'Nightcrawler' And The Acceptable Sociopath
- seedspeed57
- Nov 3, 2014
- 3 min read
Nightcrawler is the character study of Lou Bloom, a small-time thief who finds his calling working as a late-night stringer - a freelancer who prowls the streets of Los Angeles with a police scanner and video camera hoping to capture footage grisly and spectacular enough to sell to local TV news stations. We watch him gain success through a combination of hard work, complete lack of ethics and morality, and a nearly robotic disdain for the rest of the human race. He's relentless and unstoppable - picture Schwarzenegger in the first Terminator armed with a camcorder.
Every review I've read praises Jake Gyllenhaal's performance as Bloom, and rightly so. He's mesmerizingly creepy and darkly hilarious - that this hideous creature of the night is so adept at spouting pop-culture self-help and corporate-speak to make his message clear while never actually saying anything blatantly threatening is a constant source of pitch black humor. The vast majority of these reviews have also identified the character of Lou Bloom as a sociopath.
About that, they couldn't be more wrong.
Lou Bloom is a psychopath wearing the socially acceptable mask of a sociopath. Which is so much worse.
We've come to accept sociopathic behavior as a fact of our daily lives. It's even admired. Business leaders, politicians, entertainers, anyone with a single-minded drive to succeed at all costs, unconcerned with the damage left in their wake - we celebrate these people when they make it to the top. And their example inspires others to follow their path. Ethics are for losers. Compassion is for the weak. Empathy is extinct. Success is all.
This is how dead-eyed Lou Bloom is able to talk his way into a local TV news station as well as find a gullible assistant - he's got the empty grin and the psychobabble patter of the everyday sociopath down pat. Both the station news director (Rene Russo) and Bloom's partner in - literally - crime (Riz Ahmed) know Bloom's full of shit the second they meet him. But he's recognizably full of shit. He's full of shit in a socially acceptable way. He's exactly as full of shit as every self-help guru, every how-to-succeed-in-business bestseller, every asshole boss you've ever had. But he's got something they need, so they let him into their lives.
And once he's in, and made them dependent on him, he reveals his true nature - that of a genuine psychotic.
That's what I find so unsettling about Nightcrawler. People are conned by Bloom because they think they're only dealing with a sociopath. Nobody ever believes a single word he says - not the foreman on the construction site he sells stolen metal to, not the pawn shop owner he sells a stolen bike to, not Nina the news director, not Rick his assistant, not the cops who ultimately investigate him. In fact, they all call him on his bullshit to his face. But these days being a liar is an acceptable trait in someone who has something you need. And that's the poisoned bait he uses to draw them into his trap.
A trap that costs one of them their soul, and one even more.
Nightcrawler is terrifying because it shows what we've come to accept as normal - from the fear-inducing stories on our local newscasts to the nonsensical double-talk of corporate-speak. But the most frightening thing on display is how desensitized we've become to sociopathic behavior, accepting it as a daily cost of doing business. That Lou Bloom successfully uses the behavior of a sociopath as his respectable disguise makes Nightcrawler one of the scariest films in recent years.
