I have just finished watching David Cronenberg ‘s film ” Dead Ringers ” and I realize that I am still clinging to the arm of the sofa from the whirlwind of emotions it aroused in me. Anxiety and restlessness mixed with a feeling of disorientation that leaves you with something ‘disturbing’ and ‘perverse’.
And, I add, a bit of healthy horror movie ‘fear’ (a genre I don’t particularly like). Yet, in the film, there are no monsters, bloodshed, mutilations or killers that emerge from behind a door with a chainsaw in hand. However, the whole story of the monozygotic Mantle twins is pervaded by a sick, insane and disturbing climate that is the prelude to an announced tragedy. He, David Cronenberg, is the director who invented the body horror genre (which intertwines the psychological aspect with the horror of the man in front of the body changed by the disease) and what I am telling you about today is a masterpiece film, made such by his genius, as well as by the interpretation of a masterful Jeremy Irons, who plays both the protagonists, the two inseparable twins Beverly and Elliot Mantle.
The film was released in 1988 and is based on the 1977 novel of the same name, which was originally released under the title Twins and later re-released as Dead Ringers. The novel was co-written by Jack Geasland and Bari Wood, a well-known author of horror and science fiction, who were inspired by crime events that really happened in New York in the seventies. The protagonists of the story are the twin brothers Beverly and Elliot, as physically identical as they are totally different in character. Both established gynecologists specializing in female infertility and uterine diseases, Elliot is a ruthless and cynical Don Juan, while Beverly is the couple’s weak link due to her shyness and inability to make decisions.
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The twins, perfectly identical in appearance, exploit this to their advantage both professionally, exchanging patients during visits, and in the private sphere, exchanging lovers that Elliot, thanks to his charm, promptly seduces and then offers to his older brother. awkward. Although so equal in physical features, and thanks to Jeremy Irons’ skill that the viewer is always able to understand whether it is Elliot, whose features of the face are more contracted and severe, or Beverly, whose gaze is less harsh.
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Mantle twins live a practically perfect existence: professionally established and wealthy, they have all the women they want, free from any emotional ties. The only relationship they have is the one between them as twins: they live their lives totally in symbiosis (and, in this, you feel something ‘insane’ and ‘perverse’ from the beginning of the film), in a relationship in which one cannot do without the other. But, what happens if one of you falls in love with a woman
Here comes Claire Niveau, an actress of French origins, whose charm Beverly cannot resist, until he falls madly in love with her. With the arrival of Claire in the life of the twins emerges the overlap between fiction and reality in which the two have always lived: not by chance, in my opinion, the professional woman is an actress; she acts as a profession, but is overwhelmed by the reality of the twins, who make acting their life (with the clients who then become, punctually, their lovers). And, in fact, Claire at first receives the same treatment as the others: before her, and Beverly who visits her in her study; Elliot then takes over, takes his place and seduces the woman, in order to be able to have an appointment at which, then, the shy Beverly shows up. This time, however, something unexpected happens: Beverly, fascinated by the deformation of Claire’s uterus – a ‘three-forked’ uterus (of pure science fiction invention!) – he falls in love with her. Not only that: due to a misunderstanding born from the jealousy of the man and the distance of Claire for work, Beverly is mistakenly convinced that she has left him and thus falls into a vortex of self-destruction between alcohol and drugs (to which Claire herself had started while they were dating).
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And Elliot in all this
The balance on which their life has always been based is now broken and the perfect synchrony of their lives has now been lost. Elliot takes matters into his own hands, trying to stem Berverly’s damage at work (for example, using creepy tools on patients that look like alien tools of torture) and trying to cure his drug addiction. The abyss into which Beverly has fallen is so deep that the efforts of her twin are useless, who is forced to make a decision: to abandon his brother and give up his goal or go down to hell with him to safeguard their morbid relationship
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The entire film is accompanied by dark atmospheres (the photography is characterized by predominantly gray tones, with the exception of the blood-red gowns in which the gynecologists work in the clinic) and claustrophobic (all the scenes take place indoors). In this extraordinary masterpiece, Cronenberg brings out all the perversion towards which the human being is capable of pushing himself and the abyss into which one can fall without returning.
. Valentina Morlacchi
