Nightmare Alley

Consider the doomed man. The man who is fated for tragedy. The man who is the protagonist, though not a hero – never a hero – of the noir story. 

Director Guillermo del Toro knows just such a man. Having found him in a book by William Lindsay Gresham. The great director also has a personal connection to this man, who becomes, eventually, a medium who preys upon the grief of the wealthy. 

Del Toro apparently had an encounter with mediums when his father was kidnapped. The director kicked two of them out of his mother’s house. But he had a first-hand look at the pain those who prey on love and grief can create. 

In a way, this movie is about a director taking vengeance on a certain type of person. It reminded me of how Fargo was created in part because the Coen Brothers didn’t like a used car salesmen. 

Nightmare Alley also has a murderer’s row of great actors. Bradley Cooper is the lead. Cate Blanchett is the femme fatale. Willam Dafoe plays the wily ringmaster, and Richard Jenkins is a powerful madman. Rooney Mara is the ingenue and David Strathairn is the washed-up keeper of a deeper magic. 

I really could spend a lot of this review talking about how great this cast is but for the record Strathairn really stands out and Mary Steenburgen moves mountains with just a few looks in a bit part. 

It’s visually stunning but it’s visually stunning in a way that suggests what you are watching doesn’t take place in what you or I would recognize as objective reality. We are in the land of fable and myth and film noir. It’s a little too perfect and at times it’s like it crosses the uncanny valley for me. 

Sometimes they attacked the Coen Brothers too because their films could recreate the exact look of the genre they were working in. 

I can see how some might view that as a great musician playing someone else’s hits. But if the music moves you then where is the harm? 

The look of Nightmare Alley is perfect so if it was a bit too perfect at times it’s still mostly perfect. 

Another thought about the works of another great director as it relates to Nightmare Alley. Quentin Tarantino has two movie universes. One that takes place in ‘the real world’ and the other that takes place in movie fantasy land. For instance, Kill Bill is the movie that the characters in Pulp Fiction watch when they go the movies. 

We aren’t meant, I think, to mistake any of this for the real world. And when you watch it in that way it works on its own terms and in its own way. 

I do have a few bones I must chew on. A line late in the movie about sex as the main couple falls apart rings hollow. 

There were few, if any surprises, a scene early in the movie tells you everything you need to know about how the movie will end. 

On the one hand, that’s fantastic storytelling but on the other hand, maybe I didn’t need my hand held this much. 

Cooper is great but the movie never bothers to answer why we should care about him or explain how a woman could ever believe she should marry him. I suppose that it helps that he’s one of the most handsome men in the world. 

I did enjoy that every step along the way characters keep telling Stan that if he follows a dark path it will lead to a dark end. Perhaps I would have cared more if he had at least tried to avoid his fate at some point. Perhaps I would have felt some sympathy for him when he eventually reached the long, dark night. 

But it plays out like fate and if Stan ever stopped to question his role in the destruction of his own life it’s not on screen. 

It was something that bugged me when my head hit the pillow an hour or two after watching Nightmare Alley. I always find it a good sign when a movie is still running through the corners of my mind hours, days or weeks later. It could be a bad thing if it leaves you with questions that should have been answered that remain unknown. 

But as I drifted off I felt like I got it. What bothered me was that Stanton Carlisle gets what he wants or what he says he wants out of life midway through the movie. He has a woman who loves him. He has a successful career that he has built. He has money, if not wealth, he’s clearly doing better than most of his contemporaries. 

Why then does he risk his whole life doing something that multiple characters have warned him will lead to destruction? 

It’s a question that has been on my mind a lot these days as I watch some people basically self-immolate for what seems to me to be no reason.

Here’s the answer I think the movie gives. This story takes place after Stanton Carlisle committed a great crime. The crime is suggested early and then presented in its entirety near the end. 

And so when I thought about what Stanton wanted I thought about this crime and it hit me. 

What Stanton Carlisle wants most in the world is to be punished. 

And in film noir one truth is absolute: Evil men must pay for their sins. 

The final shot of the film is a close-up of Stanton Carlisle as the door closes on his life. A wave of powerful emotion rolls over him and Bradley Cooper is magnificent at making you live in this moment with him. And I can’t tell you what to see in his face. 

But I can tell you what I saw the moment judgment was handed down.

It looked like relief.