Guillermo del Toro's latest twisted carnival drama deals with the impossibility to escape one’s condition. Based on the book with the same name written in 1946, it starts with the main character, Stanton Caristle, played by Bradley Cooper who burns his father’s house and leaves.
He then takes a job with a travelling carnival, and he’s deeply affected by the sight of the geek, a barely human symbol of degradation throughout the movie. A character with an existence so absurd that people pay to see it.
Stanton meets Molly at the carnival, a kind-hearted, soft-eyed woman with a difficult past played by Rooney Mara, who seems to bring out the best out of him. Zeena and her alcoholic husband also work at the carnival as fortune tellers. So he learns mentalism tricks from them, to a point where he decides to leave for the city and make a career out of it, with Molly as his lover and assistant. They start to do shows with high-end audiences, in luxury venues. But he’s a deeply traumatised person, we learn, so even if, for a moment, it makes you believe he broke the cycle, becoming successful is only the beginning of another degradation.
One of their performances in New York is interrupted by a psychiatrist, Dr Lillith Ritter, brilliantly played by an unmoved Cate Blanchett. She tries to prove him a scam, but Stanton manages to get away with it. Yet, he becomes drawn by her assertiveness, coldness and power, so she finds it easy to manipulate him. They make a pact, and he is, quite literally, selling his soul to this mysterious woman, who seems to know him better than anyone. In fact, as a psychiatrist, she is just able to recognise his repressed feelings.
Their dialogues are intense and sensual, and every time they see each other the tension grows. That’s how the ending begins.
Cinematography sits at the border between fantasy and reality. It’s aesthetically pleasing and shot in cold, dark lighting, with a blue tint that is reminiscent of film noir. It’s dynamic and close attention is paid to details and angles.
The conclusion this psychological thriller reaches is that people can’t change, and we see at the end that he returns to the carnival. Although it’s close to 3-hours long, it feels like at the end, you’re ready to re-watch it, due to its circular nature, with the main character returning to his initial place.
It’s a film constructed of ‘almosts’. The main characters are almost vulnerable, the story is almost believable and Stanton almost manages to change who he is.
