Heroes and Cinema

If you haven’t watched Nocturnal Animals (2016) yet, you will. This film is the cinematic equivalent of shaving as close as possible. Clear cut and tense. There is an undeniable sharpness to almost every single shot registered in there. As if director Tom Ford and cinematographer Seamus McGravey quite literally want us to touch the dapperness of the events unfolding, bumping up the whole visual experience. And it is indeed an experience! Although you might be aware of the book from which this story is adapted or you might even be seduced by the likes of Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal helming the cast, you’ll come out massively impressed by Michael Shannon’s performance. If there is a list of underrated actors today, he must be sitting right on the top looking up at the sky instead of looking down on others. In Nocturnal Animals, Shannon’s character grants us the balance we seek in a thriller. 

He’s that guy who will do what needs to be done without ignoring the consequences. Intriguingly enough, everybody else on the screen lack this basic characteristic. His uniqueness lies in his anonymous suffering. He is angry at himself perhaps but he won’t tell you until it’s time. He is a good man and has what it takes to recognize a better man. He sticks to rules as long as he doesn’t have to abandon them. He, despite his relatively shorter screentime, boosts the screenplay the way we rarely get to notice nowadays. Tragic as it is, in the end, you don’t remember him because there is a grander scheme at play; the two main protagonists are busy trying to prove each other wrong and when such a game is going on, there is a little to no excuse left to highlight the real hero.

Oscars might be a self-validating circus but it’s a necessary circus. Which is why i feel that Amy Adams deserved that nod for her splendid outcome in Arrival (2016). I don’t know at whose expense though. It could have been her sixth nomination. She is yet to bag her first gong. By that yardstick, the only difference between her and Leonardo DiCaprio is there are no Internet memes dedicated to her. I’ll be surprised if she attends Dolby Theatre on the night of 26th this month. As she knows by now, the real nocturnal animals never show up.