Spider is a 2002 Canadian/British drama film produced and directed by David Cronenberg and based on the novel of the same name by Patrick McGrath, who also wrote the screenplay.
The film premiered at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and enjoyed some media buzz; however, it was released in only a few theaters at the year's end by distributor Sony Pictures Classics. Nonetheless, the film enjoyed much acclaim by critics and especially by Cronenberg enthusiasts. The film garnered a Best Director award at the Canadian Genie Awards. The stars of the film, Ralph Fiennes and particularly Miranda Richardson, received several awards for their work in the film.
During a Q&A session at the Kodak Lecture Series in May 2005, Cronenberg revealed that neither he, nor Fiennes, nor Richardson, nor the producers received any sort of salary during the shooting of the film. All chose to waive their salaries, so the money could be used to fund the under-funded production.
Dennis Clegg is in his thirties and lives in a halfway house for the mentally ill in London. Dennis, nicknamed "Spider" by his mother has been institutionalized with acute schizophrenia for some 20 years. He has never truly recovered, however, and as the story progresses we vicariously experience his increasingly fragile grip on reality.
Plot
Spider is an exploration of a schizophrenic mind told through the eyes of a grown man who is given a room in a house catering for mentally disturbed persons. The man has just been released from a mental institution and in his new abode starts piecing together or recreating in his memory an apparently fateful childhood event. He roams the nearby derelict urban area and the local canal and starts to relive or visualize a period of his childhood with his mother and his father. Set in 1950s London, exterior shots were made at Kennington for the gas towers and Pullens buildings in Walworth made the exterior for 'Pegge Street'. In this visualization, a shift takes place in the child's psyche when he witnesses his mother groping with his father in the garden and, subsequently, when he sees his mother in a silky night gown she wore for his father. The son, as a grown man seems to recreate in his memory the build up to his father's murder of his mother with the passive support of his mistress who then moves into the house and is presented as his mother. The young son then kills the mistress by gassing her in the kitchen.
After that memory he attempts to kill the landlady who, by then, he sees alternatively as the mistress and his mother. He is taken back to the asylum. By the end of the film it seems that his father did not kill his mother, but that the murder happened in the child's mind who had already started losing his sense of reality and imagined it. There is no clear indication whether his killing of his mother whom he imagined as the mistress, actually happened. Central themes of the film include memory, the unreliability thereof, and the blur between reality and hallucination. The main character often places himself within his memories.
Cast
Cast overview, first billed only:
Ralph Fiennes ... Spider
Miranda Richardson ... Yvonne / Mrs. Cleg
Gabriel Byrne ... Bill Cleg
Lynn Redgrave ... Mrs. Wilkinson
John Neville ... Terrence
Bradley Hall ... Spider Boy
Gary Reineke ... Freddy
Philip Craig ... John
Cliff Saunders ... Bob
Tara Ellis ... Nora
Sara Stockbridge ... Gladys
Arthur Whybrow ... Ernie
Nicola Duffett ... Barmaid
Jake Nightingale ... Large Man
Alison Egan ... Flashing Yvonne
Directed by David Cronenberg
Produced by David Cronenberg
Samuel Hadida
Catherine Bailey
Screenplay by Patrick McGrath
Based on Spider by
Patrick McGrath
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