Ambitious thief becomes sensationalist photographer

Rating: 7/10 (10 November 2014)

Nightcrawler targets something larger than TV sensationalism — the psychopathology of corporate America. It owes less to Network than to Death of a Salesman, which showed America abandoning character for empty personality.
Of course the film satirizes TV news in several respects. "If it bleeds it leads" encapsulates the ethics of the medium. So, too, does the proportion of its content: a few minutes on the serious issues, with the bulk squandered on local mayhem. The medium prefers to titillate rather than to educate. "It looks so real on TV," hero Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) muses on the LA local station's news set, where fantasies are sold as reality. The news team specifically sells the nightmare of urban crime, to engage its viewers in fear.
To succeed as a TV news photographer Bloom graduates from recording a scene to creating the disaster. First he rearranges the family snaps on a bullet-riddled fridge. Later he moves the traffic accident corpse into a more photogenic position. He monkeys with a rival nightcrawler's van, causing his death. Ultimately he stages an arrest and shoot-out that imperils the police and kills his employee Ricky. But nothing phases Lou.
And that's the point. Lou is a classic psychopath. He has no family background or life. As he later admits, his problem is not just an unwillingness to communicate with people but a dislike for them. He shows no feeling for any of the victims he sees, even as his intern dies. Lou's only motivation is his own advancement, his only emotion ambition.
His remarkable glibness shows the self-help education he proudly got online — itself an emblem of insularity. When he tries to get a job with the junk dealer to whom he's selling stolen goods, Lou carefully distinguishes himself from the slacker youth of his day. He promises diligence, hard work, even offers to work free as an intern. Still selling himself as he exits, he salutes the man's refusal to hire a thief.
The more we hear Lou the more he embodies the modern businessman. Failing to get an intern job he sets himself up as a company owner and hires a homeless young Rick — as his intern. Lou drills Rick with management slogans. Instead of conversation he talks like a manual. "Why you pursue something is as important as what you pursue." He seduces the desperate news editor Nina (Rene Russo) with the vapid: "A friend is a gift you give yourself." Underneath that fake sentimentality, however, he is blackmailing her into sex. She is older, more experienced, worldlier, more powerful, but he forces her to his will.
We watch Lou grow from petty, violent thief into a corporation: his pretentious news photography company. From his Rick interview on we watch Lou act and sound like a company. His unscrupulous and even criminal conduct ultimately leaves him boss of the two-van company with which his rival had earlier tempted him. But Lou owns this company and has recruited three other bright young interns to exploit. Now when he comes to a fork in the road he can take both dark routes.
The film seems most current hard upon the US election. There the wealthy companies and PACs essentially bought the election that would give the rich more tax breaks, deregulate the economy, repeal health care and further widen the gap between the small group of Haves and the huge mass of Have-nots — who voted themselves down the river. Bloom embodies the Republicans' corporate religion and total lack of empathy for the disadvantaged. If Lou Bloom seems to evoke the hero of Joyce's Ulysses, his more compelling echo is of the callous child-killing team of Leopold and Loeb, bereft of emotion and empathy.