Nightmare Alley (2021, Guillermo del Toro) is a perfect model of the application of genre and setting. Its genre is carnival noir. And its setting is the point between the end of the Great Depression and the beginning of WWII—does this give you an idea of how dark you can expect what follows to be yet?
The noir angle is more than following good guy STANTON CARLISLE (Bradley Cooper) as he turns bad. It’s the empty desperation within the lives of its characters. And, there’s a tangible, prevalent sense of the dread that all of them are on the grift; and in constant danger of being found out, betrayed, exploited, of in some form violently or mortally wounded by each other. Also, there’s this uneasiness about how the trades by which they earn their living are low, cheap, filthy—and Americans line up for more every time.
The carnival angle is built to function as a way for us the audience to see backstage, giving us access to fascinatingly detailed instructional histories of the procedures, purpose, psychology, and day to day operation of select attractions. It also evokes this contrast between the subculture of entertainers who are at once aware that they’re bottom rung and not good enough for anything else in life, and their ability to keep an inherent goodness and warmth between themselves intact. Okay but yeah, also carnivals are weird. They’re scary. Grotesque. They straddle the definitions of traveling and transient. They’re often shut down by the cops.
Nightmare Alley is also consciously and unsparingly nasty. It’s exceedingly violent. With scenes of disturbingly graphic, gnarly disfigurement, and shockingly in your face carnage, there’s little that happens offscreen and left to the imagination. But this suits the material. In fact, all of the creative choices have been done with care for the source, and considerable attention given to the audience. What a show.
12/15/2021 AMC Phipps 14
Atlanta, GA
DCP
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