Tropic Sprockets / Nocturnal Animals

By Ian Brockway

Fashion icon Tom Ford’s latest film is visually daring, as striking and forceful as a blow from a stainless steel hammer. Borrowing elements from past and present auteurs Michael Haneke and Hitchcock, Ford has crafted a cyclic meditation on revenge that is at once blunt and voluptuous.

From the first frame to the last, starting out with a full hedonistic display of heavy women and piles of flesh under patriotic flags, “Nocturnal Animals” has a slick electric movement as it travels across the screen that recalls the flight of Old Hollywood. Nothing is cast aside or left out and as gorgeous as it is visually, the film is just as important philosophically.

Susan (Amy Adams) is a high powered gallery owner, absorbed in her deals. She is married to the clean cut and monotone Hutton (Armie Hammer).  One day, Susan gets a box from her ex, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). There is a manuscript inside titled  Nocturnal Animals . The novel is dedicated to her. Susan begins to read and gets quite a shock.

The “novel” part of the film commences as Susan reads on. Tony (played by Gyllenhaal) is on a road trip with his wife Laura (Isla Fisher) and their daughter India (Ellie Bamber). The road is blocked by two cars that roar along making it impossible to go forward and India gives the head car the finger. The driver proceeds to ram their car, sending them off the road. Ray (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) gets out of the offending car and nastily belittles the family. A horrific fight ensues with a bloody Tony on the ground and his wife and daughter taken away. Tony is taken to a barren Texas road by  Lou (Karl Glusman) who is just as violent as Ray. A badly injured Tony finds Andy (Michael Shannon) a detective who is very ill.

Susan continues reading. Sleep is unattainable.

Amy Adams is excellent as the scarlet haired ice queen surrounded by glass and steel, as insulated from her heart as she is from everyone around her. Susan is left adrift in a cold white world as green demons confront her through an iPhone.

Though this is a dark tale there are flashes of marvelous spirit when it is revealed that Edward and Susan deeply love one another. Both characters betray a feeling and a burning pathos that recall Romeo’s tortures with Juliet.

Gyllenhaal, too, is perfect as both an honest family man in one realm and a pained but gentle artist in the other, who realizes with a crushing horror that he is not the man that Susan wants him to be.

The wanton frenzy of sagging, over-buttered flesh that Susan has made her living upon as a gallery owner gradually turns into something guilty and as rancid as a sin.

The last scene alone is masterful with a pinprick of apprehension that recalls the adult stories of Roald Dahl combined with the magic of longing as felt in Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.”

While some will no doubt feel put off by director Ford’s circular approach which teases and cajoles the audience, (time itself feels similar to the film “Arrival” which features another Amy Adams role) the director’s visual skill is razor sharp. Tom Ford plays to the viewer emotionally and musically like Hitchcock himself.

“Nocturnal Animals” is a fully engrossing cinematic experience about the shadows we reveal in both our dreams and waking lives. To ignore one side of ourselves is to make a beast of the other. In its holistic approach, this film is wonderfully sweeping and ambitious, but it is also divisive and unapologetic in its willingness to carress our expectations.

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