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| Dead Ringers |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 115 |
| Public Rating: 7.00 (5 votes) |
Director: David Cronenberg |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Horror |
Year: 1988 |
| Writer(s): David Cronenberg and Norman Snider |
| Distributor: Home Vision Entertainment |
| Reviewed by: Goatdog |
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Twins are always fascinating. There is something strange and surreal about having another you running around, who looks so much like you that strangers would not be able to tell you apart. And some of them actively encourage this mysticism, by exchanging knowing looks, body language that must conceal full sentences, and that unnerving tendency to finish each other's sentences.
David Cronenberg is fascinated with the body. His films offer a clinical and oftentimes scornful look at the workings of the body, especially with sexuality. He must have jumped at the chance to make this film that deals with all of his favorite obsessions. In Elliot and Beverly (a dual role played masterfully by Jeremy Irons), he presents us with two halves of the same person, the shy Beverly who masks madness, and the suave Elliot who is too cold and distant to help his brother until it is too late. The fact that they are twin gynecologists must have only added to the attraction for Cronenberg.
Elliot and Beverly are twins, brilliant gynecologists, and the perpetrators of a lifetime of deception. Since nobody can tell them apart, they stand in for each other at meetings, in classes, with patients, and with lovers. As Beverly scornfully comments, "You would still be a virgin if not for me!" Their patients don't notice the difference, and neither do their lovers. One woman, an actress named Claire Niveau (Genevieve Bujold), turns into both, with devastating consequences.
Claire comes to the clinic because she cannot conceive. Apparently, she has a malformation in which her vagina has three openings. Sorry about the clinical details. Beverly is fascinated, because he harbors a secret revulsion toward his patients, and this represents the most intriguing and messed-up case he has ever seen. He quickly falls in love with her, and she shares her drug habit with him.
As his addiction grows worse, he stops showing up for work, leading to a gap between himself and his brother. Without Elliot's strength, he quickly loses his mind, and develops an obsession with the idea that the normal tools of his profession are no longer enough. He designs cruel-looking tools that resemble H.R. Geiger's plans for the first "Alien" movie, setting up for a remarkably twisted and strangely humane climax.
This film works because of Jeremy Irons' dual performance as the twins. Using a pretty cool technique involving moving breaks, Cronenberg convinces us that Irons-as-Beverly is actually interacting with Irons-as-Elliot. Just when you are sure you have spotted the split screen, the actor crosses it. Irons deserved an Oscar for the role, because he really was two different people. As we got to know Elliot and Beverly, it became easier to tell them apart due to little mannerisms. He didn't even get a nomination, but his win the next year for "Reversal of Fortune" can be seen as a make-up for the slight.
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