Working from a script he wrote, Director Dan Gilroy (brother of Tony Gilroy) takes us through the darkness of LA and Lou’s mind systematically. The story does not let us give up and zone out at any point with Dan reminding us that none of the thrills or the evenly spaced laughs, black comedy as it may be, comes free or cheap. It almost feels like the view we get of Lou is one of the inner reaches of his mind, the part where there is a small stage whisper that is always prompting him to claw rather than reach. Robert Elswit handles the camera for Nightcrawler giving us a sort of a night-mode modern noir view of the city, never completely dark but shady enough for discomfort. There are parts when the background music by James Newton Howard almost approaches a sort of retro pop level of cheeriness, beautifully contrasting with the images on screen.
Jake Gyllenhaal needs no introduction as an actor capable of carrying off the darkness of a character in a disturbingly nonchalant way but as the titular Nightcrawler his dialogues delivered in a casual almost cheerful monotone are sometimes plain scary. His evolution from someone who steals and deals scrap metal to the owner/director of ‘Video News Corporation’ leads us on a dark odyssey with Lou at the helm. His home is shown to be a single room with a bed facing a stark LCD screen that runs the news. Lou stares, thinks, plans and sometimes chuckles and the most passive of his actions disturbs. He is an avid learner, someone who is able to rattle off leadership and management principles and jargon (probably from the latest TedX) and is a skilled researcher as well. His mind does not stop there, beneath the pallor of his skin is a darkness that Jake Gyllenhaal plumbs with seemingly no effort but the depth of his skill is evident in the coldness that settles against his behavior in the minds of the viewers.
Jake is supported by a cast which is put together brilliantly well. Rene Russo as the news desk chief of one of the hundred pulp news channels of LA walks the extremely delicate line between victim and other dark shades with her usual ease. When pushed into a corner, should one decide the corner is home? Maybe but what if the corner always has been home? Characters that dip in and out make us question the depths of human behavior as well. Riz Ahmed (of the superb adaptation of ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’) gets recruited to be Lou’s cohort in night time video gathering sessions. Seemingly flat, the characters layers are peeled as is Bill Paxton’s, the latter playing a competing Nightcrawler who initially shuns Lou’s approach but tries to recruit him later, a sequence that ends with my favorite bit of Gyllenhaal in the movie.
The movie also showcases the nature of news channels that sometimes deliver and deliver without questioning if it’s through a curtain of tears. It’s not only Lou who cannot take no for an answer and takes ‘by hook or crook’ to a new level of videography but it is the entire ecosystem in which he thrives. The extreme levels of motivation that come forth from someone who is introduced to us as a normal and capable everyday guy only serve to question our own judgment of people as we go along. Lou does not change but our perspective of him is guided through so expertly that by the conclusion there is an illusion of something having crawled into the night space of our minds. As mentioned in the first paragraph, another movie came to mind when Lou struts in front of a police station – Kevin Spacey’s self imposed limp disappearing at the end of ‘The Usual Suspects’ and inexorably the thread that exists between great movies gains another fiber.
Four and a half stars
