Nightmare Alley (2021)
Freaks and Geeks
Come one, come all and step right up to another brand new edition of I’d Like To Blank The Academy! This time around we watched Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, starring Bradley Cooper, Rooney Mara, and Cate Blanchett. If you dare, grab your little notebook full of secrets and read on!
Previews
What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched?
Ellen: From a half-remembered viewing of the trailer, I got very much American Horror Story: Carnival vibes (not that I’ve seen it - ya girl is chicken). And I think it’s this association that made me think it was more of like an arthouse horror movie than a typical Best Picture contender (The Exorcist and Get Out notwithstanding). I’m also anticipating some supernatural or other inexplicable elements, but perhaps that means I’m just another easy mark at the fair!
Tyler: We saw a trailer for this a while ago and I remember it piquing my interest with Guillermo del Toro (after enjoying his direction in Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water) and Bradley Cooper (after enjoying his acting in pretty much everything, plus his Eagles fandom). Other than that, this movie could be about literally anything. I’m just hoping it doesn’t give me actual nightmares.
Plots & Feelings
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): An ambitious carny with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychiatrist who is even more dangerous than he is.
Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):
It’s 1939, and Stanton Carlisle drags a wrapped body into a ramshackle, uh, shack, and places it in a hole in the floorboards1. He burns the whole place down and descends down a grassy hill with the blaze of ingloriousness behind him. He boards a bus dressed like Indiana Jones and arrives outside a carnival: the greatest carnival in the world, if you can believe the barker! After witnessing the man/beast called the Geek chomp down on a live chicken’s neck in the Odd-i-torium, Stanton decides this is the place for him and gets a job as a carny. The next night, it’s all hands on deck because the Geek is loose! Our man finds him in the House of Damnation (a real misnomer for a fun house, tbh) and ingratiates himself with the owner, Clem, by helping get the Geek back into his cage.
Ellen: It’s basically 10 minutes into the movie before we hear Stanton (Bradley Cooper) speak, and that alone sets the eerie tone.
Tyler: Agreed. Well, that plus the doomed fate of that chicken, which I watched through my fingers.
Through the lure of a 10¢2 bath, Stan strikes up a relationship with the carnival’s psychic, Zeena, and her kindly drunkard of a husband Pete. She asks him to hawk for her, trusting his ability to “drawl slow but hustle fast,” and thus he begins to learn the tricks of the mentalism trade, including cold reading, coded language, and social engineering. Pete and Zeena prove their mettle reading Stanton easily, telling us and him that “people are desperate to tell you who they are.” They simultaneously strongly discourage a “spook show,” aka preying on the grief-stricken with claims of being able to communicate with their departed loved ones3. During this time, Stanton develops a crush on Molly, whose act claims she was born in a lightning storm and thus can withstand astounding amounts of electricity. He also has various flashbacks to a sickly old man and the burning house.
Adding spices to dinner like (Source) Ellen: The above gif nicely illustrates the emphasis on fire throughout the movie. Every time someone lights a match for a cigarette it’s like a dang flare gun!
Tyler: And that is often because this movie cannot go thirty seconds without showing someone smoking.
Stanton falls nicely into carnival life, what with his burgeoning mentalist skills, flirtations with Molly, and jars of horrifying preserved objects where he sleeps in the Odd-i-torium. It also houses the alcohol stash, with one box of wood grain alcohol and the other of something you’d actually want to drink. Clem doesn’t need to worry about Stanton stealing though, since the smooth-talking man doesn’t touch the stuff. He’s also quite the engineer and showman, rerigging Molly’s stage into a dramatic faux electric chair. In a very cute scene where they dance along an empty carousel, they start their plan to run away together with a two-person act. Stan has also completely earned Clem’s trust, and after callously dropping the Geek off outside an emergency room for a head wound, the owner explains over steak and eggs how to create a geek. Seek out a down-and-out alcoholic, offer him a “temporary” job, slowly spike his liquor with opium to get him addicted, and then threaten to take the job away: he’ll do anything after that.
Ellen: When they’re dumping the Geek, Clem says something about a German “who looks like Chaplin” having invaded Poland, which does the double duty of anchoring us in time and reminding me that we should cover The Great Dictator (1940).
Everything's coming up Stanton, which means it’s time for bad things to happen! Pete catches him reading his and Zeena’s codebook and warns of being so blinded that you believe your own lies. When Stan gives him his nightly bottle, he accidentally (?) provides the magician with the gnarly stuff, and Pete is found dead in the morning. Then the local sheriff shows up to shut the whole thing down, displeased by everything from claims of supernatural powers and animal abuse to Molly’s stage outfit. Stanton manages to weasel them all out of it by claiming to have a message from the lawman’s dead mother. He and Molly leave the carnival shortly thereafter, with Zeena’s codebook, blessing, and final warning to not do a spook show.
Tyler: As underhanded and foreshadowy as it all is, I really enjoy seeing the tricks of their carnival trade. It reminds me of seeing how magic tricks are done, one of my personal favorite (and presumably less dangerous) YouTube rabbit holes to go down.
Two years later, Stan and Molly are performing their psychic act for Buffalo’s rich and curious, though cracks in their relationship begin to show in private. During a performance, psychologist Dr. Lilith Ritter interrupts the act and refuses to let Molly speak, thus disrupting their system. Stanton has gotten pretty good at the art of the cold read, however, and correctly deduces Lilith has a gun in her bag and absolutely blows up her spot regarding her feelings toward her mother. He ends the performance with a message from Beyond and
faintsfeints with a flourish. Turns out, the man whose reading had been interrupted, Judge Kimball, had hired the doctor to test Stan’s abilities and wants to pay double their nightly rate for a private consultation to commune with his dead son. Molly, a student of the con but not completely heartless, is very against the whole idea.Ellen: Anybody who watched Supernatural knows not to trust that bitch.
The next day, Stan walks through the halls of an opulent and impressive building, and naturally it’s Dr. Ritter’s office. She knows he’s a con man, he walks through how he read her, and they flirt in a hostile kind of way. She agrees to give him information on Judge Kimball’s late son Julian in exchange for getting to record sessions with Stanton, and she shows off her library of tapes. Stan’s therapeutic musings reveal his mom left his father for another man, and he hates him for it. His father was also a reformed alcoholic, which is why Stanton never drinks, and he also says he gave Pete the wood alcohol by accident. We also learn via flashback that Stanton killed his father by opening a window when the old man was already sick and simply waiting for the weather to do its work. Meanwhile, Molly is getting progressively unhappier, more neglected, and more homesick. She invites several old carnival pals to see them in Buffalo, and Zeena takes the opportunity to urge Stan not to do a spiritualist show one more time.
Cut to Stan doing a séance with Judge Kimball and his wife, saying that their son was in no pain and that they’d all be together soon. Stanton offers to split the money in half with Lilith, but she claims she got what she wanted. He decides to keep the money in her safe anyway, and soon the Judge presents Stan’s next client: Ezra Grindle, a powerful, dangerous, and (most importantly) rich man. Lilith will only give him so much dirt on this guy, so Stanton breaks into her records to dig it up himself (after they hook up, of course). Grindle is a skeptical kind of guy, so he wants to check that this man is on the level and gives Stanton a different kind of hook up: a lie detector. Given that Stan is as crooked as they come, he quickly deflects to saying there’s a female presence in the room, isn’t that right? It’s revealed Grindle once had a young lover named Dorrie who died of a forced abortion, and he’s willing to pay anything to see her again. Stanton tells Lilith he’ll be able to get Molly to play Dorrie and takes a sip of whiskey like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Ellen: Stan’s nickname for Molly is “rabbit,” as if we need further confirmation that she is a tool in the magician’s arsenal and nothing more.
Tyler: Ooh good catch!
Unbeknownst to most, Judge Kimball’s wife calmly shoots him and then herself over breakfast in the hopes of reuniting with Julian. Molly reluctantly agrees to play Dorrie to help Grindle “unburden his soul,” but is poised to leave Buffalo and Stan immediately afterwards. During the session in a snowy garden, Grindle reveals he’s hurt many young girls and lunges to hug “Dorrie” and gets violent upon realizing it’s not her. Stanton kicks him to death, runs over his assistant, and bolts with Molly. After Molly leaves him, he rushes back to Lilith’s only to find his money is gone. She still maintains she couldn’t care less about the money, and laughs in his face, calling him a huge disappointment and “nothing but an Okie with straight teeth.” On the lam, Stanton starts riding the rails4 and bumming alcohol off of strangers when he eventually stumbles on a carnival. He tries to talk the owner into hiring him as a mentalist, but the man says there’s actually one job available, but it’s only temporary. Could Stan handle being a geek? Handle it? He was born for it.
Ellen: I should have expected the outbreak of violence at the end, but oof it got me by surprise! Also, it just was not clear to me what Lilith’s endgame was. She doesn’t care about money, and seemed to be taking an awful lot of personal and professional risks just for the joy of besting Stanton.
Tyler: Silleth Lilith, tricks are for carnies!
Intermission
Even though ILTBTA is free, please indulge us further and enjoy this quick “advertisement.”
This installment of ILTBTA is brought to you by … Buffalo’s finest psychologist, Dr. Lilith Ritter!
Dr. Ritter provides extremely professional care and utmost discretion* in a comfortable environment in one of Buffalo’s most recognizable downtown buildings. Whether you’re looking for one-on-one attention, couples counseling, or atonement for the untimely death of your much-younger lover whom you forced to get an abortion (it’s more common than you’d think!), Dr. Ritter is available to offer her expertise to diagnose and solve your deepest, darkest psychological problems.
Tell her that ILTBTA sent you and get a free 15-minute consultation.
Ready to spilleth? Call Dr. Lilith!
*Sessions subject to audio recording. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?
Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.
Nightmare Alley’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:
As we mentioned in the Post-Credits Scene of our Jerry Maguire post, Nightmare Alley is based on a 1946 novel of the same name written by William Lindsay Gresham. Based on conversations he had with a former carnival worker while volunteering as a medic with the Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, it was Gresham’s first (and most successful) novel. Each chapter in the book is represented by a different Tarot card.
Gresham’s wife (poet Joy Davidman) became a fan of C.S. Lewis, so much so that she corresponded with him, converted to Christianity from atheism, and even went to England to seek him out! Davidman, afraid of leaving her two sons with an alcoholic and philandering Gresham, invited her cousin (Renée Rodriguez) to watch over the house and her children. Naturally, Gresham and Rodriguez started an affair, and the two married once Davidman returned and finalized the divorce from Gresham. Not to be outdone, Davidman then moved to England and later married C.S. Lewis. Davidman’s relationship with Lewis became the inspiration for the play and movie Shadowlands.
Leonardo DiCaprio was initially set to star as Stanton, but Bradley Cooper eventually took over the role after Leo dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.
Ellen: While I understand the impulse to cast Leo, I think that Bradley ultimately was a better choice.
Filming began in January 2020 in Toronto, then moved the following month to Buffalo, which shockingly required the crew to use fake snow since it hadn’t snowed that much in Buffalo. del Toro shot nearly half of the movie (the second half of the movie) before production was shut down due to COVID, which resulted in them filming the first half of the movie six months after they completed the second half.
In addition to its four Oscar nominations, Nightmare Alley was also nominated for five Movies for Grownups Awards (a real thing). The awards are given out by the AARP to “champion films made by and for grownups.”
Tyler: I’m still shook that an organization full of grown-ass adults is using the word “grownups.”
Ellen: Further Wikipedia-ing tells us that the award is for films made by or about people over 50. However, I’ve determined definitively that they are a sham, since they didn’t nominate The Father last year. Speaking of which …
Honorable Mentions
What other movies should you be watching?
Our next Honorable Mention is 2020 Best Picture nominee The Father, starring the great Anthony Hopkins.
Much of the hype surrounding The Father centered around Hopkins’ semi-controversial/unexpected Best Actor win over the late Chadwick Boseman (for his work in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom). If you watch The Father, though, you’ll realize that Hopkins’ Oscar is 100% deserved. The movie is about his character’s struggle with dementia and how it impacts not only his family but his perception of his world. We understand that many of us have (or had) experiences with loved ones that might make this topic cut too deep, but if you can overcome that, the acting and plot structure are as brilliant as they are devastating. Simply put, The Father made us both cry; Ellen described it in our Spreadsheet as “absolutely gutting” and Tyler wrote that he was “emotionally wrecked.” This movie will make you feel things, which in our opinion is what movies are all about.
The Father is available to watch exclusively on Starz, but it is 100% worth signing up for a free trial. If you’re a real emotional masochist and want to be able to rewatch it, you can purchase The Father from Google Play, Apple TV, and Vudu. If you’re a quasi-emotional masochist, a follow-up to The Father called The Son is in development and will probably flood theatres with tears sometime soon. The Son is based on director Florian Zeller’s play Le Fils, which is part of a trilogy that includes Le Père (which The Father was based on) and The Mother.
Fill In The Blank
How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?
Ellen: I’d like to give the Academy a tarot reading and not really understand what I’m looking at but surely enjoy the pretty pictures. The visual language of this film was really beautiful and whisked me away to these places, even when they weren’t spots I’d necessarily like to be. I enjoy being bamboozled by a magician’s tricks, and all of the methods for fooling folks at the carnival with various acts and systems of codes were extremely interesting to me. I will also always enjoy a veer into spiritualism and fake mediums. That being said, I was really hung up on not understanding Lilith’s whole “burn it down” mentality. Per the article Tyler mentions below, she was using Stanton to get revenge on Grindle, but if the movie indicated that, then it was so subtle it flew right over my head. Don’t think I’ll be rewatching this one, but I’m glad to have seen it!
Tyler: I’d like to buy some steak and eggs for the Academy for nominating Nightmare Alley for Best Production Design and Best Costume Design, but attempt to read its mind for why it got nominated for Best Picture. I think if I’m honest and don’t let my aforementioned affinity for the director and star cloud my judgment, I expected more from Nightmare Alley and thought it was just fine. (I wrote in my notes: “More like Night-meh Alley.”) I’m a sucker for quasi-mentalism, especially when it’s thoroughly explained to you a la Sherlock, so it scored points with me with that interesting angle. But it truly has no discernable plot for the first hour of it’s way-too-long 2.5-hour runtime, which frankly just left me a bit disappointed and waiting for something to happen.
Perhaps I was expecting some weird fantastical/supernatural stuff to pop up (given some of del Toro’s previous films), which never popped up in this one. However, after some more rumination and reading this article you sent me that explains the characters’ motives a bit more, I appreciated the underlying story a bit more. Ultimately, this one falls into the “good not great” and “benefited from an expanded field of Best Picture nominees but I’m still grateful it got the exposure” categories for me, the latter of which I’ll probably have to come up with an acronym for eventually.
Let The Credits Roll
Thanks for reading! Some quick housekeeping as you exit the theatre:
If you have plots and feelings of your own (on the movie or ILTBTA in general), feel free to comment on the post or simply reply to the email. If you liked reading this: tell your friends! If you hated reading this: tell your friends how much you hated it by forwarding it to them!
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If you’d like to start a wild Best Picture journey of your own, feel free to download a copy of The Spreadsheet. Bonus: checking off the boxes is oddly satisfying.
For pizza’s sake, GET YOUR COVID VACCINE AND BOOSTER! Wear a mask. Get tested. Don’t be an idiot.
Post-Credits Scene
Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.
For our next ILTBTA post in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, we’ll watch Brooklyn5, the 2015 romantic period drama from Irish director John Crawley and starring Irish actors Saoirse Ronan (obligatory pronunciation guide here) and Domhnall Gleeson. Brooklyn is available to rent from all the usual streaming services.
Until then, can we pour you a drink and interest you in a temporary carnival gig?
Sounds like my ex-wife! (Just kidding.)
Only about two bucks in today’s dollars!
The first car he hides in is full of caged chickens. GEE, I WONDER WHERE THIS IS GOING?
Because we don’t have time to watch The Irishman.