Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro)

There Will be Blood

Amir Siadat

I wasn't too surprised when I felt Macbeth is resonating halfway through the film. From Cronos and Blade II to Pan's Labyrinth and The Shape of Water, blood has been the main motif and subject of Del Toro's cinema. It could be guessed that sooner or later he would reach a "tragedy of blood" somewhere. Here the tarot cards - which warn Stan (Bradley Cooper) about his temptations - actually take the place of the witches of Macbeth, and Lady Macbeth appears as a stony-faced femme fatale (Cate Blanchett) - who happens to be a psychologist. In this retelling, the story also begins with the "original sin", and delusion and madness, not in the unbridled form of Macbeth, but occurs in the context of psychotherapy sessions (and of course in the background and in the war-torn world, caught in cruelty of Macbeths of the time). From one point onward, there is only blood, and a hand from which blood stains can’t be washed. It's said that Nightmare Alley is a different work in Del Toro's career, because there are no imaginary elements in it. However, the presence of the abandoned man who is feeding from the blood of chickens and is tied up like a cursed creature in the depths of darkness to be exhibited in the circus, tells us that Del Toro's monsters and vampires are still present in disguise. And this man - that in his image something of Stan's father can be seen - is the embodiment of an ominous and inevitable fate that Stan pushed back and buried at the beginning, and every step he takes during the film is only to escape and get away from it. Fantasy, which was the dominant field of Del Toro's previous works, remains a mysterious and scary "issue" here in Nightmare Alley. The film basically revolves around the question that why do we need fantasy? To overcome the meaninglessness of life and death? The psychologist believes that it’s not fantasy-makers who deceive people, because people are basically self-deceptive. Maybe that's why a hint is enough for them to feel the hand of the ghosts on their shoulders (a comparative comparison of Nightmare Alley with Verhoeven's Benedetta can be a tempting idea). Can hope be bought? Stan asks his prey at one point. From this point of view, Nightmare Alley has a self-revealing echo and it can be seen as an allusion to the cinematic mechanism from which Del Toro himself comes. Personally, Stan's sketchbook reminded me of Del Toro's famous designs. It’s as if he took a doubtful look behind him to turn what he is famous for into a moral plan. Del Toro's film tempted me to watch the old version of Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding). Although this version seemed to me to be a more focused work, I believe Del Toro's mastery in staging and character development made the new version a more spectacular film. While Goulding's characters have a completely ordinary display, Del Toro's cinema has mobilized all its forces to make every visual element (above all, the icons) special. This issue has Paradoxically made the strength of the film its Achilles heel! Del Toro's captivating characters have created an expectation that the film - as much as it should – doesn’t respond to. The audience wants to know and see more of Collette, Dafoe and Blanchett, but the film doesn’t have enough time. In my opinion, Del Toro’s ambition is more suitable for a mini-series. However, due to its richer thematic dimensions, I prefer it and its shortcomings are not so noticeable to me. The differences between the two versions are little but decisive. The best example is when the main couple decides to portray the wealthy man's lost wife in front of his eyes by staging: in Goulding's version, the woman surrenders in the midway and her conscience doesn’t let the "show" to continue. In Del Toro's version, this is the wealthy man who, seeing his "wife", loses control and runs to her, and ruins everything. I felt that both scenes have presented a moral challenge. The viewer of Goulding's film probably doesn’t appreciate the woman's action, because - if he is honest with himself - he chooses the latter between morality and acting. In Del Toro's version, however, the wealthy man makes the audience irritated, because he is too greedy to settle for fantasy. Contrary to his claim, he is not looking for "hope", he is looking to reach for the impossible. He is one of those slow-minded "audiences" who, instead of enjoying the mysterious strains of the "artwork", insists on moving along in narrow path of reality. I think it was Nietzsche who said: "We have art in order not to die of the truth." The wealthy man, however, breaks away from the dream/art to embrace reality, and what he grabs is not only pitiable and vulgar, but also is scary: a wasted, unenchanted world. Doesn't being disillusioned with the outcome of this "show" mean that we want, even if only one person, to find meaning in life and death and to believe in some kind of "truth"? I admit that while watching this scene, I was completely empathetic with the magician who was creating fantasy and selling hope so that people could imagine that there is something beyond the senses and do not die of truth.