What's in the Box

Considering Guillermo del Toro’s penchant for gothic strangeness and periodic fantasy, it seems slightly left-field that his follow-up to 2017 Best Picture winner The Shape of Water is a 1940s neo-noir thriller centred around the mania of carnivals. Fortunately, though not exactly surprisingly, Nightmare Alley is much too good to be confined by genre limitations. It’s a grippingly cut-throat portrait of how far someone would go to self-fashion themselves to fulfil their own American Dream and the extent to which this individualism is ultimately self-destructive.

The film opens with Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a man evidently attempting to escape his past who discovers an opportunity as a carny worker. Little by little, he manages to infiltrate his way into understanding the mechanisms of this deceptive industry, such as the basics of mentalism and the disturbingly inhuman way a carnival acquires its “geek”. Eventually, Stan finds himself in a position with his new love Molly (Rooney Mara) where he can leave this small-town environment behind and “make a dent” in the big city; blissfully unaware of the pitfalls and temptations that are about to be laid in his path.

One consistently engrossing feature of del Toro’s filmmaking has always been his skills as a worldbuilder and his reliance on weird and wonderful iconography. Nightmare Alley is no different, with the visual spectacle of the carnival and its frenzied ambience guiding us through the opening few scenes – Stan actually doesn’t have any dialogue until about ten minutes in. As it develops, the façade of this dazzling artificiality is worn down and the narrative’s dark underbelly begins to emerge. Pete (David Straitharn), a veteran con-merchant Stan encounters, repeatedly warns him not to engage in “spook shows” with potential clientele. There’s something ironic about how these figures have a kind of ethics boundary when it comes to the extent to their deception. Yet when Stan gets the opportunity through the austere Dr Ritter (Cate Blanchett) to enter the lucrative world of New York high-society mentalism, he doesn’t think twice in sacrificing his morality to make it happen.

Bradley Cooper is tremendous in the lead role; capturing the essential balance of Stan’s boyish, charismatic nature alongside his ruthless ambition. His chemistry with Blanchett transcends the supposed practicality of the relationship and adds a new dimension to the film – there’s an excellent scene in her office where she strips him of his showman front and arouses his deep-seated vulnerabilities, of which there are many. As he gets further involved in their sordid plot, the world of deception becomes one of self-deception for Stan, reinforced by the jaw-droppingly poignant ending.