MAR's Top 65 Performances of the 2010s [COMPLETE]

When we first meet Louis Bloom, played with laser-like focus and precision by Jake Gyllenhaal, he’s methodically clipping chunks of chain-link fence in the dead of night outside of a deserted L.A. industrial yard. When a security guard shows up and inquires what Bloom is up to (he’s stealing the fence metal to sell on the sly), Lou puts on a hapless “I’m lost” smile and forks over his ID . . . and then blindsides the rent-a-cop. We then see Lou trying to hawk his ill-gotten wares to a junkyard man, while simultaneously trying to bargain for a job. Nightcrawler is a viscerally exciting foray into an amoral — and possibly sociopathic — mind, garnering comparisons to the likes of Taxi Driver. Unlike Travis Bickle, who sought to rid the streets of the maggots that feed on the underbelly of society, Lou Bloom exploits it, following the motto of "if it bleeds, it leads" like it's a religious aphorism. And yet, even though he is in every scene, we never really get a bead on who Lou Bloom is. He is a loner, one who never seems to sleep. Much of his dialogue is couched in rigorous and yet almost Zen-like mantras of success and perseverance he cribbed from the Internet. Lou’s a go-getter, and yet there’s something dark there, something calculating. What horrifying thoughts are worming behind Bloom’s overly polite exterior? Gyllenhaal clearly tapped into a staggering wellspring that very few actors are capable of; not only did he gaze into the abyss, he dove headlong into it.

Much like Certified Copy itself, Binoche's performance is one that appears to be one thing that seamlessly transforms into something else entirely. Immediately grabbing our attention with her inherent charisma and watchability as a woman both taken by and inquisitive of the suave British author James Miller, the complexity of Binoche's unnamed character becomes gradually revealed to us, as the actress' slowly-emerging vulnerability opens up so many nuances to the character we never would've seen otherwise. While Binoche's perfectly natural chemistry with William Shimell is astonishing in its own, it's the emotionally-bare work of Binoche that begins to hold our attention entirely. Kiarostami loves framing his actors in close-up (heh) here, and at times all we need is Binoche's face in the center of the frame to convey everything we need to know, a tortured lover clinging to an ideal, longing for something more than a copy of the past. It speaks volumes that I've seen this film twice and didn't realize before writing this review that Binoche's character is unnamed -- we come to learn so much about her, to know her so intimately, that to realize even the most rudimentary detail about her still eludes us is confounding