NightcrawlerWhat is a "nightcrawler"? A nightcrawler is a worm, a lowly creature that scurries through the dirt and filth, indifferent to the suffering of the world around it. So, too, is Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), the main character of Nightcrawler, an opportunistic sociopath who, like the worm, establishes a symbiotic relationship with local news director, Nina (Rene Russo) by recording and selling footage of violent crime and other provocative footage to boost her news station's ratings. And, also like the worm, Lou learns and adapts to his environment, regenerates in the face of failure, and "blooms" in the stinking heap of manure that is media exploitation.
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Lou starts humble--stealing wire fencing to sell for pennies--but from the first words out of his mouth, we get the sense that Lou is a liar, and artifice is his trade. He is a thief and a charlatan, but is keenly aware that how others perceive him affects his opportunities. But Lou is a sociopath, who wears the mask of a rehearsed, personable snake, and is a thief and crook at his core. Lou is--in his own words--a fast learner and persistent. One thing that Lou has going for him is that he's always taking in the scene, always learning, always growing himself, investing in himself, if at the expense of others. When he catches another opportunity to make a quick buck hocking footage, he steals, lies, and even bargains to get his first set of humble equipment to start his enterprise. The idea comes to him somewhat by accident, having witnessed not just a tragic car accident on the freeway, but the immediate response of a freelance news crew taking footage and bartering their wares over the phone to news stations. The worst kinds of amoral parasites are those who are not only willing, but enthusiastic, to turn tragedy and suffering into a profit. (Lou should pursue a career in politics next.) Lou teaches himself what he needs to know to give him the edge in every situation--I fancy that Lou is, like me, a bit of a Wikipedia addict. What he's learned is that it's better to call the shots than scrambling around, begging for a job. He talks of how he has sought what to learn and learned it; but his education is devoid of morality, only driven by achievement. But he thrives in spite of it. Lou sees the world through a screen, be it through teaching himself by computer or fearless exposure to events which would evoke anxiety and fear in others. His TV the centerpiece of his meager apartment, and he sees the world through the viewfinder of his camera. Absent from any meaningful human contact, Lou is self-contained and inscrutable, an enigmatic loner who finds more satisfaction in achievement than in relationships. Lou is determined, but it is his lack of restraint or morality allows him to do what others will not to emerge on top, all while starting with so little. Is it founded in an ambivalence toward the care for others, or the inability to care? Either way, Lou finds his calling in such an unsavory business as a professional "nightcrawler", a term used by his colleague and rival, Joe Loder (Bill Paxton) to describe independent film crews that race to crime scenes on the streets of Los Angeles to catch fresh film of human tragedy. And loads of establishing shots make the L.A. of Nightcrawler feel alive, from the sunny beaches to the grime and neon lights in the city, the hills and the valleys...Lou crawls through it all.
Listening to Lou talk is like listening to "Five Easy Steps to Become Your Own Boss" or some other freshly squeezed self-help mantra implemented literally and without irony by Lou. He briefly alludes to taking an "online business course" previously in his life, and with his constant platitudes and business-speak, even when it's completely absurd, it's clear that Lou retains all of his experiences, and lets nothing go to waste. Lou may sound artificial, but he is so impassioned that he can either fool others, or is at least so tenacious that they often don't care. And when Lou begins to learn more and more about the game he is playing, he begins to understand the benefits of bending the rules to his needs, absent of any sense of guilt or shame about his actions. When it comes down to it, the only person he is honestly concerned with is himself, and failure to do so would be detrimental to his needs. So are we shocked at Lou's behavior because he is a moral vacuum? Or because he is does not relent in his meteoric rise and his roaring drive to succeed? Ironically, Lou excels because he embodies the American spirit of industry, capitalism, and enterprise, or at least the most mercenary of aspects of it. He breaks through boundaries because he sees them as just that--boundaries to keep him out, and he refuses to allow them to hold sway over him, though he remains slick enough to know how to not get caught. Nightcrawler is a crime thriller, but it is filled with plenty of dark humor. And most of all, it is a sharp, biting indictment of the symbiotic relationship between exploitative news and the voyeuristic consumer, of our willingness to sacrifice our convictions in the name of the almighty dollar, a satire of the "American Dream". Nightcrawler is the reflected image of a 21st Century culture obsessed by media and news fear-mongering, of a frenzy for "if it bleeds, it leads" news bites designed to manipulate viewers to be too afraid to turn off their television sets, where reality on TV is more real, sucking you down into the undertow. As Lou observes of the newsroom backdrop he visits, "on TV, it looks so real".
Recommended for: Fans of rags-to-riches stories with a sardonic sense of humor, and for those who read between the lines of the ease and manipulative nature of news to exploit tragedy for ratings, a practice far from going out of style.
Listening to Lou talk is like listening to "Five Easy Steps to Become Your Own Boss" or some other freshly squeezed self-help mantra implemented literally and without irony by Lou. He briefly alludes to taking an "online business course" previously in his life, and with his constant platitudes and business-speak, even when it's completely absurd, it's clear that Lou retains all of his experiences, and lets nothing go to waste. Lou may sound artificial, but he is so impassioned that he can either fool others, or is at least so tenacious that they often don't care. And when Lou begins to learn more and more about the game he is playing, he begins to understand the benefits of bending the rules to his needs, absent of any sense of guilt or shame about his actions. When it comes down to it, the only person he is honestly concerned with is himself, and failure to do so would be detrimental to his needs. So are we shocked at Lou's behavior because he is a moral vacuum? Or because he is does not relent in his meteoric rise and his roaring drive to succeed? Ironically, Lou excels because he embodies the American spirit of industry, capitalism, and enterprise, or at least the most mercenary of aspects of it. He breaks through boundaries because he sees them as just that--boundaries to keep him out, and he refuses to allow them to hold sway over him, though he remains slick enough to know how to not get caught. Nightcrawler is a crime thriller, but it is filled with plenty of dark humor. And most of all, it is a sharp, biting indictment of the symbiotic relationship between exploitative news and the voyeuristic consumer, of our willingness to sacrifice our convictions in the name of the almighty dollar, a satire of the "American Dream". Nightcrawler is the reflected image of a 21st Century culture obsessed by media and news fear-mongering, of a frenzy for "if it bleeds, it leads" news bites designed to manipulate viewers to be too afraid to turn off their television sets, where reality on TV is more real, sucking you down into the undertow. As Lou observes of the newsroom backdrop he visits, "on TV, it looks so real".
Recommended for: Fans of rags-to-riches stories with a sardonic sense of humor, and for those who read between the lines of the ease and manipulative nature of news to exploit tragedy for ratings, a practice far from going out of style.