of Brazil quite a bit with its focus on the tedious, pointless bureaucracy of its dystopian society where just about every transaction requires getting through a thick barrier of red tape that is typically illogical and contradictory, assuming the scarcely functioning machines that are meant to facilitate it happen to be working in the moment. Its blackly comic corporate hellscape is perhaps vaguer than the one that Gilliam presents. What the characters’ jobs actually are is a mystery; we can figure out how their roles relate to one another, but not what the purpose of their work is… well, aside from ‘work well and advance’ with the vague promise of being able to rub shoulders with the loved by all Colonel, the tenuous Big Brother figure that may or may not be watching over all. Despite the basic scenario and aesthetic considerations, it is perhaps ultimately a more different beast than it tends to feel. The premise exudes a different sense of despair and paranoia; Simon James isn’t free even in his dreams, freedom and advancement are only really possible by destroying other people, and even then there’s not all that much evidence to suggest escaping from the vicious cycle is even really possible. 



The world is dark, quite literally there’s a distinct lack of light, as everyone shuffles to their chthonic workplaces and shuffle back home in the night air. Perhaps things will work out for Simon James, things are left ambiguous (the ending, I believe is one of the big differences between the film’s story and the original novella’s), but in the grand scheme of things, have things really changed all that much? For that matter, where can his life really go from here?