NIGHTCRAWLER: It's a Game Where They Crawl Around in the Night Like Worms

In which Jake Gyllenhaal finally makes his X-Men debut.

Director: Dan Gilroy
Writer: Dan Gilroy
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton
Runtime: 117 mins.
2014

The brilliant feat of Nightcrawler is that it manages to be scathingly political without ever emphasizing that that's what it has on its mind. I tend to be suspicious of art that brands itself as "political" because it's often obvious... on the nose... self-important. At any rate, I've found that every work of art is political in its own way, consciously or no, and the most effective art is frequently covert or subtle when it comes to that affiliation.

Nightcrawler is a savage takedown of capitalism and news journalism, without pretending to be anything more or less than a crackling thriller. Maybe movies like these are the most politically important, since the plot and premise are enough to get them greenlit by the studios, and the themes and motifs are enough to make the audience question established moneymaking systems like the studios that approved them. It's a neat trick, one that I noticed recently in The Lego Movie, of all things.

The catalyst for all the action that unfolds is Lewis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal): sociopath, fence-stealer, smooth talker, professional miscreant. The lurid fluorescent setting of Los Angeles does not surround Lewis Bloom--Lewis Bloom penetrates Los Angeles. Nothing happens outside of his desire for it to happen, a desire that is at once monstrous and coolly efficient. The machine of his will encounters resistance, to be sure; the world does not bend to accommodate Lewis, nor does Lewis bend to accommodate the world. He reaches out and forcibly twists the world into the shape of his choosing. He is a god to those around him, and this god in turn prays to the sacred altar of the television.

Lewis has taken TV news as his object choice--that which he holds sacred--and he has no morals or scruples to hold him back from making his mark. Said mark is made through his self-appointed job as a nightcrawler, one of several talented cretins who prowl the streets late at night waiting for something newsworthy to happen. This does not mean crime exclusively. It could mean tragedy in general. Accidents. Events. So long as the victims is a middle-to-upper-class white citizen capable of inspiring fear and increased viewerships in other middle-to-upper-class white citizens. "Think of our newscast as a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut," deadpans Nina (Rene Russo), the overnight producer at the TV station that buys Lou's footage. These news stations are desperate to get one up on each other, and to achieve success they have no qualms about using any services they can find. Like Lewis, a news broadcast is a well-oiled machine, calculating and fearmongering, one whose insides Nightcrawler lets us poke around in.

Lewis is a self-made man. He makes himself into a successful freelance nightcrawler through sheer force of will, determination to learn, and trial and error. He's a spin doctor. He is a master of sloganeering, offering half-truths and catch phrases, bargaining as if he is owed something, creating systems of knowledge and business models out of whole cloth.

Lewis is the consummate capitalist. In one of the film's most effective moments, Nina tells a coworker, "Lou is inspiring all of us to reach a little higher." That's because Lewis has mastered the system, and has thus become the modern Master. This is the bleak conclusion about contemporary life that Nightcrawler has to offer, offset by an ironically exultant soundtrack that punctuates perverse moments with a religious sanctity. We worship Lewis because he is better than us at everything that a capitalist is supposed to do.

But the audience cannot support Lewis. We see his actions laid out in all their conniving hollowness. How, then, does the narrative keep from alienating us? This is a key question in any narrative with an unsympathetic protagonist, like 2000's American Psycho, a film that should draw some interesting comparisons with this one. How can we be invested in the acts of a monster?

Nightcrawler's solution is a simple yet elegant one: Rick. Lou's downtrodden "intern" holds our sympathies. He is naïve, good-natured, desperate. We experience Lou through his eyes, as well as from our more privileged perspective. Rick is our entrypoint into this movie, and Riz Ahmed gives a perfect everyman performance that also manages to be distinctive.

The camerawork in a movie about camera work does not disappoint. We are treated to expansive LA nighttime vistas, blazing with color and crime. The camera has a tendency to cozy right on up to Lou's face, letting us see the minutiae of a master class Jake Gyllenhaal performance. It is my opinion that Gyllenhaal was born to play this role, and that he will never better his work here. His slightly upturned mouth has always given the impression of a wry, almost sinister knowingness, and for Nightcrawler Gyllenhaal alternately overplays and masks that expressiveness depending on his character's goal. We can see Lou switch between registers like train cars coupling up--a performance of a man who is always performing. Even the moments when we see Lou alone, free from the need to put on a façade, are so carefully and clinically modulated by Gyllenhaal. He brings this movie to life.

I can't get much into the satisfying thematic nitty-gritty without venturing into spoiler territory so I will end my praise here. Nightcrawler is a chiller, a thriller, and a thinker. Come for the crackling plot and world class performance, stay for the implications about contemporary capitalist culture.

4 / 5  BLOBS