Web of Mystery Dissolves Slowly in Spider
By Kate Brokaw
Staff Writer

Ralph Fiennes says all of about thirty intelligible words in Spider, David Cronenberg's new, overwhelmingly bleak haunt of a film; it's a strange, shriveled performance at the center of a spare, almost minimalist creation. And although the concept of a Cronenberg movie called Spider immediately induces visions of giant arachnids, none of the grotesquely perverse, conventionally Cronenbergian imagery is present here. Instead, the grisly gynecological tools of Dead Ringers and the car crash fetishists of Crash have been replaced in Spider with horror of the psychological order. It's a dark, creepy little film, more concerned with mood and character than the fractured narrative of its haunted, mumbling star.

The Spider of the title refers to Dennis Cleg (Fiennes), a grown man released from a mental asylum into a halfway house at the beginning of the film. The gray, dingy East London home, run by hard-pressed matron Lynn Redgrave-all pursed lips and no-nonsense manner-seems destined to be Cleg's resting place for more time than he'd wish. "It's a loud world, and this is an island," explains an elderly fellow inhabitant, who, unlike Cleg, has the ability to speak above an incomprehensible mumble.

It turns out that Cleg's been released into the neighborhood of his childhood, and gradually he begins to wander through his own past, in a series of oblique scenes that we assume will eventually lead to the events preceding his admission to the asylum. He's an invisible intruder in his old home, standing in the corner of closets or pressed up against the kitchen wall, watching his parents (Gabriel Byrne and Miranda Richardson) interact with his childhood self (Bradley Hall); the nickname "Spider" turns out to be a result of hours he once spent playing with cat's cradles at the dining table and creating more intricately constructed webs in his bedroom.

These increasingly dark scenes, in which Cleg's father starts fooling around with a rotten-toothed neighborhood tartlet (wait, isn't that Miranda Richardson again?), transition between various other glimpses of Cleg's life. We see his days in the asylum, as well as moments in the current halfway house, as he sits in a deserted diner under a hilariously surreal menu that ends in "Bubble" and "Liver," and scribbles frantically in a battered, hidden notebook, close-ups on the paper underneath his nicotine-stained hands revealing tiny columns of strange symbols that look almost like hieroglyphics.

Back in the past, as Cleg's father's infidelity builds toward a shockingly, suddenly violent climax, identities and motives become blurred and characters even more permeable. The score changes from a jittery piano score to dark, moody strings. Until the very end, it's never made exactly clear what's happening. Seen a recent Oscar winner starring a schizophrenic Russell Crowe? You couldn't get two more drastically different films, but as in A Beautiful Mind, the mere fact that someone exists on screen doesn't necessarily mean anything at all. Spider is a strange, subtly tricky film because of this complete subjectivity: since everything is from Cleg's point of view, without any kind of voice-over narration, nothing is explained to the audience until it becomes clear to the main character himself.

Spider is more about mood and the fracturing of character than any kind of straightforward narrative, especially since what consists of a narrative is about as shattered as Cleg's mind. Fiennes centers the film in an excruciatingly controlled, inwardly centered performance, although it's Richardson's delicious trio of characters that really stands out. (She also pops up later in the film as a new face on Redgrave's Mrs. Wilkinson.) The whole film has quite an unnerving mood to it, scenes of quiet unease mingling with those of outright creepiness. We're often left genuinely confused at the credibility of the events unfolding on screen. Somehow we know we shouldn't believe everything we see, and it's to the credit of the actors and filmmakers that, for the most part, they're able to maintain our trust.

Scattered throughout the film are scenes of Cleg painstakingly assembling a jigsaw puzzle of some generically banal scene; at one point, hands shaking and overcome with frustration, he destroys what he has created. Cronenberg is more patient with his psychologically complex story. The pieces fall together very, very slowly-almost unnervingly so-and Spider begins to drag a bit toward the end, as we wait for the inevitable final piece. Yet when the payoff comes, Cronenberg can't seem to wait to roll the credits; content in finishing his puzzle, he seems uninterested in admiring the finished product. It's a pity- Spider is a filmic puzzle of impressive emotional depth.