‘Nightmare Alley’ Review: Guillermo Del Toro’s Noir is an Endlessly Beguiling and Magical Beast
Hot off his Oscar win, Guillermo Del Toro is back with a new, expectedly dark and alluring film in the form of ‘Nightmare Alley’. Despite the film echoing many of Del Toro’s usual fairy-tale-like sensibilities, it sees the gothic filmmaker venturing away from the supernatural and a step closer to crime and mystery, a notable signifier of film noir. Based on the novel, of the same name, and inspired by the Edmund Goulding 1947 film, Del Toro has mustered up a strikingly atmospheric noir that effortlessly transports spectators into its protagonist’s inner psyche. Scattered flashes of a defining past event haunt the film, setting things off, right away, in mysterious form.
It’s the 1940’s, Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a charismatic lone wanderer, stumbles upon a travelling carnival that’s in need of workers. Here, Stanton discovers his inner showman and sets forth on his own business ventures. In no time at all, Stanton rises to fame in New York City, with the help of his wife (Rooney Mara). His theatrical and magical talents, unfortunately, gain the attention of psychologist Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) and Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins), a dangerous tycoon, who wishes to contact to his deceased wife. However, unbeknownst to Stanton, what lies ahead is a continuously dark and winding path that will lead him into a nightmare that he’s all too familiar with.
Dan Lausten’s cinematography is supremely gorgeous, it is an entire notch over any film to come out this year, or even this decade. The film is coated in saturated blues and yellows, complimented by a healthy dose of shadow. The color palette and, especially, the use of contrast lends a great helping hand to the mystery at hand and the characters, whose performances become all the more intoxicating as one gets lost in the complexion of their reticent feelings. Additionally, Lausten’s constantly fluid camera works wonders, like in The Shape of Water, to create a beautiful cinematic language that fluently pairs the strange, the eerie and the beauty of Nightmare Alley’s story. It goes without saying that a film needs cinematography to be a film, no matter how good or bad. However, in the case of Nightmare Alley, the film would be nothing, or at least far less dynamic and potent, without Lausten’s moody, evocative cinematography.
The carnival is largely where Del Toro’s gothic touch kicks in. The dark and shadowy, yet sumptuously lit path that the narrative takes leads to a vividly haunting crescendo, which sees Bradley Cooper and Rooney Mara pulling off one final magic trick. The gothic imagery here is, without a doubt, the strongest and most lasting imprint that the film has, reminding of Del Toro and Lausten’s beguilingly scary work on Crimson Peak. Nightmare Alley makes a big point of exposing the truth behind performed acts of magic, or any supernatural connection for that matter. The protagonist, early on, is warned about “spook shows” and how performing them can warp one’s mind. Surely enough, the foreshadowing words of David Strathairn’s Pete are ignored as, naturally, spook shows can be a lucrative business, especially in a world full of tragedy. This descent into self-induced madness plagues the latter half of the film, as reality begins to slowly shatter as the truth is exposed. Not only is the so-called truth revealed in terms of story, but also for Del Toro, whose childhood fascination of the fantastical, as seen throughout his entire career, seeps in to this grounded tale, shattering the typical foundations of film noir.
Cooper’s Stanton Carlisle aptly fits into film noir’s anti-hero mold, albeit with added charm. However, Stanton’s endearing nature is just a façade as deep-down, held in an enclosed wall of fire, he is deeply selfish and lustful. Any sign of pragmatism fades away as he meets and, naturally, falls for Cate Blanchett’s Lilith, a femme fatale. Guided by unbridled greed, Stanton quickly becomes trapped in Lilith’s web, in a familiar, yet unusually less self-centered way to most femme fatales. Cooper brilliantly plays Stanton with an assured edge, selling his personal and inner moral complexities with extreme subtly. Cooper is rivalled by a furious Blanchett, who expertly plays an alluring and destructive force. Aware of her grasp over Stanton, Lilith uses her time with him to examine and manipulate him, like one of her patients. Meanwhile, Stanton’s wife, played by the ever-so-subtle Rooney Mara, obediently carries on with their joint business, but notices change in her now-lost husband’s behavior. Like most of Del Toro’s films, Nightmare Alley ends where it started, marking the completion of Stanton’s doomed cyclical arc of becoming the man who he always was, but tried to hide, again.
It’s a grandiose film, backed by an all-star cast, with big intentions that magics up a tender, moral tale of obedience and the supposed lack of, exemplified in the film’s morally ambiguous protagonist whose driven solely by desire.