Nightcrawler is an American movie directed by Dan Gilroy and released in 2014. It narrates the story of Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), a lonely and still unknown media videographer. The main character is devoted to filming night scenes, or more precisely, night scenes’ accidents. The film mostly takes place at night in the city of Los Angeles. The film shows Bloom’s beginnings in the field of journalism and follows him in his passion for reporting. Throughout the film, Bloom buys more and more equipment to master the art of crime reporting. Through the movie, we understand that Bloom lives at night in the shadow of his camera. He drives in the city in quest of mystery accidents. Rarely are the shots taken during the daytime unless Bloom is dropping his crime tape at a TV news office. Nina, a news director, believes in Bloom’s work and likes how he demonstrates violence through his images. Nevertheless, Bloom’s images are controversial, and the violence on screen is increasing while the movie goes on. The film reduces Bloom’s activities to its nights’ activities. The time and space have been amplified in this film through the art of editing; “several hours have been contracted” (Howells, Negreiros, 221). Due to his attraction to danger and adventure, Bloom can be identified as a modern representation of the “flâneur”. The word “flâneur” is a French noun that describes a particular type of persona. Indeed, according to Sharpe, the “flaneur” documents what he sees at night in order to improve social conditions. Moreover, he offers a precarious point of view of nighttime by going out of his regular environment. Bloom, such as the “flâneur”, is looking for danger and adventures at night with one goal in mind: documentation. Then, Bloom’s character is shaped as a modern American portrait of the “flâneur” due to the representation of his night excursion, his approach to night, and his documentation for mass media.

 

            Night is, to everyone, a universal common place. However, each has its own interpretation of night. Many also practice several different kinds of activities at night, while others fall asleep when the sun goes down. Lou Bloom, in Nightcrawler, develops his curiosity toward night throughout the movie. He expends his desire to discover the night's strangest and scariest aspects. Like the character of the “flâneur”, Bloom goes out at night to explore the dark side of big cities. He is driving in Los Angeles when everything is dark, looking for abnormal kinds of actions. He spies on nocturnal activities, hoping to see a tragedy: "the extravagances and immoral dalliances associated with midnight pleasure trips" (Heap, 104). Both Bloom and the “flâneur” character experience slumming. Slumming is a term to define the action of spending time at another social level out of curiosity. Slumming is often experienced by white men. According to Heap, slumming permits us to question our relationship to social classes and discover the pleasure of being free at night. Edensor compares it to the notion of dark tourism. Indeed, “‘dark tourism’ connotes the contemporary tendency to visit places of atrocity and suffering” (Edensor, 423). This perverse pleasure that Bloom has to wait for night’s crime scenes leads him outside of day-to-day society. 

 

            Indeed, Bloom is a complex character. He can be described as a nocturnal hunter, as he always looks for the night’s mysteries. Night, as a space, is used in the movie to produce sensory-motor reactions for the spectator. As a matter of fact, night is a scary environment, which amplifies the vision of horror. Night can be perceived as a figure of counter-power to day, its opposite entity. As an outsider, Bloom is a night worker who reinforces his position in the night’s counterpower. Living at night permits Bloom to be “free from the constraint of real time” (Howells, Negreiros, 221). Moreover, the title of the film Nightcrawler describes the possibility of moving at night, but in a sneaky way. The author Williams started to think about night as a place of territorialization. In fact, even if night’s activities are often illegal, some are allowable. For instance, Bloom’s reporter activity is legitimate, notwithstanding its close relationship to illegal ones such as murder or the drug movement. Night is then Bloom’s territory. As a matter of fact, he shares his territory with other kinds of “flâneur”. Nightcrawler is a nighttime compilation that uses a visual rather than a verbal representation of cities in the dark. Therefore, nighttime created another way of living. The rules change at night. Bloom wants to document the chaos, which easily happens in the dark, and be the “moral arbiters of everyday urban life” (Heap, 104).

           

           As a matter of fact, Bloom’s work permits the nocturnalization of his city. Nocturnalization expresses the expansion of social and economic activities at night, such as Bloom’s surveillance, investigation, and documentary work. Nightcrawler’s main character documents and regulates Los Angeles nightspace by “describing vice and denouncing it” (Sharpe, 37). He is a stalker of the night environment who is looking for illegal activities, which often take place under cover during the night. Bloom can be compared to the journalist Jacob Riis, himself considered a “flâneur”. According to Heap, Riis was a photographer and documentarian in the late 19th century. He mostly turned his attention to New York’s slums. Indeed, the medium of photography permits us to demonstrate reality by catching live actions. Bloom uses his camera in order to create a real representation of night on public screens. Howells and Negreiros, in their book Visual Culture, agree to write that “television provides one of our most prevalent visual texts” (Howells, Negreiros, 249). However, TV makes things more entertaining and scarier at the time. TV news is an aspect of modern capitalism and aims to “monetize all social relationships to horrifying yet lucrative ends” (Brayton, 67). Indeed, Nina, Bloom’s buyer, is looking for “excessive” bloody videos to provide reactions in the audience. The author Brayton describes Nina’s behavior as sardonic; however, he justifies her behavior as a real demonstration of what is in the industry of television. At the same time, Bloom is waiting for a breakdown in the society system. Such as the “flâneur”, Bloom wants to demonstrate the violent truth of nighttime in cities. However, the violence of night goes to Bloom’s head, who’s ending to have a dangerous behavior toward others at night. 

 

            To sum up, Nightcrawler is a dark action movie which illustrates Lou Bloom, a budding crime and night’s accident reporter. His character has been created on the same schema as the “flâneur” behavior. The film dresses a night representation based on his main character’s excursion, approach, and documentation. The film questions our relationship with night as a territory and underlined the undercover violence at night. Therefore, it accentuates the influence of night on human’s mental health and turns Bloom, a social introvert persona, into a night psychopath.

 

 

 Written by Olympia Dairaine Grimaux

 

 

SOURCES

 

 

Litvak, Michel, and al. Nightcrawler. Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 2015.

 

Sharpe, William. New York Nocturne: The City After Dark in Literature, Painting, and Photography, 1850-1950. Princeton University Press, 2008. 

 

Heap, Chad C. Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940. University of Chicago Press, 2010. 

 

Williams, R. “Night Spaces: Darkness, Deterritorialization, and Social Control.” Space and Culture, vol. 11, no. 4, 2008

 

Edensor, Tim. “The Gloomy City: Rethinking the Relationship between Light and Dark.” Urban Studies, vol. 52, no. 3, 2015

 

Howells, Richard, and Joaquim Negreiros. “Films” & “Television” Visual Culture. Third ed., Polity Press, 2019.

 

Brayton, Sean. “The ‘Madness’ of Market Logic: Mental Illness and Late Capitalism in the Double and Nightcrawler.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, 2017

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