On Being Seen with Nightcrawler

It is appropriate that a film about seeing looks so good. And Nightcrawler does look good, visual acknowledging Drive (2011), and in turn much of LA noir, including To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) and Heat (1995). Los Angeles at night is a beautiful thing and therefore a perfect contrast to this twisted tale of the American dream.

Jake Gyllenhaal gives an astounding performance of a man hit by a massive unemployment trend caused by the recession and desperate for work. Only, this man is unhinged and in the lonely moments Gyllenhaal’s performance of dangerously unhinged is what makes Nightcrawler so creepy. The performance isn’t simply violent, but disturbed. He is not the crazy loon we all recognise, but the intelligent, methodical and manipulative figure who, when hit by hard circumstances, is unable to hide his true colours and then becomes dangerous. Gyllenhaal is able to convey all this with great subtlety and occasional moments of madness. It is hard to turn away.

In addition to commenting on an America in recession, Nightcrawler explores the paradigm of seeing and being seen. The frame within a frame technique is at work here, but rather than being purely aesthetic, that we only really see the horror and violence through the cameras within the frame and in poorer quality than the film, speaks of our voyeuristic yearning to watch without being involved. This is very much a film of the YouTube age and one that is not exploring its advantages. Nightcrawler squarely takes aim at the relatively contemporary concept of 24 hour rolling news that, in their desperate need to win ratings wars with other channels, show us news coverage that is gradually extending taboos.

Nightcrawler shows us the mediation behind what we see, the ideology of news producers who decide to tell us their story rather than the story. This is a hugely important issue in the Internet age where the news is being told, retold, manipulated and thrown at us from every direction. Who do we believe, if anyone? Nightcrawler tells us we’ll believe what we’re shown by ‘legitimate’ organisations and the sad commentary is that this message isn’t too far from the truth. As Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom walks around L.A day or night, in his mirrored sunglasses, he tells us, he’s the one watching, all we can do is watch.