Alex writes about Nocturnal Animals.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n While working for TIFF this year, I spent a lot of my time standing in line outside of various movie theatres, waiting on the possibility of seeing a press and industry screening of a particular movie. Standing in line for these movies, I met a variety of fellow lanyard wearers doing the same thing; they were TIFF staff or volunteers or press or (in one case) a religious studies professor tasked with writing about some films for a scholarly journal. I met a polite aspiring videographer whose card I swiftly lost, and an older woman who didn\u2019t seem like a Black Mirror fan who nevertheless felt like seeing the two Black Mirror episodes that were screening. In one case, I (probably) mildly offended a person from the Barbados by saying I wasn\u2019t going to sit with her for our screening. Nevertheless, these were people I met briefly, and almost immediately forgot about once I actually got into my screening. We would have our time, chatting about movies we hoped to see, or how long the rush line for La La Land was going to be, and then we would immediately forget about each other as we were let into the film.<\/p>\n One movie I heard discussed in line was Tom Ford\u2019s new work, Nocturnal Animals, a movie I had been previously unaware even existed. It seemed like a movie people enjoyed talking about, so it was a movie I would see, if for no other reason than to continue following the only filmmaker Jay Z has named a song after.<\/p>\n After actually seeing Nocturnal Animals, I wanted to talk about it with somebody. Not in the hub of videographers I worked in had seen it, though; even the Nocturnal Fanimals I had previously met in line all seemed to disappear. Nobody I could find had seen it, so I was left around with various thoughts bouncing around my head, with one specific question being more prominent than the others: is Nocturnal Animals a good movie?<\/p>\n I suspect a reason behind Nocturnal Animals\u2019 heavy conversational presence in the various rush lines was built around its various makers: Amy Adams appears almost exclusively in intriguing movies these days, Jake Gyllenhaal has similar tastes, and screenwriter\/director Tom Ford\u2019s name drips with various types of prestige. From those ingredients alone, one could assume this was to be a good film, a movie worth talking about. Its time-shifting and postmodern novel-within-a-film structure only further added to this idea, as did the open-ended closing scene.<\/p>\n As I watched the movie, I can easily say I enjoyed it. It\u2019s well shot, some of the editing was distinctly old-fashioned in a pleasing way, and Michael Shannon being in a movie never makes said movie worse. I enjoy time-shifting and postmodernity and an unanswered closing question. I walked out of the movie having enjoyed myself, thinking about a variety of queries that entered my brain at some point over the film\u2019s 116 minutes.<\/p>\n I liked watching Nocturnal Animals. Ipso facto, Nocturnal Animals is a good film. And yet I can\u2019t help but feel that I\u2019ve been duped.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n It seems as though Tom Ford relishes talking about his films so much that he can\u2019t help but tell you exactly what he wants you to take away from his latest film. Of course Edward doesn\u2019t show up at the end, he says in interviews, because Edward wrote this modern McCarthy-esque novel precisely as an allegory for how Susan made him feel. Edward\u2019s wife and daughter are found on a red couch because it was a red couch Susan lay on while critiquing Edward\u2019s previous work. Susan pictures Edward as the lead while she reads the novel, just like she pictures Isla Fisher as his wife; she finds it impossible to believe that Edward would marry somebody that doesn\u2019t at least slightly resemble herself.<\/p>\n These are all relatively simple things to suss out for yourself while viewing the film. They were all immediately apparent to me on my first viewing, and nothing on a second screening last week sent me in another direction. I would have assumed I was right about such guesses had Ford never spoken about them, and yet hearing him actually say the words frustrated me. I had already sorted these elements out for myself, so I was mildly upset that he so giddily felt he had to explain them to his audience.<\/p>\n When I found out a colleague of mine had shot the TIFF premiere of the film, complete with post-screening Q+A, I asked him whether or not Ford explained much about the film, or if he was coy about the meaning he wanted viewers to get out of it.<\/p>\n \u201cOh he explained everything, pretty much without provocation,\u201d my bearded colleague said. I could feel myself start to like the film slightly less, and listening to a couple of interviews with Ford later only furthered this.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a simple reason I felt annoyed by such explanations: it felt like I was being talked down to, as though I was a child who could not come to these conclusions without papa bear holding my hand and explaining them to me. Like I was somebody that didn\u2019t know that, in the language of film, when a character is bathing alone with no lights on, the blue light of the moon is (obviously) intended to accentuate that feeling of loneliness. I always want to know what a filmmaker wants me to think, but I never actually want to hear that filmmaker say it. In order for these conclusions to be satisfying, I need to come to them by myself.<\/p>\n