Or the
American Dream is for assholes. Something like that. This could be seen on a
double-bill with Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street”.
Jake
Gyllenhall as Louis Bloom is a slime-ball: not particularly likeable but he
knows the right things to say when he needs to. He is not a cool guy, but he
can spin a tale that makes him sound more important than he actually is; he
knows how to spin and he knows how to use his leverage. He’ll use this rather
than genuine friendship and he’ll do what it takes to get ahead. He’s a true
sociopath, in fact. It’s a blistering performance by Gyllenhall, a career best.
By the time he is word-bullying TV executive Nina (Rene Russo) for sex, you can
hear in the script why some consider this the best film of the year.
Writer-Director Dan Gilroy’s script positively throbs with sardonic black
humour. It’s not a comedy but, like a horror, you might find yourself chuckling
at Gyllenhall’s outrageousness.
Louis Bloom
has nothing: no back story, nothing to fix him in place, nothing to lose. He is
a blank slate looking for his chance, for his business opportunity, which he
finds when he stumbles upon a film crew filming a car crash and realises that
he can do that.
Chris Cabin notes the moments
where Louis Bloom moves a corpse so it is more photogenic and, of course, there
is the moment where Bloom walks around a fresh murder site to film it in the
most cinematic way possible. Bloom himself states that doing so is crucial.
Cabin rightfully prods at this as the point where the film associates Bloom
with the film director’s trade: always making murder and death look at their
most filmable. Perhaps ‘staged’ is a better term: the giallo genre thrives on this. Cabin takes on Gilroy:
“Sadly, he doesn't develop this deeply
alluring aspect of his narrative. Instead, he takes the moral high ground via
Ahmed's conflicted character, and in a final twist, provides a shallowly
cynical condemnation of the press that reveals a pointed preference for banal
pessimism over further exploration of how his own profession thrives off of
illicit, even sexy images of murder, pain, and blood”
But I don’t
think that is the film that “Nightcrawler” is: it has far more to do with the
aforementioned “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Cheap Tricks” than it does the
films that directly accuse the audience, like “Funny Games” or “Peeping Tom. The
other criticism is that “Nightcrawler” chooses easy and old targets, but as
“car crash TV” is currently flourishing, I don’t believe this holds for long.
Besides, I saw “Nightcrawler” as far more allegorical and that the world of TV
was just one facet of a larger satire. I don’t even think it is subtext: like
“Killing them Softly” or “Map to the Stars”, the intent is on top. This is about
how those without scruples make business successes. It’s about what people will
do to make money.
But
“Nightcrawler” is also an excellent character study about a man who is able to go
that extra moral-less inch to get what he wants: cash and power. The American
capitalist dream is, here, that you will stumble upon a car crash and find away
to exploit it; but you must be the one to go and to do what others will not.
There is nothing Louis Bloom will not do to achieve his goal: that’s the
American Dream right there. At the end, he has taken his chances and is on his
way up, through the loopholes.
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