Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal should have won an Oscar for Nightcrawler, and frankly, I’m pissed. His COMMITMENT to the role, his EXECUTION. Not many actors can truly pull off a sociopathic character consistently throughout a film, but Jake Gyllenhaal sure fucking can.

So let’s unpack this character, Lou Bloom. Lou Bloom is a sociopath, or a person who lacks empathy. He is living under the radar for the most part, but observes and absorbs the world around him to sustain himself and make ends meet. Because he lacks empathy for people, and can’t connect with them, Lou focuses solely on himself. My understanding is that he has an incredibly high IQ, and uses that to his advantage to cultivate his standards for living. I think he knows that it’s a dog eat dog world, and he does his best to stay ahead, i.e. stealing scrap metal and selling other peoples’ bikes. When he stumbles into the world of independent “nightcrawler” filming, he sees an opportunity. An opportunity to take his skills of resourcefulness and fast learning, and make a career out of it. The only problem is the job.

The job of a nightcrawler is to stay on top of crimes and accidents in the area and capture them on film to sell to news stations. It’s pretty straight forward: the more gruesome the crime, the more of a “story” there is amongst the blood, the higher the nightcrawler gets paid. And if the footage goes along with the narrative the news station director wants, like Nina’s “urban crime seeping into white neighborhoods,” the more likely the footage will have a high price tag. Lou catches on to all of this very quickly. He races around the city filming car crashes and shootings and is becomes a successful independent news gatherer. And it all works out great, right? Happy ending. But there’s still that sociopath thing…

The objective of Lou’s job is to capture gruesome crimes on film for news broadcasting. Without empathy, he feels no connection to the victims he’s filming. He isn’t shocked or disturbed by any of it. He can drag a bloody, injured victim into the shot of his camera without thinking twice. He can witness a triple homicide and not call the police. He can film a bloody corpse without even blinking because that's his job. But the climax of his moral corruption is with the death of his partner. It is a highly orchestrated night of questionable motives that results in Rick’s death. It’s all on purpose, too. Lou puts Rick in line of danger on purpose because Rick negotiated his rates. Lou didn’t like that, and saw a threat to his whole operation. And hey, what do you know? A bleeding, dying man on the street makes for great footage anyways.

I love it when the protagonist of a movie or tv show is crazy. Lou is absolutely fucking nuts and Gyllenhaal is so convincing as this utterly creepy character. The way he speaks is so precise, his mannerisms are so strategic. Even when questioned by the police, Lou never lets up. Because to him, it’s simple. He was just doing his job.