Live In The Chaotic And Gruesome Here And Now With Nocturama

There isn't much in the way of background established for the lead characters of Nocturama in its opening scenes. We just get to follow a handful of college-aged young adults going about assorted pieces of business, with only minimal amounts of accompanying of dialogue, with this array of individuals occasionally bumping into each other amidst their routines before it's revealed that they're all in some kind of close-knit group together. There's a subtly intense vibe created here, an undercurrent of espionage that director Bertrand Bonello is able to sew into the fabric of seemingly mundane sequences.



It isn't long before we find out the underlying purpose of all these introductory scenes, as it turns out all of these young adults have been plotting and executing a plan to plant bombs all across Paris, France. The muted naturalism seen in the entire film is briefly broken by the extreme presence of explosions going off in everyday surroundings, as the plans of this assortment of young adults become a horrifying reality. In order to evade the authorities, all of the culprits behind this elaborate terrorist attack hide out in a shopping mall for the night, where the fact that they actually just pulled off a terrorist attack begins to weigh on them in varying ways.

Nocturama keeps things simple, with very little background given to the events that transpire in the film itself. We're given no terrorist association for the characters, no larger agenda for them to be fighting for beyond a basic idea of such an attack being inevitable. Bertrand Bonello's screenplay wants the viewer to have a mindset like the various lead characters of the film itself have in this scenario in that their thoughts are concentrated on the present. There's no difficulty in keeping one's attention transfixed on the here and now in Nocturama given how absorbing it is, particularly in its second half that hews closely to being a contained thriller. complete with a small environment closed off from the rest of the world.

It's nice that Nocturama's script, in this section of the movie, avoids creating drama from large-scale events like a prolonged stand-off with the police or perhaps one member of the group going off on an unhinged violent rampage. Instead, there's a slow simmer to things as we get to watch the impact of actually having pulled off such horrific carnage slowly unfold on the ensemble cast of characters. Some react in regretful horror, others find themselves falling deeper and deeper into a nihilistic spirit to absolve themselves of any responsibility for what has transpired while still another member of the pack of hooligans go-karts and someone else finds himself, whilst smoking outside, connecting with a nearby homeless man.

It is in this section of the movie that the more minimalist tendencies of the motion picture allow for internal character mindsets to come front and center. Even seemingly throwaway moments of the story, like one guy, adorned in make-up, lip-syncing to a cover of Frank Sinatra's My Way, is able to show off new dimensions of these terrorist characters. It cannot be understated how much the cast helps the movie land so many of these small moments of character building, they're able to make their individual characters emanate a unique presence and personality even given the more muted nature of how the movie approaches its characters.

The heavily character-focused second half of  Nocturama culminates in a no-frills violent climax that ends things on an appropriately grim note, though I couldn't help but feel the project was thematically a little...lightweight seems too harsh of a word, but it did feel like the movie lacked a grander theme or commentary to orient itself around. But maybe that's the point here; just as there's no grander specific ideology to provide reasoning for the senseless violence perpetrated by the various characters of Nocturama, the movie they star in is similarly eschewing a larger point in order to chronicle here and now for these characters.