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Since I've got a tendency to review things, I'll put up my review of Joker. The first half is going to be a summary, the second half is my thoughts and feelings.
The movie opens with multiple newscasts about how Gotham is going to literal shit. Trash is piling up, things are breaking down completely. If you're a fan of 1980s New York style cinema, this captures a city on the brink. You've got barely working subways with no MTA, what's implied rampant crime on the street, which occurs daily in broad daylight.
Set in the center of this mess is your mild-mannered guy Arthur Fleck. But he's seriously mentally ill. The laughs you see? They're all part of a condition where he cannot control when and how he laughs. He has to give people this card to demonstrate this. Its very subtle, but on the card its written 'as a result of mental illness or brain damage'. This is actually important later. Despite Arthur's condition, nobody cares about him. They treat him callously and he struggles to fit into normal society, which is basically decaying around him and our very eyes. The sign in the trailer? His boss blames Arthur for losing it and he gets fired.
The soundtrack and cinematography go hand in hand. It is brutal and the soundtrack reflects Arthur's deepening isolation as he is getting closed off more and more from society. Of course, he gets cut off from city services. His therapist was only going through the motions. Another very subtle detail is his joke notebook. You only catch glimpses of it, but its something out of Se7en. It paints a portrait of someone going through serious issues and is not getting any help. Arthur struggles to get more meds, better meds, but its all in vain as he can't afford to do so. Eventually one of his 'friends' gives him a .38 to protect himself. He ends up bringing this to a children's hospital and it drops out on the floor. This leads him to getting fired and going on the train ride. His illness kicks in and he laughs uncontrollably due to being mentally overwhelmed. Then the drunken Wallstreet guys kick the shit out of him and he gets fed up and wastes them. Make no mistake about it. The first one is self-defense, but the other two are blatant cold-blooded murders as Arthur hunts them down.
The city is already violently on edge, and the slaughter of three of the wealthiest men in Gotham in the poorest subway basically provides a slow burn for the city. Arthur, feeling power for the first time in his life, embraces the killings. He's now completely off his meds, and at this point its hard to tell what is real and what isn't in the movie. Arthur is a completely unreliable narrator.
In the meantime, its presented that Arthur might be the son of Thomas Wayne, but when he pulls his mother's hospital records, he finds out that his mother was a delusional schizophrenic that let her boyfriends beat and abuse Arthur. Remember the card where it says brain damage? Its heavily implied that Arthur was brain damaged due to this abuse and where this uncontrollable laughter comes from. Incensed, he rushes down to the hospital where his loving mother had a stroke. Realizing his entire life was a joke, the love of his mother, his father, his past, his illness, his job, the world he lives in, he declares his life a comedy and smothers her to death.
Two of his friends from his job earlier come down for 'condolences' for the death of his mother. One of his 'friends' was the one that gave him the .38 and ratted him out. For this, Arthur brutally kills him with a scissor but lets the other guy go as he was the only one nice to him. In the trailers, you might have seen him going on the Robert DeNiro show as he bombed on comedy night. Its at this point his degradation into insanity is complete and views the world as arbitrary. At first, he plans on doing a knock-knock joke where he will kill himself live on air. When he gets on stage, he changes his mind, witnessing the crowd and confesses to the murders at the beginning of the movie. He states he believes in nothing and is not political at all. He doesn't give a shit about the havoc the murders he caused splitting the city apart, nearly at the seams. Here's one of the more memorable lines comes in: "What happens when you cross a mentally ill loner and a society that doesn't give a shit? You get what you fucking deserve." And he pulls out the .38 and shoots DeNiro square in the face. Its here you get some Nichlson/Ledger Joker flair as he does a little bit of a giddy dance and puts a few more rounds into DeNiro's corpse.
With DeNiro's death on live TV, the city that has been separated by the murders and the economic tension erupts into a full scale riot. He's being taken away in a police car and the officers admonish him, saying to him look what he's done. He replies its beautiful. The cop car then gets into a crash, and Arthur is pulled out of the car, almost like a messianic figure and rested on the hood of it. He slowly stands up, paints his mouth in a smile of blood and begins to dance as the city burns around him.
There's a sharp cut to a mental institution with his social worker, looking to be years later. As they speak, they're interrupted by possibly Arthur's first genuine laugh. There's a shot of a dead Martha and Thomas Wayne with a young Bruce between them. When the therapist asks what's the joke, Arthur cryptically responds, "You wouldn't get it."
The ending shot is in an all-white hallway, with Arthur's shoes coated in blood as he escapes from orderlies.
This is one of the most amazing films of 2019, bar none. The cinematography is absurdly good and the soundtrack is paired so wonderfully with the fall of a man. Arthur is very sympathetic up until a point, but you're really watching the portrait of a man who suffered child abuse and possible brain damage, someone who is mentally ill, completely rejected by society. If you have any sort of mental illness, you know exactly what Arthur is going through. Nobody cares about you. There is no sympathy for you. You're a fucking weirdo, get your shit straight. The therapists you go through go through the motions and you struggle to get your meds right. Up until the point where they shut you out or you can't afford it.
The thing is Arthur's plight isn't of a white person. Its of a person, and that's really where all of this comes from. They try to humanize Arthur, which makes him all the more scarier. Because its real. You can see how someone this damaged, trying and struggling in an atmosphere of human callousness, economic oppression with no compassion would be pushed over the edge. Arthur embraces his madness because in the end he feels that's what society wants him to be. That's why he feels his life is a joke.
The incel angle is a lie. All Arthur wants is someone he can connect to, someone who is honest with him. If you notice, no one in the movie is ever honest with Arthur. Not his mother, not his boss, not his co-workers, not Murray, not his therapist. He makes up the relationship with the single mother in his mind because its literally the only thing keeping him sane. He doesn't hate her for it. He knows its not real. He tries to connect with her in the real world, but it obviously doesn't work. With this last connection shattered, he loses all grasp on society. There's literally nothing and no place for him anymore. So he embraces the Joker's trademark Chaos. There's nothing but madness, the screeching of the crowd. He stands for nothing and no one, an agent of pure Chaos.
How much of this is in his mind is up for interpretation. But I think most of it is real. Excepting the relationship and him being lifted of the car as a messiah.
Its the portrait of a man who is crying out for help and is rejected by society. The reason the left hates it is very simple. They want the freedom to hate people like Arthur guilt free. They don't want to consider them people. They want them vilified, neutered, mocked. They don't care about their plight. They don't care about their problems. They believe they're unquestionably disgusting and deserve no humanity, help or a hand in need. They want to believe that they can do this with impunity. That they can continue doing this with nothing ever happening to them, guilt free. This movie challenges that notion in a brutal way. That you can't destroy people in need with impunity, you need to show them compassion. Or you leave them no choice to embrace the devil inside of them.
Since I've got a tendency to review things, I'll put up my review of Joker. The first half is going to be a summary, the second half is my thoughts and feelings.
The movie opens with multiple newscasts about how Gotham is going to literal shit. Trash is piling up, things are breaking down completely. If you're a fan of 1980s New York style cinema, this captures a city on the brink. You've got barely working subways with no MTA, what's implied rampant crime on the street, which occurs daily in broad daylight.
Set in the center of this mess is your mild-mannered guy Arthur Fleck. But he's seriously mentally ill. The laughs you see? They're all part of a condition where he cannot control when and how he laughs. He has to give people this card to demonstrate this. Its very subtle, but on the card its written 'as a result of mental illness or brain damage'. This is actually important later. Despite Arthur's condition, nobody cares about him. They treat him callously and he struggles to fit into normal society, which is basically decaying around him and our very eyes. The sign in the trailer? His boss blames Arthur for losing it and he gets fired.
The soundtrack and cinematography go hand in hand. It is brutal and the soundtrack reflects Arthur's deepening isolation as he is getting closed off more and more from society. Of course, he gets cut off from city services. His therapist was only going through the motions. Another very subtle detail is his joke notebook. You only catch glimpses of it, but its something out of Se7en. It paints a portrait of someone going through serious issues and is not getting any help. Arthur struggles to get more meds, better meds, but its all in vain as he can't afford to do so. Eventually one of his 'friends' gives him a .38 to protect himself. He ends up bringing this to a children's hospital and it drops out on the floor. This leads him to getting fired and going on the train ride. His illness kicks in and he laughs uncontrollably due to being mentally overwhelmed. Then the drunken Wallstreet guys kick the shit out of him and he gets fed up and wastes them. Make no mistake about it. The first one is self-defense, but the other two are blatant cold-blooded murders as Arthur hunts them down.
The city is already violently on edge, and the slaughter of three of the wealthiest men in Gotham in the poorest subway basically provides a slow burn for the city. Arthur, feeling power for the first time in his life, embraces the killings. He's now completely off his meds, and at this point its hard to tell what is real and what isn't in the movie. Arthur is a completely unreliable narrator.
In the meantime, its presented that Arthur might be the son of Thomas Wayne, but when he pulls his mother's hospital records, he finds out that his mother was a delusional schizophrenic that let her boyfriends beat and abuse Arthur. Remember the card where it says brain damage? Its heavily implied that Arthur was brain damaged due to this abuse and where this uncontrollable laughter comes from. Incensed, he rushes down to the hospital where his loving mother had a stroke. Realizing his entire life was a joke, the love of his mother, his father, his past, his illness, his job, the world he lives in, he declares his life a comedy and smothers her to death.
Two of his friends from his job earlier come down for 'condolences' for the death of his mother. One of his 'friends' was the one that gave him the .38 and ratted him out. For this, Arthur brutally kills him with a scissor but lets the other guy go as he was the only one nice to him. In the trailers, you might have seen him going on the Robert DeNiro show as he bombed on comedy night. Its at this point his degradation into insanity is complete and views the world as arbitrary. At first, he plans on doing a knock-knock joke where he will kill himself live on air. When he gets on stage, he changes his mind, witnessing the crowd and confesses to the murders at the beginning of the movie. He states he believes in nothing and is not political at all. He doesn't give a shit about the havoc the murders he caused splitting the city apart, nearly at the seams. Here's one of the more memorable lines comes in: "What happens when you cross a mentally ill loner and a society that doesn't give a shit? You get what you fucking deserve." And he pulls out the .38 and shoots DeNiro square in the face. Its here you get some Nichlson/Ledger Joker flair as he does a little bit of a giddy dance and puts a few more rounds into DeNiro's corpse.
With DeNiro's death on live TV, the city that has been separated by the murders and the economic tension erupts into a full scale riot. He's being taken away in a police car and the officers admonish him, saying to him look what he's done. He replies its beautiful. The cop car then gets into a crash, and Arthur is pulled out of the car, almost like a messianic figure and rested on the hood of it. He slowly stands up, paints his mouth in a smile of blood and begins to dance as the city burns around him.
There's a sharp cut to a mental institution with his social worker, looking to be years later. As they speak, they're interrupted by possibly Arthur's first genuine laugh. There's a shot of a dead Martha and Thomas Wayne with a young Bruce between them. When the therapist asks what's the joke, Arthur cryptically responds, "You wouldn't get it."
The ending shot is in an all-white hallway, with Arthur's shoes coated in blood as he escapes from orderlies.
This is one of the most amazing films of 2019, bar none. The cinematography is absurdly good and the soundtrack is paired so wonderfully with the fall of a man. Arthur is very sympathetic up until a point, but you're really watching the portrait of a man who suffered child abuse and possible brain damage, someone who is mentally ill, completely rejected by society. If you have any sort of mental illness, you know exactly what Arthur is going through. Nobody cares about you. There is no sympathy for you. You're a fucking weirdo, get your shit straight. The therapists you go through go through the motions and you struggle to get your meds right. Up until the point where they shut you out or you can't afford it.
The thing is Arthur's plight isn't of a white person. Its of a person, and that's really where all of this comes from. They try to humanize Arthur, which makes him all the more scarier. Because its real. You can see how someone this damaged, trying and struggling in an atmosphere of human callousness, economic oppression with no compassion would be pushed over the edge. Arthur embraces his madness because in the end he feels that's what society wants him to be. That's why he feels his life is a joke.
The incel angle is a lie. All Arthur wants is someone he can connect to, someone who is honest with him. If you notice, no one in the movie is ever honest with Arthur. Not his mother, not his boss, not his co-workers, not Murray, not his therapist. He makes up the relationship with the single mother in his mind because its literally the only thing keeping him sane. He doesn't hate her for it. He knows its not real. He tries to connect with her in the real world, but it obviously doesn't work. With this last connection shattered, he loses all grasp on society. There's literally nothing and no place for him anymore. So he embraces the Joker's trademark Chaos. There's nothing but madness, the screeching of the crowd. He stands for nothing and no one, an agent of pure Chaos.
How much of this is in his mind is up for interpretation. But I think most of it is real. Excepting the relationship and him being lifted of the car as a messiah.
Its the portrait of a man who is crying out for help and is rejected by society. The reason the left hates it is very simple. They want the freedom to hate people like Arthur guilt free. They don't want to consider them people. They want them vilified, neutered, mocked. They don't care about their plight. They don't care about their problems. They believe they're unquestionably disgusting and deserve no humanity, help or a hand in need. They want to believe that they can do this with impunity. That they can continue doing this with nothing ever happening to them, guilt free. This movie challenges that notion in a brutal way. That you can't destroy people in need with impunity, you need to show them compassion. Or you leave them no choice to embrace the devil inside of them.
Your analysis of the mental illness angle is absolutely spot on. One of the more tragic elements of the movie is the fact that Arthur had no help and everyone either ignored him or flat out spat on him, and nobody cared until he lashed out. And the sad truth is that's way more common than we want to think. The only time we ever truly give a shit about someone's mental problems is when they do something violent, when it's far too late.
This is also why I hate it when people say we should spread awareness of mental illness but don't have the balls to actually show it because it doesn't really help anyone and it sugarcoats the harsh reality of what mental illness entails. In my mind, Joker does both. It shows that there are people out there that have problems like Arthur and they desperately need help, but at the same time it shows the grim reality a lot of them face on a near-daily basis, both externally and internally.
Ironically, for all the media's bitching about the violence this movie will cause, when you get right down to it, it's probably the most frank movie about mental illness in a long, long time.
I think Arthur would have been okay if one real person had taken charge and done him a real service of kindness. Lots of mentally ill, messed up people in this world have the potential to get worse, but there are stories about how much they bloom when there is someone in their lives to keep them stable and whole.
I don't think Arthur was a monster at the beginning. Deeply broken and troubled, yes. But the scene where he has a fantasy of being celebrated by Murray and hugs him shows a kind of innocence and a desperation to connect and be loved by others that's so incredibly heartbreaking and you feel for him something fierce.
The legacy of the Joker has always been the "One Bad Day" philosophy but it's also so much more than that. Giggling over internet lolcows aside, being kind to broken people in the real world is important. When a person is bitter and isolated enough, they snap and do bad things. Think of all the so-called "Jokers" out there that could have been saved had their loved ones or neighbors paid better attention to them and encouraged positive hobbies and goals.
I mostly disagree. The big loss in the adaptation is the restraint on the violence. As far as being an accurate adaptation of the book it more than succeeded. Abbreviating Bateman's fixation on designer products and music reviews was greatly appreciated. The color pallet has a cold banality to it, just like Bateman and his world.
It is not a perfect adaptation largely because of the lack of violence and de-emphasizing Bateman's hallucinations and racism which were more frequent in the book. As a movie I'd say it's great but as an adaptation I'd say it's pretty good.
Reminds me: Bale was offered a cameo in Rules of Attraction but refused to do it without the director of American Psycho. So there was obviously some back and fourth between the two. And I don't think it was a money issue because Bale was kind of desperate for it at that time.
What was also refreshing is that we saw Thomas Wayne, one of the most important parental figures in fiction for being the good man whose senseless death set his son on his quest to be the ultimate dark paragon of justice, was actually kind of a rich arrogant cunt. He looked down on others that were lower than his class, literally calling them clowns on "accident", but then tries to correct saying he is the only hope Gotham has...Arthur thought he was his father, he tried to reach out to him and while he wasnt his son, Thomas could clearly see that this young man in front of him was broken and needed help...to which he just tells him to fuck off, that his mother was insane (while that isnt false, the way he said it was so arrogantly dickish) and then punches him...
This movie actually made me wonder if everytime we see Thomas Wayne in any other movie is what Bruce thinks his father was like...and that Joker shows that the real man was an absolute awful person that looked down on others...I know its most likely just something from this movie and thats it but it did made me wonder if a lot of the people our heroes look up to werent shitstains and they were far too young to be able to tell (like Uncle Ben was rather an abusive dick that Peter was far too young to tell or perhaps his death traumatized him so badly that he cant see Uncle Ben may not have been such a nice guy to begin with).
Now everyone is asking if Phoenix takes Ledger's Throne as the ultimate joker...and the answer is yes and no.
Ledger is the best villain
Phoenix is the best protagonist
You fear Ledger
You understand and feel for Phoenix.
This movie was absolutely amazing and SJWs can cry in their bubbles as this movie becomes the voice of a frustrated generation of young men who know that their future was stolen from them by those who only see them as clowns and nothing more.
This movie actually made me wonder if everytime we see Thomas Wayne in any other movie is what Bruce thinks his father was like...and that Joker shows that the real man was an absolute awful person that looked down on others...I know its most likely just something from this movie and thats it but it did made me wonder if a lot of the people our heroes look up to werent shitstains and they were far too young to be able to tell (like Uncle Ben was rather an abusive dick that Peter was far too young to tell or perhaps his death traumatized him so badly that he cant see Uncle Ben may not have been such a nice guy to begin with).
The TellTale Batman games did something similar, except they had the Waynes connected to the crime families, which isn't quite as potent as having a rich family straight up spit in the face of those beneath them.
The TellTale Batman games did something similar, except they had the Waynes connected to the crime families, which isn't quite as potent as having a rich family straight up spit in the face of those beneath them.
Meh, I think Telltale didnt know what to do with Batman in that game (and the sequel). I would have prefered they hurried it up with The Wolf Among us S2 before they went bankrupt (my only hope is that the new owners can figure out a way to ressurect it akin to TWD The final season).
Telltale still left things mostly vague at the end. Joker makes sure you know that, in a brutal dry way, Thomas Wayne deserved that bullet (not sure about Martha, we never see her much), not that Bruce deserved to watch his parents die, of course...
I think Arthur would have been okay if one real person had taken charge and done him a real service of kindness. Lots of mentally ill, messed up people in this world have the potential to get worse, but there are stories about how much they bloom when there is someone in their lives to keep them stable and whole.
I don't think Arthur was a monster at the beginning. Deeply broken and troubled, yes. But the scene where he has a fantasy of being celebrated by Murray and hugs him shows a kind of innocence and a desperation to connect and be loved by others that's so incredibly heartbreaking and you feel for him something fierce.
The legacy of the Joker has always been the "One Bad Day" philosophy but it's also so much more than that. Giggling over internet lolcows aside, being kind to broken people in the real world is important. When a person is bitter and isolated enough, they snap and do bad things. Think of all the so-called "Jokers" out there that could have been saved had their loved ones or neighbors paid better attention to them and encouraged positive hobbies and goals.
Arthur would have been. He's not a monster at the beginning and that's the whole point. He's a damaged person in frankly, the real world. People are calling it 'terrifying' because its real. It reflects the callousness of society. Ironically, by calling it scary and wanting it to be banned, people want to embrace their own callousness. They don't want to have compassion. They don't want to have empathy. I'll quote Morgan Freeman in Se7en:
"....[this place] embraces apathy as a virtue. I sympathize. Apathy is a solution....Love costs, it takes effort and work."
That's exactly the controversy to this movie. You want to know why? Its not boomering over incels, it isn't whitey. Its that they want to hate Arthur free of charge and this movie shows them the Emperor has no clothes. It is a hatred of the poor. A hatred of the mentally ill. Of icky people. They want free reign to sneer. And this movie tells a cautionary tale of a man rejected by people like this. Its pure projection.
I think the derision of this movie is much more insidious than it appears to be. I think its because these people are callous, cruel narcissists who don't like to see the effects of their actions. So they have to do what they always do: Paint the victim as the danger. The one who is mentally ill. Poor. Desperate. Alone. Strange. He's the dangerous one! Not them! They're upstanding members of society. They're the 'good ones'. They're deserving of nothing but loathing and we should cheer on their descent into irrelevancy.
What was also refreshing is that we saw Thomas Wayne, one of the most important parental figures in fiction for being the good man whose senseless death set his son on his quest to be the ultimate dark paragon of justice, was actually kind of a rich arrogant cunt. He looked down on others that were lower than his class, literally calling them clowns on "accident", but then tries to correct saying he is the only hope Gotham has...Arthur thought he was his father, he tried to reach out to him and while he wasnt his son, Thomas could clearly see that this young man in front of him was broken and needed help...to which he just tells him to fuck off, that his mother was insane (while that isnt false, the way he said it was so arrogantly dickish) and then punches him...
This movie actually made me wonder if everytime we see Thomas Wayne in any other movie is what Bruce thinks his father was like...and that Joker shows that the real man was an absolute awful person that looked down on others...I know its most likely just something from this movie and thats it but it did made me wonder if a lot of the people our heroes look up to werent shitstains and they were far too young to be able to tell (like Uncle Ben was rather an abusive dick that Peter was far too young to tell or perhaps his death traumatized him so badly that he cant see Uncle Ben may not have been such a nice guy to begin with).
Now everyone is asking if Phoenix takes Ledger's Throne as the ultimate joker...and the answer is yes and no.
Ledger is the best villain
Phoenix is the best protagonist
You fear Ledger
You understand and feel for Phoenix.
This movie was absolutely amazing and SJWs can cry in their bubbles as this movie becomes the voice of a frustrated generation of young men who know that their future was stolen from them but those who only see them as clowns and nothing more.
The thing with this movie is that we only see Thomas Wayne from Arthur's point of view. We really don't know his inner monologue or why he does the things he does. To him, Arthur is a crazy person, dangerous, who crept up on his son. Its a nuanced view to be sure, but we're only seeing things from Arthur's perspective, which is most certainly skewed.
Your analysis of the mental illness angle is absolutely spot on. One of the more tragic elements of the movie is the fact that Arthur had no help and everyone either ignored him or flat out spat on him, and nobody cared until he lashed out. And the sad truth is that's way more common than we want to think. The only time we ever truly give a shit about someone's mental problems is when they do something violent, when it's far too late.
This is also why I hate it when people say we should spread awareness of mental illness but don't have the balls to actually show it because it doesn't really help anyone and it sugarcoats the harsh reality of what mental illness entails. In my mind, Joker does both. It shows that there are people out there that have problems like Arthur and they desperately need help, but at the same time it shows the grim reality a lot of them face on a near-daily basis, both externally and internally.
Ironically, for all the media's bitching about the violence this movie will cause, when you get right down to it, it's probably the most frank movie about mental illness in a long, long time.
Yeah, exactly. And as I said above, I think this uncomfortable truth has a LOT of people projecting on this movie, way more than normal. Because you see all these people bitching about conditions they clearly don't have, and Arthur is clearly mentally ill. People who actually have these conditions will nod and be able to see through these pretenders. I mean, Arthur knew he was at the brink. He knew he was struggling with his mental health. But nobody gives a shit. They're callous and disgusted towards him. The therapist even makes it about her when he's about to get cut off. She can go into private practice. He has no options. He can't afford therapy or anti-psychotics.
It shows the effects and isolation of mental illness. It is a cautionary tail. I think Joker is a character study, but its also a judgement on a callous society. As I've stated before, I think this is where the media anger comes in. The movie is making a judgement call on them. On how they crow on and on about the plight of the poor, mentally ill, but they really don't care. Its all for appearances and when it comes down to it, they're on they're own. The problem is the movie basically rips this right open and is not subtle at all.
That happened during the showing of Venom I watched; some autist was cheering his head off at all the shit like the "We are VENOM" line. Everyone else got tired of it.
The thing with this movie is that we only see Thomas Wayne from Arthur's point of view. We really don't know his inner monologue or why he does the things he does. To him, Arthur is a crazy person, dangerous, who crept up on his son. Its a nuanced view to be sure, but we're only seeing things from Arthur's perspective, which is most certainly skewed.
The problem is that everytime Thomas Wayne was shown, he was shown to be a good man who always has seen the best on others, especially those less fortunate than him. It makes sense he doesnt treat Arthur amazingly but to almost act like he is mocking him (hell, he punches him just for "laughing" and one can tell Arthur was not laughing naturally). Besides, on other scenes, like on TV, we see Thomas does look down on people that arent rich elites. Its not like he even tried to calm Arthur down, since Im sure calling an unstable man's mother crazy isnt going to help the situation.
The reason Joker laughs at the end is because he knows he might not have Bruce as a brother, but in an ironic way they are now the same...orphaned and a product of violence that will no doubt lead to deep psychological scars.
He knows he is responsible for sending the city into absolute chaos as well, since news of a high-profile mayoral candidate's murder would definitely make the rounds at the mental hospital.
Since I've got a tendency to review things, I'll put up my review of Joker. The first half is going to be a summary, the second half is my thoughts and feelings.
Quite frankly, I cannot wait for the director's cut of this film as there is supposedly 30 minutes cut and perhaps there might be even more glorious stuff to add to this wonderful film. Something I also love about this film is that the violence in it isn't trivialized and isn't shied away from.
I honestly want this film to break 500 million at the box office so other films of that type of being hard character studies are given a look into.
Movie was legit kino and Phoenix's performance was astounding. I felt so uncomfortable and sad for him, especially with him looking so gaunt and tired. Fucking spectacular all around.
For me this was a case of a great performance in want of a great director. I felt like Phoenix was propelling the movie into the stratosphere, but Phillips just couldn’t keep up.
That’s not to say Phoenix overwhelmed the movie— it’s a very contained performance— but the film itself felt too referencial to other works rather than creating something unique. Phoenix was doing something genuine and original, that’s why the performance feels so singular; Phillips not so much, though I think the effort is clearly there. He lacks an auteurist sensibility, and this was a performance worthy of a more artful vision.
Agreed. The director seemed desperate to put his film in the company of great dramatic films like KoC and Taxi Driver, to bring gravitas to a comic book film. But copying the King of Comedy milieu was a very lazy, unoriginal way to go about it. This went miles beyond inspiration and right into plagiarizing territory.
I almost think they pitched this film as Joker meets King of Comedy meets Taxi Driver...AND DeNiro will do it for $15 mil!!!
I just have no idea why they gave this film to Phillips. He had no track record to indicate it would be a good fit - he directed light comedies only up until this film. His big hits are the Hangover series ffs. Very strange.
It could have been an original and great film if Phoenix had been paired with another director, better script. (The cinematography was alright, but I’m shocked they didn’t try to pull Micheal Chapman out of retirement so he could deliver Scorsese’s NYC universe of that era. They shamelessly got DeNiro to play the Jerry Langford role after all, so why not?)
I think Phoenix is really one of the best actors of our generation and his performance deserved better than a film that made the Joker a tribute to Rupert Pupkin
Memes aside, J*ker captured the nihilism of contemporary American society and how a primal mind free from attachment would be compelled to respond to it. A swarm of bureaucrats, uncivil masses, filth and rot everywhere. How can he be a good boy? But what this kino does that is so challenging is that it makes the doomed future into a fictional past. It already happened and we lived past it. His Gotham becomes a timeless Gothic, a menacing unknown despite its outward motifs that allow us to identify it. The specter of a rancid 80s urban decay, populated by even more disgusting denizens, revolted against by an anti-villain.
Arthur admits he has no politics, and his actions induce in him a state of elated joy, smiling and dancing despite the carnage, followed by a kind of emptiness or state of zen, where he no longer suffers nor experiences pleasure. He engages in pure action, like Arjuna, the kshatriya charioteer of the Bhagavad Gita, called to war against his own kin and fulfilling the destiny he is tasked with.
Certain blockheaded rightists denounce this kino as leftist for a variety of tropes which occur. First there is Arthur's sacred bride, his spiritual waifu. She is m*latto, but as a wise man once said, such women were made for copulation. Then there is the anarchism and anti-wealth theme. But those who have grown fat on such a wicked system should not be guarded by a right which claims to be in opposition to that system. Are we to defend the Waynes? Does Thomas really plan to save Gotham if he has maneuvered to throw his mistresses into insane asylums for risking to expose him as just another vulgar pedestrian?
Finally, J*ker goes after media and medium. Are Murray's jokes any funny? Or are they just delivered by a man with a contract and an applause sign? When they are juxtaposed with Arthur's, several times, is there really any difference? Or is the context what drives the distinction? What you see is not real, it is made real. Now yuo see.
I just have no idea why they gave this film to Phillips. He had no track record to indicate it would be a good fit - he directed light comedies only up until this film. His big hits are the Hangover series ffs. Very strange.
Bradley Cooper is executive producer on Joker and he’s got a great deal of pull at Warner— especially after delivering them A Star Is Born last year. My guess is Phillips lobbied for the project and Cooper’s involvement sold them on it. Phillips does have this as his first effort, so maybe not so surprising that he’d want to return to grungier subjects.
“The true appeal of the new "Joker" movie lies in its invidious validation of the white-male resentment that helped bring President Trump to power, writes Jeff Yang for @CNNOpinion https://t.co/WcLJUAJ7Zb”
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