by Matt St Clair
Nightmare Alley, Guillermo del Toro’s anticipated follow-up to The Shape of Water, is quite a risk for the Oscar-winning auteur. Del Toro ditches the phantasmic monsters he’s known for in favor of human monstrosity, the beasts within all of us that drive our carnal needs. As with the original 1947 noir, Nightmare Alley is an exemplary exercise on the folly of man and what happens when the line between man and beast becomes blurred.
The main anti-hero who toes that line is Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a carny with a knack for manipulating people. His subjects include fellow carny and eventual love interest/accomplice Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara), Paul Krumbein (David Strathairn) and his fortune teller wife Zeena (Toni Collette), and a wealthy fearsome widower Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins). Cooper's piercing eyes and bewildering smile make him a perfect casting fit for the manipulative con man. He is a man of few words which is just as well; the words when they come are lies and deceit. It is in Cooper’s expressive face where we see Stan’s constant fear of his troubled past resurfacing...
Carlisle meets his match in the second half of the picture in for the form of a psychiatrist, Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett). As soon as Cate Blanchett makes her alluring movie star entrance, she walks away with the entire picture. Blanchett completely relishes in her femme fatale role, walking a fine line between playing Lilith as cunning yet slightly unhinged as opposed to Helen Walker’s more controlled perceptiveness in the ‘47 film.
Beyond Blanchett the standouts are Toni Collette who, in her usual fashion, astonishes in each scene she’s in as the fading psychic Zeena. David Strathairn is similarly strong as her husband, playing for Carlisle a glimpse at his own future if he doesn't change his ways.
Shining brightest behind the scenes is the cinematographer Dan Laustsen. Laustsen breaks away from the water, green-tinted world he crafted in The Shape of Water to capture an underworld drenched in fire. The film opens with our anti-hero walking away from a decrepit burning building. In movie that follows, Laustsen images of characters smoking or sitting by bonfires continually reconjure the hellish memory that Carlisle escaped in the prologue but that follows him wherever he goes.
Thanks to its visual panache, Nightmare Alley is able to avoid being a complete copycat of the original ‘47 noir despite following the same story almost beat-for-beat. The gory violence and occassional erotic charge also make it feel like a version of the previous film that’s been freed of the shackles of the Hays Code.
Despite minor problems (the new adaptation meanders and could've used a trim), Nightmare Alley is another exemplary effort from director Guillermo del Toro that proves once again his skill at creating visual feasts and getting strong performances from his actors. A trip down Nightmare Alley should be taken on the biggest screen. With this noir's inevitable demolition in the franchise-driven theatrical, climate, it could certainly use all the tickets it can get. B+
Nightmare Alley opens tomorrow, Friday December 17th, in theaters.