Dead Ringers - 1988

I am in a rewatching marathon right now, and you know what? It's the good shit. It's not the usual rewatching of stupid fluff that I rewatch for god knows what reason. I'm reawatching actual good movies. Imagine that.

David Cronenberg. How did I learn of him? I have no memory of it. I have no memory of what I saw first and when. I know that I was in high school-ish age, and that I got in deep and fast, watching all of them in a line. Pretty much. It was circa 2000, and lil' Theo was slamming through Cronenberg, Lynch, Kurosawa, and many other great directors. Man, I miss those days.

Dead Ringers has Jeremy Irons as twin brothers Beverly and Elliot are both brilliant, charming, attractive gynecologists who who apparently have it all. They are young, successful, and their relationship is so close and intimate that it's scary. They live together, they practice together, they are basically one, to the point where most people cannot tell them apart. When an comes into their lives and Beverly begins to fall in love with her, it creates a rift between the two brothers, and when she introduces Beverly to drugs, things start to really go awry.

This movie is so great. It really is wordless, descriptionless, amazing and powerful. The acting is next level as Jeremy Irons creates a slight distinguishment between the twin brothers. The idea is a consuming, immediate threat as we see the quick road towards destruction we're following. The effects, the darkness of the film is complete, and we get a deep sense of foreboding along with a total mystery as to how the film will end. The music, the whole thing is in effect here, shining bright that these are people who know what the fuck they're doing.

I want to rant and rave about this. When I first saw this, I was very disturbed by it. The gyncological angle that happens in this film is really creepy. These guys invent these weird tools to the treatment of "mutant women" and I found that to be extremely disturbing. There is incredible restraint though, because this movie shows very little until the end. It's powerful when the implication of violence, horror, and the unnerving is worse that the actual experienced horror.

I have to rewatch M. Butterfly, Naked Lunch, and then I might be done. I would enjoy seeing History of Violence and Eastern Promises again, to see if they're better than I remember, but I'm also not gonna force it. I could rant and rave for hours, but instead I'll say it's a great film, and one of the necessary ones.