Ideas which are, without exception, fascinating. It is an essay that functions not be argument but rather by the juxtaposition of half-formed ideas. Double Take is, at times, almost impossible to follow. This head-spinning muddying of the film’s ontological waters sets the tone for a documentary essay that does not so much explore ideas head on as sidle up to you and whisper them in your ear before sauntering off. Was the Borges who wrote the story having decided to kill himself in 1983 the same Borges as the one who died in 1986? Can one ever speak of there being a real Borges? But of course, Borges would only die in 1986 begging the question of whether the old Borges actually was the young Borges and whether either of them was the real Borges who was writing the story. Borges would later say of this short story that its title marked the date he had chosen for suicide. A decision that ultimately leads to the old man’s decision to commit suicide. The older Borges lays out a future for his younger self including the humiliating decision to publish his masterpiece under a pseudonym.
This story (itself a revisitation of a much older Borges story entitled “The Circular Ruins”) features a confrontation between an elderly and dying Borges and his younger self. A short story written by Jorge Luis Borges entitled “August 25, 1983”. McCarthy’s story is inspired by another short story. This short story is written by the novelist and conceptual artist Tom McCarthy. The tone of the film is set by the short story that it is structured around. Johan Grimonprez’s documentary essay Double Take attempts to answer this question by using the doppelganger as a device for examining not only the politics of the Cold War but also the relationship between television and cinema. How far can we take this insight into our fears and terrors? You can imagine Uncle Sigmund whispering it in your ear as you cough up his fee and prepare for the long slouch back home. Perhaps all hatred and fear is externalised and projected self-loathing? This idea has a nicely psychoanalytical feel to it. Perhaps what we hate about the Other is what we hate about ourselves. The doppelganger is a reminder that as much as humanity fears the Other, it fears the Self just as much. Terror is dealing someone who knows all of your secrets, who knows all of your bullshit, who knows what you are capable of… and who can do it too. A monster which, in fact, is you.įrom Poe’s “William Wilson” (1838) to Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound (1820) and Dostoyevsky’s The Double (1846) through to Kurosawa’s Doppelganger (2003), it is clear that one of the greatest fears humanity has is to wind up face-to-face with itself. A monster that fits uneasily on the cinema screen because his depiction requires no make-up or special effects.
#DOUBLETAKE MOVIE TV#
Ballard James Salter Japan Japanese Film Kim Longinotto Last Night LGBT Literary Criticism Manga Masters of Cinema Maurice Pialat Misogyny Noir Olivier Assayas Ooku Pedro Almodovar Politics Postmodernism Psychological Thriller Psychology Racism Religion review Roman Polanski Science Fiction Sexism Short Fiction Some Thoughts On Stalker Stripp'd Theory THE ZONE Thriller TV Video Games Videovista Search Search for:ĭig through the history of Horror and you will find, buried beneath the Vampires and the Werewolves, a more enduring monster. Tag Cloud 2014 2015 American Film Andrei Tarkovsky Anime Art House Art House Film Blasphemous Geometries British Film Capitalism Claude Chabrol Colin Barrett Comedy Comics Consumerism Crime Crime Film criticism Death Documentaries Documentary Empathy Existentialism Fantasy Feminism Film film criticism Film Juice FilmJuice French Film Fumi Yoshinaga Futurismic gender Genre Gestalt Mash GLBT Hadrian's Wall Heart of Darkness Horror J. Grey Gardens (1975) – Hell is a Collection of Dead Raccoons.Ivan’s Childhood (1962) – Adolescent Dreamscapes.Andrei Rublev (1966) – Some We Call Nothing at All.REVIEW – What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984).
REVIEW – Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988).Auto Focus (2002) – Made Free, Yet Everywhere in Chains.
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