Above: Jake Gyllenhaal as the titular nightcrawler
It’s night in Los
Angeles. A small, greasy-haired man is
trying to tear some metal off a chain link fence…when a security guard steps
out of the darkness, demanding to see some identification. “I think I’m lost,” the man explains. Then, he hits the guard and leaves him lying
there, unconscious on the ground.
So begins “Nightcrawler,” a clear-eyed, oily-hearted look
into the life of the hitter in question, Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal). When we first meet him, he’s a thief who gets
by selling stolen manhole covers and metal scraps. But when Lou sees a TV camera crew filming a
car accident, his fate is assured.
Starved for work and money, he buys a camera and starts patrolling the
city, gathering footage of accidents and crimes that he can sell to the highest
bidder.
Not a pleasant story.
“Nightcrawler” is the directorial debut of writer Dan Gilroy (“The
Bourne Legacy”) and while his visuals are as clean and sleek as a televised
weather report, the core of his movie is twisted and queasy. There’s no one to root for; Mr. Gilroy may
spin Lou as an outsider in the world of “nightcrawlers” (Lou’s macho, hackneyed
rival is played by Bill Paxton), but that narrative strategy invites only a
modicum of sympathy for Mr. Gyllenhaal’s leering pipsqueak. Lou, with his creepily eager eyes and
high-pitched speeches about business and success, seems not just morally
bankrupt, but genuinely evil.
If you don’t believe me, wait until you see what happens
when Lou becomes not only a voyeur, but a murderer. By then, it becomes apparent that there are
no shades of gray to this guy, and that’s the film’s biggest problem. “Nightcrawler” may purport to be an exposé of
contemporary media, but it refuses probe Lou’s psyche, even as it clings to his
story like a hungry mosquito. The
result? A movie that, with its obsessive
focus on Lou’s disturbing behavior, embodies the very spirit of the shallow,
exploitive television reports it attempts to critique.
That doesn’t mean that “Nightcrawler” is a waste of
time—far from it. Because while Mr.
Gilroy’s critique of television reporting is flimsy at best, his commentary on
the twenty-first century American psyche has genuine bite. Just watch the early scene when Lou reflects
on his education, saying that school taught him to expect “his needs to be
considered.” Fair enough, except he then
explains that he now knows that self-esteem is irrelevant—that he needs to make
money and he’s willing to do whatever it takes.
That moment resonated with me more than anything else in
the film. School protects you from the
world as much as it prepares you for it, and the most compellingly freakish
idea in “Nightcrawler” is that Lou ultimately takes another route—he learns to
interact with station managers and newscasters though online business courses
that allow him to sound like he knows what he’s talking about. The terrifying result? That by the end, he’s become a
mini-entrepreneur. “I will never ask you
to do anything I wouldn’t do myself,” he proudly tells his new employees near
the film’s end.
Yikes.
No comments:
Post a Comment