‘Mister, I was born for it.…’
I don’t know why I put so much stock in the Oscars every year when I almost universally disagree with their list of winners every damn year. A good case in point was the praise lavished upon Guillermo del Toro’s fishy fairy tale The Shape of Water. That is a movie that I just did not get. At all. Well, it’s Oscar season and sure enough del Toro has another film up for Best Picture. The difference between the two couldn’t be starker…
Following some kind of vaguely expressed tragedy related to his father, Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) literally runs away to join the circus. Upon arrival, Carlisle discovers that he has a gift. A rare ability to read the people around him and separate them from their money. Along the way he meets a revolving cast of circus folks including Zeena the Seer (Toni Collette), Bruno the strongman (Ron Perlman) and Clem Hoatley (Willem Dafoe) the cold-hearted ringmaster.
No matter what you think of him, there can be no denying that del Toro is a singular voice on the cinematic landscape. Despite being adapted from William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel, a novel that was already adapted for the screen in 1947, this iteration of Nightmare Alley very much feels like a del Toro film. This is partly because the Spanish director himself wrote the screenplay (along with Kim Morgan), and partly because his direction is so distinct and so vivid. Nightmare Alley looks beautiful throughout, without ever being overbearing or distracting. Cooper, who seems to have benefitted from a couple of years out of the limelight, provides his most focussed and multi-layered performance since 2018’s A Star is Born. Stanton Carlisle is a complicated, morally ambiguous character who changes throughout the course of the narrative whilst still retaining a sense of self. Cooper captures this dichotomy whilst ensuring that he remains charismatic and eminently watchable throughout – it is a scandal that he was overlooked for an acting gong at this year’s Oscars, but at least the film itself has been deservedly nominated for Best Picture.
Nightmare Alley is a powerful, Shakespearean fable with an utterly haunting and fitting conclusion. I loved it.