Try Making Sense of the New Trailer for ‘The Double’

One of the oddest pairings of artist and material this year has to be English comedy writer, actor, and director Richard Ayoade with Russian novelst Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1846 novel, The Double. After it was announced that Magnolia had picked up Ayoade’s film version of The Double – starring Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska – for distribution in 2014, there was likely going to be a new trailer to promote it.

Well, that didn’t make much sense. Maybe the film’s first trailer for its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival will be a little more clear.

Nope, not very clear at all.

While the trailers don’t exactly say much about the film’s plot, they are at least odd, and a little bit uncomfortable; moods that are commonplace for both Ayoade and Dostoyevsky. Perhaps this isn’t such a strange pairing of talents.

For anyone who can’t make heads or tails of the trailers, or hasn’t read Dostoyevsky’s book, here’s a synopsis provided by IMDb:

Simon is a timid man, scratching out an isolated existence in an indifferent world. He is overlooked at work, scorned by his mother, and ignored by the woman of his dreams. He feels powerless to change any of these things. The arrival of a new co-worker, James, serves to upset the balance. James is both Simon’s exact physical double and his opposite – confident, charismatic and good with women. To Simon’s horror, James slowly starts taking over his life.