"Nightmare Alley": review

When you hear the name Guillermo del Toro, you probably think pagan gods, demons, and tentacles. With del Toro, it's normally strange beasts and Lovecraftian imagery. Then along comes a film like "Nightmare Alley," a remake of the 1947 noir film that is itself based on a 1946 novel, also titled Nightmare Alley, by William Lindsay Gresham. Del Toro's 2021 film has no gods, demons, or tentacles, but it does at least partially take place in the weird demimonde of 1940s-era carnival acts. The film follows the rise and fall of a con man, Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a natural grifter who's young and willing to learn.

Stan meets a slew of characters at the carnival: the owner Clem (Willem Dafoe), strongman Bruno (Ron Perlman, a del Toro regular), a miserable carnival geek* (Paul Anderson), a midget who calls himself the Major (Mark Povinelli), medium/fortune-teller Zeena (Toni Collette) and her alcoholic mentalist associate Pete (David Strathairn). Finally, there's Molly (Rooney Mara), with whom Stan falls in love. Stan learns much from Clem, Zeena and Pete about the business; he's warned by Bruno to be careful never to hurt Molly. Pete has a book containing his various mentalist tricks, but he's reluctant to share it with Stan. Pete eventually dies, and it's implied that Stan has killed him by taking advantage of Pete's alcoholism. Stan gets Pete's book, and he and Molly leave the carnival to make their own way in the world of 1941, right as the US is about to go to war with Japan. 

A couple years after leaving the carnival, Stan and Molly have perfected a show-stopping mentalist act, but Molly is feeling trapped, and Stan is constantly bitter toward her. During one act, a skeptic named Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) appears, and she loudly tries to intimidate Stan during his act, but he successfully deduces the contents of her purse (something she had dared him to do), much to the amazement of the audience. At that same show, sitting with Lilith, is Judge Charles Kimball (Peter MacNeill), who ends up amazed by Stan's apparent prowess. Lilith sees through the act and understands Stan for who he is, but she does nothing to stop Stan from grifting Kimball, who pays Stan a substantial amount of money and introduces him to an even richer client, the unpredictable, unstable, paranoid tycoon Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins). And around here is where things start to go downhill for Stan because he's been repeatedly warned not to use his mentalist skills to appear to talk to the dead, which is the one thing Ezra Grindle wants.

"Nightmare Alley" is shot and scripted like a classic noir—there's plenty of rain and darkness and human iniquity on display. I went in knowing next to nothing about the movie and kept expecting those pagan gods, demons, and tentacles, so part of me was a bit let down to find myself in the midst of a thoroughly non-magical, human drama. That said, del Toro directs the action capably, and the script, laced with 40s-era slang, is pretty smart. As you can expect with a del Toro film, the cinematography is top-notch, and the acting is as well; Cooper and Blanchett both give mesmerizing performances.

To me, though, the movie is best thought of as a character study, maybe even a morality tale about what happens when you can't transcend your nature and keep failing the same way again and again, utterly unable to learn from your mistakes. In the end, Stan ends up being his own worst enemy, and he loses everything he's managed to gain because he just—can't—help—himself when it comes to pursuing money. Unable to free himself from his own past and unable to break free of his own compulsions, Stan is, like the carnival attraction we see several times, trapped inside his own house of damnation. Eventually, circumstances come full circle for Stan. And karma's a bitch.

"Nightmare Alley" is a fascinating, well-put-together noir and character study with great imagery, multilayered symbolism, excellent acting, plenty of tension between and among the main characters, and quite possibly a message for people unable or unwilling to liberate themselves from their own compulsions: change while you can so you can live a better life.

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*A carnival geek was a person who bit the heads off chickens. During a dinner scene, Clem tells Stan how he lures derelicts in with alcohol while saying that geeking is a temporary job, then he hooks them on opium and keeps them geeking for a long, long time.