Michael Shannon received his second Oscar nomination for his performance as Detective Bobby Andes in Nocturnal Animals.
Nocturnal Animals is a very problematic movie about a wealthy art gallery owner who grows increasingly paranoid about her ex-husband's novel, a gory thriller that she interprets as an allegory for their marriage. The first time I saw the movie, I actually liked it a lot; then my admiration gradually started to cool down until I finally gave the movie a rewatch which pretty much destroyed it for me. The half of the movie involving Amy Adams' character looks splendid - the production design is gorgeous and the cinematography looks stunning, but in terms of substance it is completely empty, with the few moments of satire being totally out of the place and most of the supporting characters being one-note cartoons (Laura Linney has a moment or two in her single scene, but otherwise she is terrible). I'll give credit to Adams who still manages to pull off a believable and even moving performance despite having an extremely passive character to work with, and she convincingly portrays Susan's transition from naive, idealistic student to embittered ice queen. The half of the move depicting the book's plot is slightly better: I still love Aaron Taylor-Johnson' chilling portrayal and I thought the first scene was impeccably done; otherwise, it's a fairly standard crime story that never becomes particularly compelling - it's not necessarily bad, but nothing special either. The worst element of the movie is probably the screenplay, with often badly written and unrealistic dialogues.
Michael Shannon plays Bobby Andes, a character of the novel who is the detective working on the case involving the rape and murder of Laura and India, respectively the wife and daughter of Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal). The supporting roles in this half of the movie are not very well-written: it seems like Tom Ford wanted them to be some sort of heavily stylized figures, something not unlike the supporting characters of David Lynch's Wild at Heart. Unfortunately Nocturnal Animals is not Wild at Heart or anything like David Lynch's movies as Ford doesn't really set a definite atmosphere in this movie and that's why it feels mostly atonal. The novel side of the movie in this regard feels particularly odd as there are both straightforward performances (Gyllenhaal) and very stylized ones with the overall register being just sort of flat. Bobby Andes is one of those heavily stylized supporting characters - he is the archetype of the sardonic detective, although Andes might have a few more quirks than those that are usually associated with this kind of character. Shannon is an excellent actor and he pulls off this side of the character really quite well - he makes for a fairly entertaining presence and he delivers his one-liners in a rather amusing fashion. The writing behind his character is pretty weak and there are times when the screenplay pushes the character's eccentricities way too far, but even in those moments Shannon is still good in the role. He portrays very well Andes' flamboyance without ever feeling too mannered and he often adds some needed energy to the proceeding. The accent he adopts for the role is quite thick but thankfully he pulls it off really well so it never becomes distracting, and actually he manages to sell even his oddest lines thanks to his delivery alone. For a large chunk of the movie, there is nothing to his character othen than his surface and Shannon can't do anything about that, but to his credit he does try to give some weight to a few moments, such as the one in which he tells Tony the cause of death of his wife and daughter, and he makes the interrogation scenes both very entertaining and tense - no one can pull off the creepy, intense stare like he does. He is quite fascinating in his portrayal of his character's own method in his work and his performance occasionally quite compelling even if the role itself is not really worth his effort.
The only scene in which the screenplay gives Bobby a little bit more depth is in the second half of the movie, in which he reveals Tony that he is dying of cancer. Shannon is very moving at showing his character's sadness towards his imminent fate but not quite a desperation - he doesn't fear death, he has sadly accepted it and the things that hurt him the most are his regrets, particularly his relationship with his estranged daughter. Shannon stays fairly low-key throughout the entire scenes but he gives it the needed emotional key and subtly communicates the suffering and plight of this man. Along with the pain, Shannon also brings a certain determination to Bobby as he now has nothing to lose and decides to see justice done before his demise.
In his final scenes I found Shannon to be rather effective at portraying his character's unhinged behavior as he really won't stop in front of anything in order to achieve his goal and there's a raw quality to his performance in those scenes that I certainly appreciated. He has some truly chilling moment in his last scene as he confronts two of the men responsible for the crimes, even if I have to say his exit in the movie is extremely disappointing. He just sort of leaves and it really doesn't feel like a worthy closure neither to the character nor the performance.
In the end, I think that this is an entirely good performance by Michael Shannon even if it is hardly his best. He really makes the most out of his severely underwritten role and even if for most of the time his character is all surface he does a good job at portraying that surface. In the moments in which he is allowed to shine, he truly does. Overall his work is undermined by the movie and the screenplay, but it's still a wholly solid turn from an actor who, with a better writing, would have been amazing in the role.
3.5/5
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