Nightcrawler is a movie that i watched a couple of years ago and after i finished the movie i was just speechless, a movie with an anti-hero, a thrilling unique story about journalism, and what goes behind the scene. It was all amazing. But what completely stayed with me after finishing the movie was how they portrayed Jake Gyllenhaal’s character as Lou Bloom, cinema’s one of perfect anti-hero, and today we shall break down and take look at what make him that perfect anti-hero.
Welcome Everyone To The World Of Nightcrawler
This 2014 movie directed by Dan Gilroy, is a perfect example of how antiheroes should be. Antiheroes are the kind of people whom we kind of like and root for despite being aware of their antagonistic side, even after knowing what the character is doing is not morally correct.
Jake Gyllenhaal playing as Lou Bloom completely immersed us into the character & world of Lou Bloom. Being antihero doesn’t mean the character is completely evil, it’s just somewhere between the lines of a protagonist and antagonist, mostly featuring the characteristics that make the audience feel empathy towards our antihero.
WHAT EMPATHY IS ?
ITS THE EMOTIONAL CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CHARACTER AND THE AUDIENCE WHERE THE AUDIENCE CAN CONNECT THEMSELVES WITH THE CHARACTER, because of some tragic past, or some similarities between them and the character, maybe the hero lost someone close to him and therefore he became an avenging anti-hero breaking all the laws and getting his justice, or maybe the audience can relate to him because the character is struggling with a particular thing, maybe financially, health-wise etc.. I mean we all struggle in real life in some way or another and this could be a beautiful way to build an empathetic connection between the audience and the character because we can relate to the protagonist’s story, and feel for the character.
But the point here is do we really like antiheroes?
I guess yes because antiheroes are the ones who is different from typically conventional heroes ( who are termed as truthful, lawful, and righteous in short without any flaws) and somewhere in our subconscious mind we know that the existence of such a character or person in this world is just impossible.
And there are certain things in our life which we cant do but wish to do it, its something like killing a criminal or a rapist but our morality stops us from doing so… but in the case of an antihero he could kill a criminal or a rapist.
But talking about the movie, its the brilliance of writer/director Dan Gilroy who created a perfectly empathetic antihero whom we cannot forget. Where the positive side and the negative side of our character and blended in a beautiful way.
In particular scenes such as a scene where Lou says a dialogue ” My mother says in order to win a lottery you must buy a ticket” , or the other scene where he says ” Me who I am, am a hardworking person who set high goals in life”, these all are the features which shows us the positive side of Lou, a man who believes in hard work, a man who wants to build a name for himself, well earn a honest living. Who doesn’t want that, or appreciates such a life, its such an admirable character to be willing to work to achieve one’s goals, and the movies shows us as well that Lou always tries his best to do his Nightcrawler job, we can see him putting effort.
Or these particular scenes where it is shown the polite nature of his character where he is talking politely with everyone, with his new partner, or with some higher authority
Nina Romina, it depicts his polite nature, but soon these all start changing as the antagonistic characteristics of Lou start creeping on to the screen, where he threatens his competitor with politeness, & soon starts to get his hands into the dirty side of night crawling business and ends up into a character who wants to become successful, who knows no mercy and could go to any extent to achieve his target.
Like towards the end of the film where we see Lou allow a person to die instead of helping him, just so he could capture more sensational footage, so his footage could bring more trp. Hence making up a character that we neither can’t hate fully nor could love completely, but the character and his actions would remain with us for a very long time. That’s how Anti Heroes should be portrayed.