Amy
Adams Jake Gyllenhaal Michael Shannon Aaron Taylor-Johnson Armie Hammer
Laura Linney Andrea Riseborough Michael Sheen Isla Fisher
It’s paradoxical that a designer of beautiful
things can just as well create the same measure of ugliness. Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals is stunning both for its beauty (people, art,
landscapes) and its depravity (grossly obese naked dancers, disgusting images
and sounds, menacing characters).
I assume that this reflects Ford’s view of the world in that he can find
beauty even in ugliness.
After the shocking opening scenes with the
credits, we are introduced to lovely, gorgeous Susan (Adams) driving through
the gate to her architecturally striking home. Eye-catching works of paintings and sculpture abound, and we
soon learn that she is the owner of an art gallery. Her equally attractive husband Hutton (Hammer) arrives, and
we’re soon looking at the other side of the beauty; she is cynical and he is
angry, anxious, and avoidant.
Their relationship seems strained.
He flies back to New York for business, and
Susan is left at home, alone because she let the help take the weekend
off. When she got home, she had
opened a package from her ex-husband Edward (Gyllenhaal), which contained a
copy of his latest novel, Nocturnal
Animals. The two had not
spoken in years, so she was curious about why he had sent it. But as she read it over the weekend, it
became clear to her.
Most of the film thereafter jumps back and
forth between Susan’s life now, with flashbacks of an earlier time when she was
married to Edward, and to a movie of the novel. The main character in the novel is Tony Hastings (Gyllenhaal
as the character as well as the author) who, with his wife and daughter, are
terrorized by “nocturnal animals” in the middle of the night on an isolated
road on their way to Marfa, Texas.
The novel has maximum impact on Susan, pulling
up her memories and guilt about her first marriage and how she left it, and
feeling threatened by Edward’s sending it to her. Amy Adams’ performance is probably one of her best—much more
impressive than in her other current release, Arrival, although she is outstanding in that as well. The reason lies mostly in the
difference between the two characters, one
a scientist, the other a gallery owner with a complex history.
The gifted actor Jake Gyllenhaal likewise pulls
off a difficult challenge of portraying two different characters who have some
similarities, but one is something of a pansy, whereas the other is more
layered in temperament—a super nice, sensitive guy who has deeply vengeful
thoughts and impulses that are terrifying.
Reflecting Ford’s penchant for mixing up the
good with the bad, the sinister character Ray (Taylor-Johnson) embodies the
psychopath on the road who puts on an act of being rule-bound, polite and
charming, but in reality is exceedingly cruel and twisted. He and the policeman Carlos (Shannon)
will send chills up your spine.
Nocturnal
Animals is exemplary as an art house film, one that doesn’t hold back any
image, action, or state of mind, but covers a wide range of same. That means it’s not always enjoyable or
that it’s for everyone. But Tom
Ford’s script and direction, the cinematography (Seamus McGarvey), the music
(Abel Korzeniowski), and the acting (Adams, Gyllenhaal, Taylor-Johnson,
Shannon, Linney, and the rest of the cast) all come together to form a gripping
production.
Hold onto your seats; this one is big,
bad, and beautiful.
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