Movie Review: 'Nightcrawler'

06 March 2015 - 12:10 By Sue de Groot
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Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler
Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler
Image: Supplied

Jake Gyllenhaal's ghoulish cameraman is an unforgettable character in this gripping thriller, writes Sue de Groot

"I've made up my mind to find a career I can learn and grow into." This is one of many empty epithets plucked from the internet and repeated in tones of great solemnity by Louis Bloom, the antihero of Nightcrawler.

Jake Gyllenhaal, plays the ethically challenged Bloom with cadaverous weirdness. His rictal grin, unblinking stare and shadowed eye sockets are eerily reminiscent of Peter Sellers in the 1979 film Being There. That, too, was about a man who intoned life-coach statements without grasping their meaning. That, too, was about a man who "liked to watch". But Gyllenhaal's Bloom is at the opposite end of the autism spectrum from Sellers's Chance the gardener. He has a similar inability to understand nuance or feel emotion, but his merciless desire to succeed makes him more of a sociopath than a figure of sympathy.

When we meet Bloom, he is stealing metal and wire, which he sells to a scrap dealer. At first he seems to be the more endearing sort of thief, one who desperately wants a job that suits his skills. It emerges that his skills include a total absence of empathy, compassion, guilt or shame. We begin to like him less but also become more fascinated by him, particularly when he stumbles on the perfect career - taking video footage of gruesome incidents as a freelance cameraman for news channels, a "nightcrawler".

Bloom sees his work as art, and his art is more important than his subjects' right to live. When he gets the chance to move a body and create the perfect frame, his eyes pop with moist euphoria.

Bloom's opposite number in this callous business is Nina (Rene Russo), the news director at ailing TV station KWLA. Nina is a colder dragon than Faye Dunaway played in the 1976 media satire Network, with less bellowing of fire, but she is a dragon nonetheless, one who will burn through any sense of humanity or morality to keep her job. To do this she needs to build KWLA's viewership of white, middle-class suburbanites. This means giving them news they feel compelled to watch - in other words, news that taps into their racism and paranoia.

Bloom is instructed to bring Nina video footage that shows crime creeping into the suburbs. He would bring her the head of John the Baptist if she wanted it, but he also finds great satisfaction in his work. As he progresses he becomes more daring. Nina's colleagues begin to flinch at the immorality of some of his actions, but she is sucked into his slipstream and so fired with her own ambition that she crosses every boundary.

The power balance between them shifts as Bloom begins to manipulate Nina to his own ends, and the erotic charge, despite an age difference of three decades, is disturbing in its intensity. At 60, Russo still smoulders. She happens to be married to Dan Gilroy, who wrote and directed Nightcrawler, but her casting was unquestionably right. So was the choice of British actor Riz Ahmed as Louis's homeless assistant and navigator Rick. The cut and thrust between Rick and Louis provides some comic relief from the unrelenting noir-ness, but ultimately Rick's role is to provide yet another sickening opportunity for Louis to shine.

Gyllenhaal lost a significant amount of weight to play the scrawny Bloom. One could draw a tenuous parallel here: where Bloom prioritises his art over the wellbeing of others, Gyllenhaal placed his art above his own health. He is like a man with a layer scraped off to reveal the glow of flames beneath the crust. Between them, Gilroy and Gyllenhaal have created a character as unforgettable as Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle.

The theme of those who work in the media becoming detached and hardened is not a new one, but the excoriating performances, LA-night visuals by cinematographer Robert Elswit and a pounding score by James Newton Howard make this a claustrophobic thriller from which one cannot look away. As Chance the gardener said in Being There about his first ride in a car: "This is just like television, only you can see much further."

Rating: 4/5

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