NOCTURNAL ANIMALS: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing at an art house or multiplex (or an art house multiplex if there are such things) near you:

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS

(Dir. Tom Ford, 2016)

The opening credits sequence for this film may be considered one of the most challenging bits of cinema this year. It contains a montage of a burlesque line of full frontal nude plus-size models, dancing amid firecrackers and American flags.

I don’t want to body shame anybody, but it was difficult to watch despite how uninhibited and happy these women appeared. I found myself focusing on the names in the credits as these unabashedly naked ladies were grinding behind them onscreen.

Turns out that this bold display of flesh is part of a modern art installation at a Los Angeles gallery owned and run by unhappy socialite Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), who later calls the exhibit “junk.”

Susan is living a posh existence with a handsome husband (Armie Hammer) in a lavish steel and glass house, but she’s unhappy because her life feels empty. Also her husband cheats on her so there’s that.

Susan receives in the mail a manuscript of a novel written by her first husband, Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal) that’s dedicated to her and named “Nocturnal Animals” – something he used to call her because she rarely sleeps.

When Susan starts reading the manuscript she imagines Gyllenhaal’s Edward as the protagonist, Tony Hastings, but Isla Fisher stands in for Adams, and Ellie Bamber plays their teenage daughter. This is the film inside the film of sorts as we are taken to a West Texas desert in the middle of the night where Tony and his family get run off the road by three rowdy, scary rednecks (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Karl Glusman, and Robert Aramayo).

Led by Taylor-Johnson, the trio of troublemakers terrorize Tony and kidnap his screaming wife and daughter leaving Tony stranded in the desert. By morning, Tony makes his way to the nearest town and goes to the police, but they are too late to save his loved ones as they find them raped, and murdered lying together, arranged like an art exhibit, on a red velvet sofa in the broken down remains of a building out in the middle of nowhere.

This is shown in sections as the film cuts back to Susan in the real world when she stops reading after a particularly harrowing passage. The dark content of her ex-husband’s book makes her have flashbacks to when they first met and fell in live, with Susan re-living how they fell apart because she found him too sensitive and weak. Susan breaks Edward’s heart for good when she aborts their baby, and runs off with successful heart surgeon Arnold (Hammer) resulting in her current unsatisfied existence.

Obviously, the guy’s book is making a symbolic statement about their relationship, but it may be hard to decipher beyond its themes about murder and revenge. 

Susan reads on and we see Tony, with the help of deputy/detective Bobby Andes (the always excellent Michael Shannon in his tenth movie this year – no joke), try to avenge his wife and daughter’s deaths by tracking down the psychopath perpetrators (two of them at least, as one was killed) and taking them to the shack where they committed the crime. Taylor-Johnson is so effectively sleazy in this part that I was hoping that they'd just hurry up and off him.

Despite some of its perplexing motivations, Ford’s follow-up to his acclaimed debut, A SINGLE MAN, is stylish and thoroughly compelling exercise, or triplet of exercises. It’s based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel “Tony and Susan,” and from descriptions I’ve read it seems to be very faithful adaptation. Not sure if the overweight nude dancing ladies were in the book though.

I may be to prudish to appreciate that aforementioned opening, but the film's well crafted and exquisitely shot (by ace cinematographer Seamus McGarvey) textures took me into the worlds of Adams’ lush life, her imagined scenes from the novel, and her remembrances of her younger self’s choices. Adams does a great job subtly fleshing out the role of Susan, but it’s Gyllenhaal’s performance that really got under my skin.

Gyllenhaal’s exasperated everyman Tony whose weakness goes on trial is one of his finest portrayals to date. His character is a surrogate for anyone who’s ever wished that they could go back to a crucial time where they faltered and man up.

What Edward is trying to get across to his ex-wife Susan in the book “Nocturnal Animals” is something to be debated, but damn if it isn’t provocative enough to keep moviegoers processing it for weeks. I speak from experience as I saw it a month ago and I’m still working on what it means.

The ambiguous ending left me hanging a bit too. So I’m betting that the beginning and the end of NOCTURNAL ANIMALS will turn off a lot of folks. But with hope, maybe they’ll get something seemingly profound from the middle. I know I did. I think.

More later...

SOURCE CODE Is Fun, But Has A Major Glitch

SOURCE CODE (Dir. Duncan Jones, 2011)

So Jake Gyllenhaall is jarred into consciousness on a Chicago commuter train sitting across from Michelle Monaghan who’s in mid conversation mode.

She thinks he’s somebody else, and from his reflection in the train’s restroom mirror – he is somebody else.

While still scrambling to figure out what’s going on, a massive explosion destroys the train and kills him, her, and hundreds of people. Then Gyllenhaall wakes up again, but this time in a dark chamber in some sort of laboratory with Vera Farmiga in a dark blue military suit on a video monitor.

Farmiga explains to Gylennhaall that he is on a mission to inhabit a specific passenger’s mind the last 8 minutes before the train is blown up in order to identify the bomber and thwart future attacks.

Therefore Gyllenhaall is thrust into the same scene again multiple times, GROUNDHOG DAY style.

This is a juicy premise that comes equipped with some tasty twists. Gyllenhaall, who is revealed to be a army helicopter pilot, is a smart guy so it’s fun to watch him try to figure out the suspects and manipulate the situation, all the while flirting with the playful Monaghan.

As Farmiga’s superior, a stodgy Jeffrey Wright is sternly looking over her shoulder spouting out the necessary exposition about the source code that they are utilizing: “It’s not time travel; it’s time reassignment.”

As the second film of director Duncan Jones (whose first movie MOON is seriously worth checking out), SOURCE CODE is stylishly paced, elaborately assembled, and is filled with stunning visuals, but it has one fatal flaw that is really difficult for me to wrap my brain around.

Thing is, to reveal that flaw would be committing a major Spoiler! crime, so I’ll just say that this film is close to 80 maybe 85% of a superb surreal action thriller.

It's one of Gyllenhaall's most appealing performances displaying the right amount of tension and humility. By this point he doesn't have to prove that he can carry a movie, but it's still cool seeing him again give it the "old college try."

Farmiga shows that even with her lips prudishly pursed, wearing a drab uniform, and with her hair pulled back into a bun is still collassally cute. Her performance ain't bad either - she conveys a restrained sense of urgency throughout.

Monaghan doesn't have much of a character despite being the love interest, but she makes the most of it. Wright as the handicapped "source code" scientist, is all sinister in his cold calculations in a predictable "heavy" manner, but although he's mainly a device - he's not a narrative problem like the one that keeps me from being 100% on board with this movie.

So much of this film is so good that I definitely recommend it, but that one particular plot hole (that I'm dying to go off on, again - Spoiler! city) just keeps bugging me.

I know I over-think these things, and that most folks will see it as a slick serviceable popcorn picture and go about their day, but SOURCE CODE is so close to absolute brilliance in its meticulousness that I can't help but zeroing in the one element that almost derails the entire endeavor.

However, maybe getting wrapped up in that one glitch in the system is just as much fun as getting wrapped up in the rest of it.

More later...