By Piya Sinha-Roy
LOS ANGELES, May 13 (Reuters) – The appearance of a
doppelganger precipitates a severe psychological identity crisis
in British actor-director Richard Ayoade’s latest film “The
Double,” as actor Jesse Eisenberg faces himself on screen.
In “The Double,” Eisenberg plays both Simon, a shy,
introverted and forgettable office worker, and the brash,
egotistical James, a physically identical man with a polar
opposite extrovert personality. The film opened in limited U.S.
theaters last week and will be showcased at the Seattle
International Film Festival this week.
Ayoade, 36, is best known for playing nerd extraordinaire
Maurice Moss on British TV comedy series “The IT Crowd,” but the
bespectacled actor is carving out a career behind the camera.
For his second directorial feature, Ayoade adapted Fyodor
Dostoyevsky’s classic 1846 novella “The Double” about a man who
meets his doppelganger and descends into a psychological crisis.
In his film, Eisenberg’s Simon endures a similar journey as
his doppelganger James begins to take over his life in a
callous, selfish manner, manipulating love interests and work
colleagues to believe Simon’s existence is inconsequential.
“I liked the central premise of this person who is so
unnoticeable that no one cares when the doppelganger arrives.
It’s not a story about a regular person, it’s really a metaphor
for his situation rather than an incident,” the director said.
Casting Eisenberg was key for the independent film, which
featured the actor playing opposite himself in numerous scenes
that Ayoade said needed meticulous timing and rehearsal.
“We needed someone who could internally animate the two
different roles,” he said. “The characters looked different when
he was playing each one … he has a very expressive face and
his thoughts do radiate depending on how he’s commanding them.”
The director has a soft spot for outsiders like Simon, both
playing one on television and centering his 2010 directorial
debut “Submarine” about an intelligent but disconnected Welsh
boy.
If “Submarine” was defined aesthetically by sweeping
landscapes and natural light, “The Double” sits on the opposite
end of the scale, visually dark and oppressive in its setting,
an extension of Simon’s feelings of being trapped.
Shot over 53 days on an abandoned office estate, “The
Double” is set in a vague non-period that lends to the film’s
Orwellian alternate world, littered with kitsch 1980s-style
television shows and music from 1960s’ Japanese singers.
“It needed to be an environment that he couldn’t escape
from,” Ayoade said. “He needed to feel this was it, like you
feel in a dream that’s going badly, you can’t get out of it.”
“I CAN’T ACT”
Ayoade may best be known in the United States for his role
alongside Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill in 2011
neighborhood vigilante comedy “The Watch.”
But Ayoade, who has two young children and confessed he
rarely likes to leave his London house, said he doesn’t have any
designs to conquer Hollywood, at least not as an actor.
The filmmaker, dressed in a sharp navy blue suit with a
yellow tie and a shirt covered with illustrated insects,
sprinkled the interview with self-deprecating jokes (“I have hay
fever, it’s not a cocaine habit,” he quipped, after blowing his
nose into a handkerchief).
That mixture of self-awareness and biting humor sets the
tone for Ayoade’s upcoming book “Ayoade on Ayoade,” which will
feature the director interviewing himself about film.
“I can’t act,” he said with a laugh. “Acting is a strange
thing, it’s a strange and hard thing, and it makes you think
about all sorts of things and makes you crazy.
“You try not to think about yourself in life, otherwise it’s
terrible. I’m not the most interesting thing that can be thought
about in any given situation.”
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy and Andre Grenon)
