two SEE ONE story

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

-The Metamorphosis 

by Franz Kafka.

 Imagine you are going down a staircase into to an unknown cellar with a stranger you suspect is a killer.

David Fincher put those frightful words into film in his movie ZODIAC. To me that is the most scary scene in the whole movie. In that moment the tone changes into one of uncertainty. Even the light is dimmed as to create tension between us and the characters. The duality of Charles Fleischer´s  performance is intriguing and frightening.  

How can somebody act good and be evil. Be frightening but at the same time passive. Two Identities in ONE?

Jeremy Irons did it in Dead Ringers, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, Bette Davis in A Stolen Life, John Lithgow in Raising Cain. and Nicholas Cage in Adaptation. One story of two characters. Portraying a character must be difficult. But can you imagine portraying two ?? 

For example, Gwyneth Paltrow did a movie called Sliding Doors, it is really good. She plays Helen Quilley twice. The same person but in two parallel time lines. Perfectly crafted and wonderfully told. Surely a screenwriters nightmare telling two stories spawned by one decision, to me Paltrow´s best work yet. 

Movies such as: Identity , Run Lola Run, Family Man, Memento or the classic It´s a Wonderful Life show us the many shades the human mind can hold.

I´ve just seen the new trailer for the Jesse Eisenberg film "Double" and it made me remember another trailer i saw, like two months ago with Jake Gyllenhall about a man having a double or someone looking exactly like him called "Enemy". Both movies seem alike but different in the tones. One is more sarcastic and the other one is more David Lynch meets the Twilight Zone. I really want to see both. 

To me, one of the best performances by an actor in a double character-ROLE has been Armie Hammer in The Social Network. I had never seen him act before so i THOUGHT the "Winklevoss" twins were 2 real life twin actors. Up until the credits i realized it was all an ilussion and appreciated even more both performances.

There is no denial that Andy Serkis as Gollum/Smeagol  in "The Lord of the Rings" Trilogy and "The Hobbit" is flawless. He gave a chilling-stunning performance as a dual personality evil character.  The greatness of Serkis is how he transpired his acting thru a motion captured performance.

But what about actors making similar roles in different movies??? Like Eddie Tagoe. He has a brief appearance in "Raiders of the Lost Ark". He yells : "I found him!", pointing to Indiana Jones swimming to the Nazi submarine. And as "Chocolate Mousse" in the 1984 farce, "Top Secret! "

In both roles he looks exactly the same.

Or Anne Archer who won an Academy Award for her role as Michael Douglas sympathetic, tortured wife, Beth Gallagher, in  “Fatal Attraction.”  and is well-known for playing CIA agent Jack Ryan’s beleaguered wife, Cathy, in “Patriot Games” with Harrison Ford. In both movies she suffers a car crash.

What about two actors playing similar roles in two different movies??

Gabriel Byrne and Kevin Pollak in  both "The Usual Suspects" and  "END OF DAYS" play similar roles. Both movies share a lot in common like: the scene with the suspects in the police station, a cigarette dropped into a flammable liquid, Pollak riding in a distinctive white van, Gabriel Byrne uses black clothes and Kevin Pollack a base ball cap, to top it all they quote the same line in both movies: 

"Satan's greatest trick was convincing man he didn't exist" 

-Charles Baudelaire.

Some of my favorite dual/performances are:

Edward Norton  as a victim of abuse and mental illness 
as Aaron Stampler   in "Primal Fear"

Ian Holm  as  Sir William Gull  becomes both 
The Compass And The Ruler  in "From Hell"

Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers in "Black Swan"

Macaulay Culkin explores darkness as a child as Henry Evans in "The Good Son"

Every cast member as Azazel in "Fallen"

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages."

-William Shakespeare