“Nightmare Alley”: Part Two (2021)

For Part One, go here.

Guillermo del Toro’s take on “Nightmare Alley” is apparently based more on the novel. I’ll keep that in mind but I don’t know if that’s going to do much for how I read the film. Taken on its own, his reading of the material is chock full of signature touches of remarkable beauty, lyrical surrealism, and set-ups the like of which no one else can do. 

Much of the visual mastery owes to Dan Laustsen, del Toro’s cinematographer since “Crimson Peak” (not to mention the recent “John Wick” films) and that alone is almost enough to keep you engaged. The story is almost note for note the same as 1947’s version, but with more of a back story for Stanton Carlisle (Tyrone Power in the earlier version, Bradley Cooper here) and more Grand Guignol violence here. The take on Molly (Rooney Mara) is different; she’s not nearly as naive as her predecessor; Daniel Straithairn’s Pete is perhaps more nuanced than Ian Keith’s (both performances are great, by the way); Toni Collette is, as usual, fantastic in the Joan Blondell role as Zeena, and Cate Blanchett walks off, effortlessly, with every scene she’s in as Lilith Ritter. It’s difficult to imagine anyone matching Helen Walker’s take on Lilith, and I’m not sure that Blanchett does, but close enough. 

As for Cooper’s Stanton? Well, this is where the movie suffers in comparison. By saddling him with a backstory and ladened with hellish imagery, to boot, Stanton begins as irredeemable and can’t really move from that point in any meaningful way, so much so, that the irony that should infuse the film’s final moment, can’t land. This is not to say that in any iteration, Carlisle is bound for or deserves any redemption, but out of all the characters here, Cooper was given the least to play with. Which, believe it or not is fine; Cooper doesn’t get enough credit for the minimalism he can bring to a role, particularly with what he does here, but you wish the pay-off were more meaningful. 

So is that the only problem? I think the larger issue is that the material is intended to be and succeeded more as a psychological noir in its previous version. Any moral or lesson that we could take away is secondary to watching a range of characters interact with a highly amoral protagonist and the issue lies in large measure with del Toro being a fabulist. 

Obviously, he’s a fabulist in the sense of creating works of a stunningly original, fantastic sensibility. He is, however, also a fabulist in the sense that his works are fables; the morals may not be easily summarized and are from Aesopian, but he challenges the viewer the same way a Bunuel or a Mario Bava might. He’s not the iconoclast that Bunuel was, but he’s very much got a handle on the macabre that Bava had. What he shares with Bunuel - perhaps Jodoworsky might be an even better match - is the above mentioned surrealism. 

However, here he’s dipping into different waters. As much as the first “Nightmare Alley” might be seen as a little corny or melodramatic by modern standards (it’s really neither, but I think the acting styles may be more of their time and less naturalistic; but hold that thought), the whole movie is a slow burn of ambition, deception, and hubris that leads to extreme psychological unease. In the 21st century version, things alluded to are seen and the dramatic emphasis lessened by comparison. 

I know that comparisons are odious; however, in this instance, they are unavoidable. On its own, del Toro’s is a distinctly minor work from a great director. In many ways, it stands in the same relation to the first film as Scorsese’s version of “Cape Fear” does to J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 original. And let me be clear, I do like what del Toro’s done here (as I did what Scorsese filmed). It’s clear that he’s drawn to the material and has a genuine love of the genre and the period. 

It’s this last that brings me to another observation. The film is stylish to a fault. There is not a sequence where the composition threatens to take us into a moving painting and away from the narrative. (The same could be said of Scorsese in some of his works, too.) Whenever I’m aware of the camera’s presence, I have to wonder if the film understands the story its trying to tell. Not just the writer or the director, but the film overall as a kind of organic whole. 

In any case, the bifurcation of themes or at least motifs is somewhat smeared over in the dichotomy of Stanton with Molly and Staton with Lilith. In Goulding’s version, there’s a greater sense of Stanton quite aware that he’s living a dual life and if he thought being with Molly would make him better, he failed. He was seeking redemption and …failed. Here, it’s all more of a piece. Stanton’s a shit and you never really believe he cares for Molly, at all, and there are moments when it looks like Lilith is going to eat him alive and you almost welcome it.

The third act downfall when Stanton’s deception of Ezra Grindle comes to light is played out violently and far more grotesquely than in the 1947 version. This may very well be in the novel, but as it’s executed here, it doesn’t carry the weight of tragedy that Colleen Gray’s and Taylor Holmes’s work did. Of course, in this telling, Ezra Grindle is a man of demonic reach and it is established early on, not a man to be crossed. 

It helps that Richard Jenkins as Grindle is a formidable presence and his bodyguard, Anderson (the also formidable Holt McCallany) convey menace and I have to admit that I was torn between wanting them to pick off Stanton or in the gray moral universe del Toro is trafficking in,  be taken out by him. 

Also in the mix and I can’t help but note it is the sub-plot revolving around the MacKimball’s (Peter MacNeil as the judge and Mary Steenbergen as his wife, whose son died in World War One and who Carlisle claimed to have been in touch with) that ends with one of the most unintentionally funny murder-suicides in film. I swear del Toro’s not playing it for laughs; it’s just that by this point in the film, I was wondering if he was going to commit to it or not…and he did!)

The stake somehow feel higher in this version but for all that, still feel weightless. I don’t mind having a central character being unlikable or devious or a charming rogue, but somehow, in the work before us, he’s so much so that I just don’t really care what happens to him. That might be down to the writing or it might be that Bradley Cooper has effectively captured the void at the center of the character, but it’s also a distancing factor that removes any degree of human sympathy for him from the story. I felt bad for Tyrone Power’s take on Stanton because he did seem to care, however, minimally, for Molly, and seemed to regard his downfall as understandably the result of his own ambition having gotten the better of him. He understood he was out of his league in the midst of the people he was trying to bilk. Cooper’s variant just doesn’t seem to have that tenuous grasp on understanding or self-awareness and he and the movie suffer accordingly.

Consequently, the pay-off on the Road to Geekdom doesn’t land. Yes, yes, it was foreordained by Willem Dafoe’s carnival owner (and goddamn, Dafoe does it again….) and you know, of course, if you are familiar with the ‘47 version what’s going to happen, but the signature line is used to no effect and while it ends the film, the most I think one could muster is a shrug. This is very much a first for me in a del Toro film. 

I am, however, oxymoronically as it may sound, glad del Toro made it. It’s always fascinating to see what a director is going to do with a work that he loves and even if it doesn’t succeed, it’s nice to see it. Really. 

Following are some examples of Laustsen’s cinematography. No descriptions, but do click on the images to see them enlarged.