Nightmare Alley Redux (dir. by Guillermo del Toro)

[cjlasky7]

Could a movie as gorgeously constructed, as finely acted, and directed by a modern master of horror be considered a "disappointment"? It seems impossible, but 90 minutes into Guillermo del Toro's remake of "Nightmare Alley," I'd decided I'd rather be watching the 1947 original.

What went wrong? Well, del Toro and his collaborators made a number of alterations from the first movie--and almost none of them paid off.

The first major mistake was the attempt to provide a psychological backstory for our antihero, Stanton Carlisle. There are numerous flashbacks to Stanton's final moments with his father, a long-winded explanation of how Stanton is driven by the hatred of his father's weakness--but the way Bradley Cooper underplays Stanton, none of that seems relevant to the character's vaulting ambition. You could eliminate all that Freudian mess--as they did in the 1947 version--and the character would be just as vivid.

I also felt that the decision to set the new movie during WWII took away from the larger themes inherent in the material. The 1947 version was set in the moment, a post-War America just regaining its feet after a plunge into the abyss and somewhat lost spiritually. The America of Nightmare Alley '47 was searching for something to fill the great, gnawing void in its soul--money, spiritualism, psychoanalysis... anything. That version of Stanton Carlisle saw an entire country ready to buy what he was selling, and he was shooting for nothing less than a national ministry, with a devoted and well-paying flock.

(In a sense, the '47 version is the cousin of a movie like Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master", where the post-war environment gives rise to hucksters preying on the spiritual emptiness of the nation.)

But Cooper's Stanton Carlisle has no national ambitions. He's just looking for a rich mark to milk for big bucks; and rather than come off as a dynamo who wants to conquer the world, he's more a mid level con man who, with some hard work and few breaks, has stumbled into a prime money-making opportunity. Lilith Ritter, Stan's sultry partner in crime (Cate Blanchett), calls him a "stupid Okie"--and there are points in the movie when you don't necessarily disagree.

But I think my main source of dissatisfaction stems from del Toro himself. This might sound silly when talking about a director whose last movie was a love story between a mute woman and a fish monster--but maybe del Toro is too tasteful a director for this material. If you want to do a modern take on Nightmare Alley as a psychological horror story, you've got to be willing to go a bit bonkers on the screen--it's got to feel feverish and slightly deranged. But del Toro is too in love with the people and the details of carnival life--heck, even the geek has a certain sad dignity to him, even when he's ripping the head off a chicken. (The phrase I've heard most often from critics when praising this movie is "well-mounted." But to me, "well-mounted" is for a large mouthed bass on a basement wall, not a movie.)

Granted, there are a few of moments of derangement near the end--when Lilith shows Stan her scars and when Stan completely loses his shit when his big scam falls apart. But those come a little too late to redeem the 100 or so minutes that came before. No, this movie needed to be hornier, seedier, uglier, NASTIER...and del Toro just couldn't bring himself to do it.

Comments

[shadowkat]

Thanks for the review. I'd been flirting with it on HBO Max (I think HBO, hard to remember which streaming service it was on). I even tried to watch it once - but couldn't get into it.

I'm thinking it would make more sense to hunt down the Tyrone Power version, which I've not seen. (I did read your review of it though.)

I read somewhere, can't remember where, that the difficulty with Del Torro is he's less interested in horrifying or scaring his audience, than he is in charming them with his monsters. I kind of agree.
I don't really think of the films I've seen of his as horror per se, so much as dark fantasy or fantastical. He's not really interested in the scare factor, mainly because he's kind of enamored with his monsters and identifies with them - so can't quite see why they should be scary.

[cjlasky7]

Definitely watch the 1947 version. Tyrone Power is so much more dynamic and charismatic than Bradley Cooper. You understand why people would follow him. (I don't understand why Cooper is so muted here. We know he can turn up the charm if he needs to. Did del Toro tell him to play Stanton as a bit thick? It works against the story...)

Del Toro definitely loves his freaks and monsters. They've been his friends and his comfort since childhood. (It's people who are the terror in the night.) You can see the way he lavished loving attention to every nook and cranny of that carnival...

Unfortunately, that's not where the story is. The carny is to be used and abandoned by Stanton in relatively short order. Lingering on it for so long misses the point.

[shadowkat]

I think you answered your own question? Del Torro tends to mute humans in his stories to better showcase the monsters. I've noticed it as a pattern in his other films - it's actually my main quibble with his films, the human characters are often either muted or cartoonish, while the monsters are featured and front and center.

[beer_good_foamy]

Agree completely. That backstory thing really bugged me too - the 47 version works precisely because it's such a generic backstory, it's a stock reading that everyone can relate to. Instead GdT puts this thing in that marks him as a possible murderer right from the get go and then does nothing with it.

The new movie does two things much better than the original, and their names are Cate Blanchett and David Strathairn, who are both absolutely brilliant. The rest... not awful, but like you say, not nasty enough. I wanted this to be like a feature-length take on Nick Cave's "The Carny". Instead it far too often just become an art deco showroom with no idea of why it exists.

[cjlasky7]

[T]he '47 version works precisely because it's such a generic backstory; it's a stock reading that everyone can relate to.

Exactly. Who needs the whole backstory if it's not really going to add anything to the movie? It just slowed everything down, and the movie was slow enough as it is.

[A]n art deco showroom with no idea why it exists.

I get a bad feeling that the "art deco showroom" IS why this movie exists. Del Toro probably drooled at the thought of those brass and gold corridors. (Not to mention building an entire carny from scratch. Must have been a childhood dream come true.)

Is that why he switched the period to the late 30s? So he could show off the art deco architecture? He could have at least spared us the lame dialogue time stamping the action. Willem Dafoe could have turned to the camera and said, "It's September 1939; Germany is invading Poland" and it wouldn't have been any more awkward.

[beer_good_foamy]

There seems to be this idea in modern movies, especially over the last 20-odd years (post-Phantom Menace?) that we can't know who a character is if we don't know their entire life's story. Even though no medium is better suited to establishing a character than film. Compare Goulding showing us who the various carnies are in about 15 seconds just using costumes and a few well-placed lines, to GdT again and again going back to rehashing the backstory, as if we couldn't possibly understand who a character is if we don't know the exact name of their childhood dog. It's so pointless, especially since he still keeps so many of the scenes that establish Stanton's character better than any backstory can. (And then he still can't find time to get Toni Collette even half the depth that her character got in the original, what a waste.) Why add scenes that take away from the story? Why add scenes that make the protagonist less relatable? What does he think this story is?

[cjlasky7]

It's not like I object to a full brain dive every once in a while. It can be fun. But if you do it, you gotta COMMIT. There was nothing interesting in that back story. After the sixth flashback to the pretty pretty fire, I mentally checked out.

Toni Collette could have been a great Zeena, but del Toro never gave her a chance. What a waste.