Nightmare Alley starts somewhat clunkily, with a lot of awkward edits as the plot sets itself up and introduces the world of the circus which Bradley Cooper’s Stan is about to become a part of. In this sense it feels like the adaptation of a novel to the screen, where the novel has limitless time to build its rhythm, whereas film, in particular narrative driven film, needs to hit the ground running. Stan’s journey towards becoming a key part of the circus company seems to happen almost overnight. The mystery of his past is left hanging (and never really resolved). At first it looks as though he’s on a mission of revenge, or seeking out a lost lover, but this turns out not to be the case and the film never makes any real attempt to justify why the good-looking protagonist needs to inhabit this world, rather than any other. It will turn out that much of this set-up is required to deliver the punch-line (or remate) with which the film concludes. It’s a pretty good punchline, so it’s just about worth it. As the would-be love story emerges, the film seems to settle down. The thematic of ambition and greed starts to take over, with the protagonist’s journey becoming more clear cut.
It feels worth dwelling on the plot to such an extent, because the most intriguing element of the film might be the tension between the requirements of story and the director’s desire to paint big set piece scenes. This is why we spend so much time in the circus, getting acquainted with a whole raft of characters who will be ditched at the halfway point. The circus, as many a director will attest, is a visual treat, a through-the-mirror wonderland. There are echoes of Pan’s Labyrinth in this fantastical world, but the demands of the narrative mean that the film has to move on and leave this spirit world behind. The film recreates this to an extent with the Mentalist scenes, but by now the issues of character and plot predominate.
The issue of the mentalist comes to the fore in the film’s second half. It’s a fascinating trope and the scenes where Stan manipulates his marks felt like they could almost come out of a PT Anderson film (specifically The Master). The issues of wartime loss and human susceptibly give Nightmare Abbey a weight, albeit a kind of unbalanced weight. The mentalist operating in high society represents a similar exploration of the sub-conscious to the world of the circus. The film isn’t lacking for ideas, and it feels as though one of Del Toro’s strengths is his ability to take the Hollywood world and give it a distorted Latino twist. (There were times when Nightmare Alley reminded me of the work of Juan José Saer.) It’s an unbalanced, contrived vision, which teeters on the edge of self-parody, but just about dragged this viewer with it to the film’s coda, a bathetic sucker punch.
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