Movie review: Nightcrawler

Posted on 4 December, 2014

When Lou Bloom, a driven man desperate for work, muscles into the world of L.A. crime journalism, he blurs the line between observer and participant to become the star of his own story. Aiding him in his effort is Nina, a TV-news veteran”. imdb

I don’t know whether I need a shower, whether I have seen an Oscar winner or whether I should just weep for our species.

Should I be appalled or impressed by a story that is an indictment of our times but is also like watching a bus crash in slow motion?

Jake Gyllenhaal gives a powerful, and powerfully disturbing, performance as a sociopath who falls into his perfect line of work – ambulance chasing with a camera. It is a well-written character brought to skin-crawling life by an actor who makes him both attractive and repellant at the same time. Lou is unflinchingly calm and weirdly logical, without an atom of morality but with a strong sense of self-worth and his right to the prize.

His descent into the underbelly of newsgathering is fed by his inability to get a toehold in the America of his imagination. This America is a place where all the self-help courses and positive thinking sites on the interweb come true. Where a business plan matters more than a business, where a can-do attitude opens all doors. It is a demon dimension paean to the USA’s capitalistic ‘poor boy made good’ hero.

Lou makes good, he succeeds – but there is not a moral boundary left standing at the end.

The other actors, particularly Rene Russo as Nina (with just the right amount of desperation) and Riz Ahmed as Lou’s offsider (and recipient of much of his bizarro logic) bring this nightmare version of Los Angeles to vivid life. Still, it is Gyllenhaal’s movie, from his first fake nice guy encounter to the last unblinking shot of him on a police camera, it is his film.

(And another shiver scoots down my spine).

The writer, Dan Gilroy, has a really interesting body of work behind him – robots (Real Steel), psych fantasy (The Fall), and a Bourne but this is his first film as director as well. Quite an entrance, Dan, quite an entrance. I am almost afraid to ask what’s next.

The atmosphere of the film is oppressive and unnerving – James Newton Howard’s score soars as it would for the rise of a hero, counterpointing what is happening onscreen with unsettling effect. Robert Elswit’s cinematography is uncomfortable, yet beautiful and therefore even more disquieting.

As is the ending, which some reviewers have criticised as being anti-climatic but which I think says more about the current thirst for voyeurism. There is no moral to Lou’s story but neither are there many morals left in the world of newsgathering. We shake our heads and frown at the excesses of the paparazzi or the news crews but we want the close-up of the crash, the anguish on the face of the family …

It does not matter either that this film has flaws in logic.

Actually, it almost makes me feel a little bit better about the story because if there was a website where he could trace number-plates and if he could get away with what he does without being arrested then the world would just be that much worse.

It is an allegory for our times, not the real story. At least I hope its not.

Roslyn saw this film as a guest of Dendy Cinemas Canberra