•
Rating: You can't help but love Guillermo, always and no matter what. He is a trusted friend, you know he can’t betray you. The identity we share (us and him) is etched on our skin, written with blood. It is tattooed on the heart. A heart inhabited by fauns, devil-men, amphibian lovers, but also colossal mecha that march slowly through the ocean to face equally gigantic monsters.
And as it happens with friends, we have learned to recognize his flaws, probe his limits, understand that sometimes his aesthetic grandeur does not align with a real need to communicate with the viewer, except to reaffirm his skill. What has been missing in some cases is a story worth telling, beautiful even if stripped of embellishments and masks, colors and finishes.
A shortcoming that certainly cannot be attributed to Nightmare Alley. Starting from Gresham's novel, already adapted for the big screen in 1947, Guillermo amazes with the solidity and formal starkness of his work. As if the dreaming child, lost in his gothic worlds, had finally awakened to real life, accepting to deal with men and discovering that more often than not, they can be more monstrous than the monsters themselves.
Iconic characters, rich on a human and iconic level, expressive, that seem sculpted like the statues of an artist accustomed to creating fantastic creatures in three dimensions. Del Toro treats men as if they were fauns, and for this, he succeeds in constructing them so well: he captures their profound moral deformities, amplifies the distortions, makes all the monstrosities they carry with them, more or less veiled, shine.
A story where brilliance and roguery constantly touch, where the dividing line between the limelight and the abyss of misery is always very thin. A man who, despite his great talents, remains a commoner greedy for money and nothing else, a deceiver destined to be deceived. The lengthy duration (perhaps excessive) of the film unfolds in two narrative sections spanning two years: the rise and fall story is not surprising, but it is enjoyable precisely due to the rich directorial embellishments, the abundance of nuances (and always somewhat hyperbolic suggestions) that are dispensed each time. The gallery of characters is somewhat buffoonish, somewhat caricatural, but it also knows how to finely work on contrasts and power plays, psychological blackmail, and fears.
There is something more: it is the expertise of the script, the harmony of the editing, the precision of the shots that drag us into an increasingly terrifying and amoral dream-nightmare, sublimated in certain moments where violence becomes macabre and reignites all the indicators of our love for cinema. Just a few seconds and the entire construction, carefully arranged in the previous two hours, ignites with a cruelty almost unsuspected until that moment.
There are a few errors, some final passages are a bit inconsistent, but the taste that remains in the mouth is the almost obscene bitterness that overwhelms us in the face of life's ruthlessness, which here has its effective double in the author's absolute detachment from the fate of his protagonist. It almost seems like he wants to rub salt in the wound when he approaches to scrutinize his now madness-laden eyes.
Loading comments slowly
