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It is rarely satisfying to enter the realms of a disturbed man's mind. In fact, it can be downright depressing: providing almost an automatic way to lure away the average viewer. But David Cronenberg's Spider, based on Patrick McGrath's 1988 novel, is an exception to the rule. Instead, we travel into and discover the incapacities of a man who is venturing through a tangled web of sanity and madness.

Spider (Ralph Fiennes), a roughly dressed and extremely disturbed young man, slowly steps off a train with the hustle and bustle of London's rush hour. He has just been released from a mental institution that he's been kept at for the past twenty years. Spider eventually makes his way to a halfway house in East London, which is run by the belligerent Mrs. Wilkenson (Lynn Redgrave). However, her authority is limited as her residents are given the right to come and go as they please.

Spider quickly discerns that the house is the same neighborhood in which he grew up. He decides to pay a visit to his childhood home, peering through the window and seeing himself as a child (played brilliantly by Bradley Hall) at the dinner table with his father Bill Cleg, a drunken plumber (Gabriel Byrne) who is unfaithful to his accommodating wife (Miranda Richardson). Bill is a regular at the corner bar, The Dog and Beggar, where he meets the vulgar and dirty blonde Yvonne (also played by Miranda Richardson).

However, Yvonne happens to be the complete opposite of Spider's mother: intolerant and coldhearted. It is indeed a huge blow to Spider when his father kills his mother and invites Yvonne to move in. Bill wants the best for his son, but selfishly lets his own emotions make the decisions which will negatively affect Spider's life.

Spider often retreats to his cramped, dirty room in the upstairs of the halfway house. He begins to unravel his thoughts through writing obsessive hieroglyphics in his tiny notebook: practically a diary, which no one can translate, in an errant attempt to reconstruct his past.

Spider recalls many disturbing events from his troubled childhood, as the audience (and perhaps Spider himself) discovers why he is so distressed. Has Spider entangled himself in an intricate web to maintain his sanity? Has he distorted his memories to protect himself?

Director David Cronenberg is well known for his work in the horror genre: but Spider is a different breed. It's arguably his most satisfying film to date, a film that gives us a look into a disturbed man's battle to survive in such an indifferent world.

After starring alongside Jennifer Lopez in the ridiculously awful Maid in Manhattan, Ralph Fiennes certainly redeems himself here. What makes Fiennes so impressive is that his performance is largely silent, as Spider mostly mumbles and keeps to himself. But Fiennes' incredible work guides the audience into knowing that turbulence exists just below the surface. Newcomer Bradley Hall plays the young Spider in a performance that expertly navigates Spider's fall into madness in a gradual manner; it's so subtle that it would be easy to write it off as easy when it had to have been anything but.

While Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind deserves its accolades, Spider provides a more truthful approach to the ravages of schizophrenia. Spider's mind may not be beautiful, but it sure as hell is compelling.

(6 of 8)

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