How do you go about raising funding for a film like Spider? Its central character is schizophrenic, recently released from an asylum and almost completely unable to communicate with others, his speech a series of almost unintelligible mumbles to no-one in particular, his notepad tightly crammed with scribblings in a language of his own invention. As he arrives in London and seeks out the halfway house in which he is to be lodged, the camera repeatedly isolates him in often eerily empty landscapes. Later in the story, people around him and in his own memory appear to shift and swap identity. We are prompted to identify with Spider not because he is engaging or witty or likeable, but because the film itself climbs inside Spider's head and takes residence there, forcing us to see the world as he does, to share his memories and his confusion and fear of everything and everyone. There's no voice over to provide clarification, no sudden opening up of the character to allow us to warm to him - this is one hard sell to even the most adventurous funding source.

I would venture to say that there are few directors in western cinema who would even consider taking on such a film, and fewer still who could pull it off with such style. David Cronenberg has never shied away from 'difficult' projects - indeed, part of what makes him such a great outsider director is that he positively embraces them. Initially a genre film-maker of distinctive style, Cronenberg has managed to widen his scope without diluting his vision even a fraction, creating works as individually compelling and diverse as Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Crash and eXistenZ, and yet infuse each with distinctively Cronenbergian thematic meat. The destruction or mutation of the body, the loss of control to the power of obsession, the strength and dangers of non-conformity are all elements that he openly celebrates. With Spider this focus is narrowed considerably, as we do not engage with the central character and observe his slide into self destruction as we did with Beverly Mantle in Dead Ringers or Jeff Brundle in The Fly - when we meet Spider, the damage is already done, and we are invited to work with him as he attempts to unravel the unknown horror of his past and confront the issues that changed him from an everyday young boy into the disturbed adult he has become.

This is a film in which the audience has to both work and show faith. There is no initial narrative hook, no snappy opening and few real clues in the early stages to indicate where the story will later head. The film moves at Spider's own unhurried pace, revealing key information in a way that only becomes fully clear at the end. On paper this is a risky approach, but it proves utterly compelling from the very first shot, a slow track down a station platform though a throng of commuters to reveal the lone and confused central character. This may not be the traditional Hollywood introduction, which usually consists of a wearily predictable burst of action born of a terror of losing the short attention span audience in the first three minutes, and we may not be able to immediately identify with Spider, but he holds our attention from the start through the simple fact that he is interesting. If the story itself is a puzzle for the audience (and Spider) to solve, then so is Spider himself, an enigma waiting to be unraveled in the manner of any classic mystery. It's an intricate process, and Cronenberg drops the narrative clues in a way that repeatedly moves the story forward and yet continues to protect Spider's dark secret until the film is ready to reveal it. On a second viewing, intrigue and guesswork is replaced by a sense of wonder at the extraordinary complexity of this seemingly minimalist approach, and provides a better understand the workings of Spider's mind and how the events of his past have continued to shape his present.

If considerable credit must go to Cronenberg for the effectiveness of this - his camera placement and editing are key factors in creating the sense of dark mystery that surrounds Spider - then he shares it with Ralph Fiennes, who is nothing short of extraordinary as Spider, immersing himself so completely in the role that you genuinely forget you are watching a performance. Every twitch, mumble, movement and nuance feels utterly authentic, and he is very convincingly presented as a man robbed of his dignity and privacy, a man for whom a simple bedsit room is a source of unexplained terror. It seems almost ironic that although determined not to produce a case study of schizophrenia, Cronenberg, screenwriter Patrick McGrath (on whose novel the screenplay was based) and Fiennes have nonetheless built a far more convincing and unsensationalist film around the subject than the horribly over-praised A Beautiful Mind. But this is acting at its least self-serving, a brilliant performance that is nonetheless never flashy or attention grabbing, and as a result is not the sort that attracts the attention of the Academy.

But this is no one-man show. Equally remarkable is the magnificent Miranda Richardson, who plays two very distinct characters (this is no gimmick and essential to Spider's own memories and perception of his present) and later even meld one of them with a character played elsewhere in the film by another actress. She performs each to perfection, her performance as the tarty Yvonne in particular being bang on - the accent, facial expressions and body language are so absolutely right that it's worth a viewing of the film just to watch Richardson in action. Fine support is provided by Gabriel Byrne as Spider's father, a role he confesses was probably the hardest of his life (you need to see the film and watch the extras to fully understand why), Lynn Redgrave as the frosty landlady Mrs. Wilkinson and John Neville as fellow house resident Terrence, a man who exudes a sense of rebelliousness that has long since been crushed.

Slowly paced but darkly compelling, Spider is a beautifully performed and constructed work. Particular credit should go to director of photography and Cronenberg regular Peter Suschitzky, who lights interiors with a sometimes unsettling combination of naturalism and surrealism (a style that is most strongly evident in the potentially mundane but striking long shot of Spider framed against a cupboard in his room, writing in his journal with his back to the camera), Howard Shore's unsettling, low key score and Andrew Sanders' atmospheric production design. Typically of a Cronenberg film, all of those involved in the production appear to have a completely unified view of the material, creating the sense that everything you see on screen, from the gigantic gas storage cylinders to the wallpaper in Spider's room to the very string he uses to create his webs, has been pulled from inside of Spider's own mind.

Lacking the visceral thrills of Cronenberg's genre works or even the taboo-busting controversy of Crash, Spider demonstrates clearly just how great a director Cronenberg is, and the film shines not just as a gripping and imaginative psychological drama, but as a showcase for his ability to tell a complex, intelligent story in purely cinematic terms.

Sound and Vision

Framed at 1.85:1 and anamorphically enhanced, this is a pleasingly crisp and well balanced transfer with first rate contrast and strong colour reproduction, very nicely reproducing the browns and greys that dominate much of the production and costume design. Very few compression artefacts are visible, no mean feat given the studied gloom of many scenes. A very nice job.

The 5.1 soundtrack is a resolutely unflashy affair, but there is subtly effective use of the full sound stage, with rain, wind and other location atmospherics creeping up on you from behind, and some very nice separation work on some sound effects (Gabriel Byrne's night-time cycle ride to the allotments and the window breaking in the asylum are very good examples). The almost David Lynch-like background noises in Spider's bedsit are particularly effective, though there is surprisingly little use of the lower frequencies. An impressively and appropriately subtle mix.