MEMORABLE FILM CHARACTERS #3 – LOU BLOOM

Written and directed by Dan Gilroy

Produced by: Jennifer Fox, Tony Gilroy, Michel Litvak, Jake Gyllenhaal, David Lancaster

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton

**** CONTAINS SPOILERS ****

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Along with Toni Collette in Hereditary (2018) and Lupita N’yongo in Us (2019), Jake Gyllenhaal’s failure to be nominated for a Best Acting Oscar for his performance as Lou Bloom never fails to astonish me. His committed acting in the thrilling and violent social satire, Nightcrawler (2014), is one of the greatest of this century so far. He inhabits the skin within this sociopathic, self-starting capitalistic hustler with such energy it’s a film I can watch over and over again.

With so many films about superheroes, it’s rare to see one about an anti-hero that is done so brilliantly and without redemption. Lou Bloom’s conniving, planning and preparedness to go the extra mile and expand his media business via sabotage and eventually murder is expertly rendered in Dan Gilroy’s stupendously good screenplay.  Bloom is a drifting social outsider until he becomes a “stringer”; a “nightcrawler” filming bloody events to sell to news stations. Bloom then becomes a monster of ambition. A monster of obsession. A monster of humanity. He’s a symbol of a monstrous media and of a bloodthirsty public searching for the next violent clip to trend or share on Twitter or Facebook over their morning coffee. Bloom is an anti-anti-anti-hero of our times. A personification of capitalist evil.

Dan Gilroy’s cutting script makes no attempt to make Bloom likeable or even sympathetic. But you kind of admire his drive, linguistic charisma and thirst for success. That is until he goes way too far filming death and selling it for profit. Ultimately Lou Bloom is a vampire; a night creature creeping between the shadows. Through Bloom, the parasitic Media New Networks and public are also shown to both be vampires draining the life out of humanity. Gyllenhaal’s performance, as I say, is one of physical, verbal and mental brilliance. In some ways it foreshadows Joaquin Phoenix’s stunning acting work in Joker (2019). Phoenix was rightly rewarded by the Academy, with Gyllenhaal’s Bloom cruelly overlooked.

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