A film about Alfred Hitchcock.
A film about Castro and Cuba.
A film about Kennedy.
A film about the Cold War.
A film about the nuclear arms race.
Had this been a film about any one of these interesting topics then this would have been an interesting film.
Sadly, director Johan Grimonprez has decided to make a film that interweaves all of these things and also manages to throw in a discussion on the notion of identity for good measure with the end result being a messy, confusing, bitty and, ultimately, boring film. It's clear that Grimonprez has a love of Hitchcock the man and Hitchcock the director and had he used the mass of footage he uncovered to create a straightforward biopic I would have been much more engaged.
"Double-Take" just felt a bit like the sort of film that the really pretentious student in a film school would make..."Uh yeah, I'm creating a shifting, fluid anti-biopic that deals with questions of identity and the true nature of the world around us in order to confront people with the stupidity of their own understanding...or something."
There is a good idea in here with Hitchcock acting as narrator and telling the story of the Cold War period and using his own film "The Birds" as a metaphor...but I only know that because I read it somewhere else! Left to your own devices I think you would be just as confused as I was.
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