In the case of Nightmare Road, Guillermo del Toro, a well-known master of horror, relied not on fantasy monsters, but on the main monster in the coordinate system – a man. But his new movie on trial turns out to be a mediocre gimmick, and just as the protagonist’s supernatural abilities practically turn into nothing more than a charlatan, he likewise hides a rather trivial story about one under the guise of a no-nonsense crime thriller. boundless human ego.
Onscreen, 1939, the newly deposed Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) escapes from the past and becomes part of a traveling circus where he gradually learns local tricks and even brings his own contribution to the common. because he can go free swimming with Molly (Rooney Mara), whom he later meets in a new house. It is impossible to call him a person with pure intentions, and this becomes clear almost from the very beginning – he is ready to go over heads and not stop at anything in his frenzied enthusiasm for the goal. Although he doesn’t have the latter – at least in the movie, his purposes can be counted, excluding financial ones.
Atypical for him, Guillermo del Toro refers to the real world, where there are no monsters or demons, and even the circus “monster” that the head of the fair Clem (Willem Dafoe) proudly shows to the public, only to eat a chicken alive, drugged with alcohol and opium, and for the amusement of ticket buyers. He is a brutal man. Finally, all the repercussions of the supernatural in Nightmare Alley find a logical explanation – these are well thought-out plots over the years. There is no magic here, and moreover, the heroes warn the ambitious Stan Carlisle of danger, saying “You can’t fool God”. Overall, the plot of this movie is borrowed from Guillermo del Toro, William Lindsay Gresham’s novel of the same name, and its visual shell is borrowed from the 1947 Nightmare Alley, a film noir classic. This story fits the director perfectly: it fits perfectly into his classic filmography, even in the absence of anti-heroes, magic tricks, carnival, fantasy films.
Guillermo del Toro’s version doesn’t have much advantage, though: in an effort to give depth to the characters, he generously sweetens each of them with childhood traumas, offering many minor and not always important lines, a dwarf adds Hitler. It can be attributed to the historical context on the eve of World War II and a baby who had been drinking alcohol in a jar. A similar chaos occurs with the questions the director puts before the audience, where he finally talks about everything (from fate to extreme human arrogance) and nothing at the same time. The protagonist is clearly playing God and will have to pay the bills sooner or later – this story is as old as the world and Guillermo del Toro isn’t holding an ace either. Due to the inflated plot, its execution also suffers, and even the stars of the first magnitude (one of the central roles, along with Bradley Cooper, was played by Cate Blanchett) have no one and nothing to play. Their characters are static, they do not cause any sympathy, anger or surprise – in a word, there is nothing to hook and remember. And the problem is clearly not in her acting abilities.
Guillermo del Toro, perhaps the first to move away from the fantastic component, has made an entertaining movie that moralizes every time. Beautiful, aesthetic and in noble retrotones, but unfortunately, nothing teaches anything and actually says nothing. Against this backdrop, the film’s four Oscar nominations this year (including, surprisingly, Best Picture) seemed more like a consolation prize. Moreover, none of the candidates turned into it.
Source: People Talk
