Details
Movie Description
This dark, eerie, multi-layered drama may stand as Cronenberg's masterpiece. The film is loosely based on the true case of the Marcus Twins and the novel about them, TWINS by Bari Wood.
The Mantle brothers, Beverly and Elliot, are brilliant gynecologists with an upscale Toronto practice. Elliot is charismatic and outgoing, Beverly is shy and hard-working; emotionally inseparable, the brothers function like psychological Siamese twins. They share everything, including women, until Beverly--the weaker of the two--falls in love with a neurotic, drug addicted, actress. Forced to separate from his brother for the first time, Beverly becomes hooked on drugs and suffers a complete mental breakdown. Elliot, unable to exist independently of his twin, soon joins Beverly in a nightmarish descent into madness and self-destruction. Irons plays the brothers (achieved with seamless camera trickery), whose award winning research in gynecology has brought them international acclaim. Wholly original and uniquely disturbing, it could have been made by an alien, providing he had David Cronenberg's healthy disregard for commercial cinema and a unique sense of the human condition.
Synopsis
The Mantle brothers, Beverly and Elliot, are brilliant gynecologists with an upscale Toronto practice. Elliot is charismatic and outgoing, Beverly is shy and hard-working; emotionally inseparable, the brothers function like psychological Siamese twins. They share everything, including women, until Beverly -- the weaker of the two -- falls in love with a neurotic, drug addicted, actress. Forced to separate from his brother for the first time, Beverly becomes hooked on drugs and suffers a complete mental breakdown. Elliot, unable to exist independently of his twin, soon joins Beverly in a nightmarish descent into madness and self-destruction. Irons plays the brothers (achieved with seamless camera trickery), whose award winning research in gynecology has brought them international acclaim. Wholly original and uniquely disturbing, it could have been made by an alien, providing he had Cronenberg's healthy disregard for commercial cinema and a unique sense of the human condition.
Film Notes
"Dead Ringers" is based on a true story.
Peter Grundy, the assistant art director, designed the unusual surgical instruments for the film. The mechanical design is by Walter Klassen.
Industry Reviews
"...Irons has never been better....It's the confidence and disturbing beauty of Cronenberg's direction that makes this a minor classic..." -- 4 out of 5 stars
Total Film - p.86 - Dorian Lynskey (03/01/2000)
"...[Irons gives a] seamless performance, a schizophrenic marvel....Not easily forgotten..."
New York Times - p.C10 - Janet Maslin (09/23/1988)
"...Cronenberg's masterpiece of infinite regression....RINGERS is an epistemological horror film a nightmare of entrapment in an imperceivable situation..."
Film Comment - David Chute (11/01/1988)
"...DEAD RINGERS announces David Cronenberg's full maturity as a director, period....To think of a film this assured, this unified and this dizzyingly potent, you have to go back to BLUE VELVET..."
Los Angeles Times - Sheila Benton (09/22/1988)
"David Cronenberg's best movie..."
USA Today - Mike Clark (06/10/2005)
Quotations
"I need the humiliation and the work." -- Actress Claire Niveau (Genevieve Bujold) to her agent.
"Pain is distortion." -- Beverly or Elliot Mantle (Jeremy Irons) to Claire Niveau (Genevieve Bujold)
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