The Double

Synopsis: 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 Simons exact physical double and his opposite - confident, charismatic and good with women. To Simons horror, James slowly starts taking over his life.
Director(s): Richard Ayoade
Production: Magnolia Pictures
  1 win & 10 nominations.
 
IMDB:
6.5
Metacritic:
68
Rotten Tomatoes:
83%
R
Year:
2013
93 min
£520,447
Website
1,222 Views


You're in my place.

I'm sorry?

You're in my place.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Hey, you!

- Me?

- Visitors have to sign in.

Oh wait, I've worked

here for seven years.

- I see you every day.

- I don't work weekends...

- I'm sorry?

- ...It is therefore impossible

for you to see me every day. I.D.

- Yeah, I...

- Supplementary I.D.

Oh yeah, the funny thing

is I don't have any.

It's actually in my case, which

is in the door of a train.

- It got stuck.

- Do you think that's funny?

No. No, it's actually more

upsetting than anything else.

Don't make a jest of this, sir.

I won't.

Oh, um... Actually my

name is Simon James.

Uh, you left off the

"J" in my last name.

- I need to see your pass.

- Right.

Uh-huh.

Sorry.

Put your jacket on, son.

This isn't a brothel.

No shirking! This is the big push!

Plenty to do. The Colonel is counting

on each and every one of you, as am I.

Mr. Papadopoulos, actually...

Mr. Papadopoulos, excuse me.

Mr. Papadopoulos, I've finished up.

In fact, I completed substantially

more than my quota.

I took my jacket off only

because it's so hot,

not because I mistook the

office for a brothel.

Excellent job. That's the

type of initiative we need.

How long have you been here, son?

- Just started, eh?

- Yes sir, seven years ago.

You know we've been

pruning the dead wood.

The Colonel refuses to

carry any more passengers.

Er, actually, I have some

rather exciting ideas

I've been wanting to share

with the Colonel about how

we could make our

reports more efficient.

I think by using simple

regression analysis

we could really reconfigure

the entire business.

- My daughter's name is Melanie.

- A nice name.

She's interning for the holidays.

- Say hello, Melanie.

- Hello, Melanie.

Stanley here is gonna

be your mentor.

- Yes. What?

- An hour a day,

at your discretion.

She's a good girl,

- but no head for figures.

- Yeah.

Idiot.

- You can go now.

- Right. Yes, thank you.

Because if I were to

find out how depressing

and demeaning whatever the

f*** it is you do here,

I might be forced to

feel sorry for you.

Right. Well,

I look forward to it.

Hi.

Copy.

Oh.

Why don't you print out two copies?

That would make sense.

That would be what a

normal person would do.

- Sorry.

- You can't use this place for one copy.

- It was the same story yesterday.

- Sorry.

- You're always sorry.

- Sorry about that.

Hey, Hannah, can you stay late?

- I've gotta get this thing lanced.

- Uh-huh.

One copy.

Yes, please.

I know.

I know!

Yes, mom, I'll be there.

I always work late.

I'm trying to leave now.

Because I'm talking to you. Yeah.

Okay. Yes. Bye.

You can rely on me. Okay.

People...

The ultimate resource.

Yet to some businesses

they all look the same.

But the Colonel knows

people are different.

The Colonel knows business is

people and people are business,

making your business his business.

Because the Colonel knows people.

And the Colonel knows

that you demand

the most powerful

data-processing system

on the planet to make

sense of it all.

The Colonel will show you people

in a way your business

can understand.

Because the Colonel knows

there's no such thing

as special people.

Just people.

- Which one was you?

- Which one...

I don't know how to answer that.

The one... the one that was me.

He didn't look like you.

He had brown hair.

We both have brown hair.

I mean, I have... I...

We're the same person.

- I'm not gonna die ever...

- I know.

- ...so you can forget it.

- Okay.

Will you stop talking?

I'm trying to sleep.

Your mother says

you're a strange boy.

- I'm sorry?

- Your mother says you're a strange boy.

Oh. Thank you.

Let me see your hand.

Oh, that's okay. I'm fine.

You're not right.

May I speak with you?

Yes.

Will you excuse me?

Yes?

There seems to be a

discrepancy in your bill.

Oh yes, well, there was a

rather large cost increase

- and no explanation, so I thought...

- There's a new price.

- And why is that?

- Improvements.

- That seems a little...

- Unfair.

Yeah.

Oh, sorry.

Okay.

That's all I have.

Yeah.

It's not enough.

You shouldn't be doing that.

Sorry.

- And then what did you do?

- Sorry?

And then what did you do?

- I called the police.

- Right.

Anything else?

He waved at me.

- Yeah?

- Right before he jumped he waved.

How did he wave?

- Did you wave back?

- I wonder why he did it.

His note said he was lonely.

He should have got a dog.

Or exercised more.

That's important.

- Should I write that down?

- Maybe in parenthesis.

- Does that mean brackets?

- What the f*** are brackets?

- Did he suffer?

- Splat.

Do you see this sort

of thing often?

Every day. That's what

we do... suicides.

- Only suicides?

- That's right.

- For the whole city?

- We can barely cover the neighborhood.

You know the funny thing is

he would have landed on that awning if

he'd just jumped a few feet to the right.

You see that? He would

have fallen, bounced off

and landed somewhere about there.

Probably would have survived.

Horribly maimed,

of course, but still.

If you get 'em to the hospital quick

enough to stop the brain swelling.

You're not thinking of

killing yourself, are you?

Sorry?

- It's a simple question.

- No.

- Should I put him down as a "no"?

- Put him down as a "maybe."

What are you doing here?

The man that jumped?

- I saw it.

- How?

I live in that building.

I didn't know him.

- He waved at me.

- Strange.

It's the Colonel's ball tomorrow.

Do you think you'll go?

I don't know if I'll go.

It's mandatory. Everyone has to go.

Hannah?

Yeah?

It's terrible to be alone too much.

I think it was an orange

juice. I just...

- Are they normally that rude here?

- Yes.

- Then why do you come?

- I think I'm quite loyal.

You'll have to hand in your

holo-badge and blaster.

Come and get 'em.

Holster your blaster, Jack.

I like this show.

I don't mind dying.

In fact, I'm getting

quite used to it.

The way I figure it,

you only get one life.

And like they say...

There's no such thing

as second chances.

Jack, this isn't you.

Then who the hell is?

He's in your heart.

He's good and right and true.

I was lying when I said

I didn't know him.

The man who jumped?

I kind of knew him.

I'd never really met him.

I'd more confronted him.

He was this person who'd been

following me around for a while,

and I'd always see him,

no matter where I went...

Like at the office, on the

subway, by my apartment.

You know, in that little underpass

thing by the apartments?

He'd just be there, watching.

And I thought, "that's strange."

But, you know, whatever.

Men look at women.

You get used to it.

But then I found out that he lived above

me and I thought, "that's really odd."

Like, did he follow me around because

he lived in the same building as me

and he got fixated? Or did he

get fixated and then move in?

So anyway, eventually I

thought, "you know what?

Enough is enough." Because it was

Rate this script:3.7 / 3 votes

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (English: ; Russian: Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, tr. Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, IPA: [ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ dəstɐˈjɛfskʲɪj] ( listen); 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. Dostoevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of realistic philosophical and religious themes. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His most acclaimed works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Dostoevsky's oeuvre consists of 11 novels, three novellas, 17 short stories and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychologists in world literature. His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature. Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837 when he was 15, and around the same time, he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. In the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into St. Petersburg's literary circles. Arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group that discussed banned books critical of "Tsarist Russia", he was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted at the last moment. He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer's Diary, a collection of his writings. He began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he eventually became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages. Dostoevsky was influenced by a wide variety of philosophers and authors including Pushkin, Gogol, Augustine, Shakespeare, Dickens, Balzac, Lermontov, Hugo, Poe, Plato, Cervantes, Herzen, Kant, Belinsky, Hegel, Schiller, Solovyov, Bakunin, Sand, Hoffmann, and Mickiewicz. His writings were widely read both within and beyond his native Russia and influenced an equally great number of later writers including Russians like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov as well as philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre. more…

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Submitted on August 05, 2018

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    "The Double" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 Nov. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/the_double_20111>.

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