3/13/2023 0 Comments Nocturnal animals movieAdams imbues Susan with that regret in the subtlest of ways at first, letting the pauses in between her words and the slight creases in her eyebrows hint at an underlying sadness that’s only later explained in the second and third acts of the film. Equal parts intelligent and unsure of herself, Susan lives in the constant fear of turning into her mother (Laura Linney), always stuck questioning whether or not she’s made the right decisions in her life. Luckily, Ford’s explanation behind Edward’s ultimate sadness and the reasons behind the couple’s divorce makes more than enough sense when it’s revealed, and manages to carefully ride the line between being pulpy and exaggerated in its own way, without ever falling into melodramatic territory.įor her part, Amy Adams gives yet another, almost predictably great performance as Susan. Especially since, in the initial flashbacks to their past, they seemed like a perfect pair, her being the pessimistic and self-conscious realist, and him an ambitious dreamer with the hopes one day of being a great writer. By showing us the book storyline, which opens with one of the most tense and disturbing sequences I’ve seen in recent memory, and exposing us to the dark, almost sadistic nature of it, we can’t help but be curious to know what it is that Susan did to cause Edward so much pain. Whether he spent the past nine years perfecting this script or not, his hard work has paid off in spades nonetheless, and Nocturnal Animals manages to never show a personal favor towards one storyline over the others - making each of them feel equally important. Possible pacing issues aside (which Ford manages to nimbly avoid), there’s a danger of making one of the storylines more interesting than the other, and therefore throwing Nocturnal Animals completely off balance. With this story, Ford not only has to follow Susan during the present day, but also show us the beginning and end of her relationship with Edward in the past, in addition to the story written in Edward’s novel. Structurally, Nocturnal Animals is an absolute marvel because to be completely, utterly honest, it shouldn’t work. Dedicated to her, Susan reads the novel and begins to see the thematic parallels between Edward’s story about a man seeking revenge for the murder and rape of his wife and daughter and their marriage that fell apart almost two decades earlier. Amy Adams leads the film as Susan Morrow, a successful art gallery owner living in Los Angeles, who one day is sent a manuscript in the mail from her ex-husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal).
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