Nightmare Alley is Joker meets The Prestige, a story adapted from classic cinema that leans harder into the realism of magical realism, that spans the 1930s and 40s without talking very much about fascism beyond “that guy who looks like Chaplin just invaded Czechoslovakia.” The practical effects are excellent. The three actresses who constitute sort of three loose acts as Bradley Cooper’s muses all give tremendous performances. There’s a definite sense that Guillermo del Toro is trying his hand at an entirely new sort of story for himself, and comparisons to his last award-winning film, The Shape of Water are likely to be disappointed. Comparisons to that movie are likely to breed contempt: Nightmare Alley’s cast is almost entirely white and cishet, whereas TSoW opens with a masturbation scene, involves a lot of fish on girl action, and did some of the coolest work to date in the action genre with ASL. It also constituted the high water mark for a very busy Michael Stuhlbarg, who starred in approximately every film of that year. Much of what makes this sprawling, two and a half hour movie work has to do with the performances of Blanchett, Mara, and Collette.
I came to the movie expecting sexy Cate Blanchett, maybe because I had been primed by Don’t Look Up!, but also because the trailer really does make it seem like Bradley Cooper and she are going to have sex on her couch during a therapy/hypnosis session, but in many ways that expectation was frustrated. Nightmare Alley is devoid of intimacy and stuffed with charm. Stan’s world is one of superficialities and smokescreens. Even the sexiest bits of this movie are bathed in shame, regret, and self-revulsion.
If I had to level more damning criticisms than the ones that you can think up yourself via comparisons with TSoW, I guess it would be that The Big Reveal of Stan’s Past does not feel not revelatory as it seems like it should be? A lot of the equivalences that are drawn between Stan and his constellation of love-hate father figures don’t really seem to land, ultimately, and the pop psychology integrated into the mentalism lessons don’t really give us too much insight into the character’s condition or our own. There’s also a late weird turn for the millionare’s reveal toward the end that seems pretty unnecessary, but I guess Collette literally calls it in the cards.
I saw this on the last night it was around in a pretty far radius, so I’m betting it’s pretty likely that if you haven’t caught it in its short four week stint in theaters, you’re not going to see this unless you consciously seek it out, which really only completionists and Blanchett fanboys are going to do.
