The Sick Fascination of "Nightcrawler"

Let It Bleed

by NATHANIEL ST. CLAIR

Once the sun sinks beneath the horizon of the Pacific, Lou Bloom slinks onto the streets of Los Angeles, armed with a camera, car, police scanner, and morally untethered ambition. His purpose: the perfect shot of a tragic scene. Bloodier the better, because for the graveyard shift at a local news station, if the footage “bleeds it leads”, and Bloom needs his work to be seen.

But this film isn’t simply a critique on the seedy measures a network will go to for a ratings bump (well covered cinematic territory), it’s more a character study of what a man looks like when he is born out of a self-help book, raised on a steady diet of TED talks and YouTube tutorials, and fueled by the increasingly elusive American Dream. He is like a robot programmed with capitalist clichés, and routinely rehearsed facial expressions. Every interaction is a transaction. The profession doesn’t really matter. Success in anything is everything, and he will do what it takes to climb the ladder. Because for guys like him, the climb is all there is.

The cinematic style of Nightcrawler is polished slick around spots of grime, which keeps the viewer unsteady and bizarrely enchanted as we rush back and forth from one twisted scene to the next. This eerie mood is enhanced with a score that hangs over the film like smog, either resonating the darkness or oddly contradicting it with a recurring inspirational melody that pulls you into the main character’s head as he relishes the ideal framing of a body sprawled on pavement lit by the headlights of a steaming SUV. Salivating from just the thought of the compliments he is about to receive, and the leverage he now has to negotiate a price he deems reasonable.

But all of that stylish dressing remains in the periphery, there to compliment, not distract, from the central performance of Jake Gylennhall, whose gaunt, predatory character is marvelous in its measured menace. Creepy yet magnetic, drawing us curiously into the night, enrapt by the pureness of his drive, even when we know the intent is polluted. We need to see the next bloody scene as much as he needs to film it. Our sick fascination is his paycheck, and if Lou Bloom is to win the lottery, he has to make the money to buy the ticket.

Nathaniel St. Clair is CounterPunch’s social media editor.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/14/let-it-bleed/

hints of WEE GEE the great ??? the history runs horribly deep . 

Wee Gee 'made' it to Hollywood.

And he Lost it all , I think, in his  making of the American Dream