Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to talk a little about the closing night film of Fantastic Fest 2014, a rather disturbing character study called NIGHTCRAWLER starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
I know this is AICN so when you see that title you expect a teleporting blue dude with a tail, but I'm happy to report this movie is even better than that movie you're thinking about in your head.
Cinephiles are going to eat this flick up. It's the type of disturbing character study that we don't get to see out of the studio system much anymore. If this movie had been made in the '70s Al Pacino would have played creeper Lou Bloom. The personal video cameras wouldn't have made any sense since they hadn't been invented yet, but it would have been a great friggin' movie.
Man, Lou Bloom is destined to be one of cinema's all time great creepers. Jake Gyllenhaal gives 110% here and isn't afraid to go to some realllllly dark places. What's nuts is he's not a serial killer or rapist or mad scientist or anything. Lou is a guy almost all of us can recognize from our day to day lives. He's ambitious, more than willing to take advantage of any opportunity that presents itself no matter who he hurts in the process. What makes him dangerous is that ambition is paired with a disturbing detachment from reality.
Throughout the story Lou is constantly trying to figure out how to achieve his goals. He coldly examines his goals and has no qualms about changing reality in order to shape it to what suits him better. He's the creepy James Kirk, Kobayashi Maru-ing his way through life.
If Lou was trying to make a name for himself as a car salesman then it wouldn't be a problem, but unfortunately he's attracted to the seedy world of freelance crime journalism. That sounds super fancy, but what that really means is he's TMZ for any kind of awful tragedy. Shootings, stabbings, deadly car accidents, fires... the bloodier the better. He gets in the way of paramedics in order to get a better shot of a dying man on a stretcher, for instance, and then turn around sell that footage to a news station struggling with ratings.
Lou stumbles upon this world and must be a part of it. His competitors (personified by Bill Paxton in a frankly fantastic bit of supporting character work) are better equipped, staffed and tied into the nightcrawler world, but even they have moral lines they won't cross to get that perfect bit of footage. Lou's edge is that he has no such qualms.
Nightcrawler is an LA film through and through. There are a whole lotta Lous out there and sadly most of them are successful. You have to be a little cut-throat to make it in Los Angeles or any business-centric community. There's nothing but competition around you and it seems work ethic alone means littler and littler with each passing generation. It takes something drastic or a massive deal of luck to get you ahead.
The film is set in Los Angeles and I don't think that's a coincidence. There's some deep commentary going on here, not just an indictment of the news media's bloodlust, but also the corporate ladder itself.
Since Dan Gilroy knows what he's doing, all that juicy stuff is subtext under a compelling character study. Once you view Lou as the personification of what is needed to succeed today something clicks and you get all the deeper social commentary.
The point is Nightcrawler is incredibly entertaining and disturbing, but not hollow. In my opinion, this is the kind of star vehicle that should be the norm out of the studio system. There's a thirst out there for more than just escapism. Don't get me wrong, I love big budget summer franchise flicks like anybody else, but when everything's a tentpole and there's no peaks and valleys then everything just becomes noise. We need movies like Nightcrawler to remind us about a standard we should be holding US studios accountable to. It might not be Top 10 Of All Time material, but if this was the norm for Fall movies we'd all be in a better place.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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