RANK: #3 |
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JOKER
2019, R, 118 mins. Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck / Joker / Zazie Beetz as Sophie Dumond / Robert De Niro as Murray Franklin / Brett Cullen as Thomas Wayne / Frances Conroy as Penny Fleck / Douglas Hodge as Alfred Pennyworth / Shea Whigham as GCPD Detective / Marc Maron as Ted Marco Directed by Todd Phillips / Written by Phillips and Scott Silver |
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I needed time after screening JOKER to process all of its limitless complexities. I resisted the urge to review it immediately after seeing it, mostly because I was still decompressing from it...even days later. This is one of the most talked about films - in terms of pre and post release coverage - in recent memory, and one that has deeply polarized the media, critics, and fans alike (I'll deep dive into that in a bit). With all of the
smoke cleared I feel confident in just swinging for the fences by saying
that JOKER is definitely one of the most dread inducing and depressingly
disturbing films in a long while, and one that intimately and
unflinchingly chronicles the journey of one damaged man's descent into
unbridled madness. The film
is not easy to watch, to be sure, but it's most definitely a masterstroke
work in a very overstuffed comic book film genre that needs - at this
stage in the game - a jolt out of creative lethargy. To even call this
a comic book film is almost misleading.
It's almost more psychological horror.
In fairness, JOKER is a solo, alternate take origin film of
Batman's greatest and most famous arch nemesis (occurring outside of the
current and ever changing DC Cinematic Universe), showcasing who he really
is, where he came from, and how he came to become the Clown Prince of
Crime. This is not a Batman
movie, nor is Batman even in it (well...sort of), but rather an expose on
the inception of the Joker persona from fairly humble, but troubled
beginnings. There are easy
arguments to be levied that the character is more compelling as a cipher, and that knowing less about him makes him a more
endlessly compelling agent of bloody chaos.
JOKER wholeheartedly and successfully argues the opposite, and key
to its pioneering approach is how it breaks this character down from
ground up and daringly redefines him in ways that are both hypnotic and
difficult to casually cast aside. Perhaps even more intoxicating is how it cements Joker in a
period setting (in its case, the early 1980s) that also manages to speak
towards a lot of societal ills and class divide that feels scarily topical
today. For a comic book film
to be as simultaneously frightening and eliciting thought and discussion
about its ideas is to JOKER's credit. Even to call this
film JOKER is questionable. The
makeup covered and green haired dyed sociopath doesn't appear in full form
until the film's final sections, and beforehand we see the man behind this
villainous facade and his journey into the abyss.
JOKER opens with an introduction to perhaps the most dilapidated
and grittily real iteration of Gotham City the movies has ever seen.
It's 1981 and the city has become embroiled in a massive sanitation
worker's strike, leading to seemingly every single street corner being
literally covered in piled up garbage.
Gotham is a metropolis of decay, with no apparent hope for
improvement to come. It also serves as the home for ex-Arkham State Hospital
mental patient Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), who is a heavily medicated,
emaciated, and thoroughly unhealthy lower class man struggling to make
ends meet as a clown-for-hire. He
lives with his sicker, approaching death mother, Penny (Francis Conroy), who spends a majority of her bed ridden days watching her
favorite late night talk show comedian/host Murray Franklin (Robert De
Niro) and fanatically penning letters to her ex-employer in Thomas Wayne
(Brett Cullen), whom she may or may not have had...shall we say...a beyond
professional relationship with. Thomas
is father of Bruce, who eventually will become...you know who. Arthur himself
also worships Franklin and his show with a passion, fanaticizing about
becoming a stand-up comedian and eventually making it on his program as a
guest. There are a few problems
that hurt his chances: (1) He's verbally and physically accosted on a
daily basis at his clown day job, making him unstable, (2) he suffers from
a debilitating aliment that causes him to laugh at the most inopportune
moments and (3) he's simply not talented or funny enough.
He tries to find some solace from his misery by taking an interest
in one of his rundown apartment building's neighbors in Sophie (DEADPOOL
2's Zazie Beetz). Unfortunately
for poor Arthur, any chance of sustained happiness hopelessly eludes him,
and when society has humiliatingly pummeled
him to the ground one to many times, he snaps and puts one foot forward
down a path to uncontrollable lunacy, with multiple dark detours to come. One thing about
JOKER that stands out within minutes of it starting is how gorgeously
produced this film is at every level.
With a lean and mean budget of just $55 million (which probably
wouldn't have covered the catering on the last AVENGERS
blockbuster), JOKER looks consummately polished, lavish, and expensive on
the cheap, thanks largely to Lawrence Sher's sepia and cold toned
cinematography that evokes a city of yesteryear that feels both familiar
and new at the same time (using the old school Warner Brothers logo intro
to open the film is a nice vintage touch as well).
JOKER is also a film that wears its cinematic influences on its
sleeves, but without feeling aggressively slavish to them.
There's definite narrative and stylistic echoes of Martin
Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER and, perhaps to a larger extent, THE KING OF COMEDY
(both of which featured De Niro, who appears not-to-coincidentally here).
Married to that is the film's swift cavalcade of comic book Easter
Eggs and references, which helps round out JOKER's eclectic aesthetic
package. I almost forgot
to mention that JOKER was co-written and directed by Todd Phillips, who
made a career for himself making low brow R-rated comedies like ROAD TRIP
and THE HANGOVER trilogy.
Very little on his resume would ever hint that he is confident or
competent enough to helm a film this mature, unsettling, and nihilistic.
It's a pretty astounding 180 degree turn for the filmmaker, but he
absolutely demonstrates that he has the stuff to make it as a serious
dramatic auteur. Virtuoso
direction aside, Phillips and his screenwriter partner Scott Silver
understand the importance of giving their titular character an origin
narrative that's cruelly believable as a character study, and all while
showing some connective tissue with the larger Batman comic book mythology
as a whole (which is unavoidable in a film like this).
But, make no mistake about it...this is Joker's film...and
no one else's. I've run out of
superlatives over the years to describe the rich variety of Phoenix's
roles and performances, and the Oscar nominated actor, no doubt, has a
mightily large shadow cast over him here playing a role that has been made
iconic in nearly a century's worth of comics as well as on the silver
screen, with actors like Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger putting their
immortal stamp on the character (with the latter posthumously winning an
Academy Award for his work on THE DARK
KNIGHT). Thanklessly
and miraculously, Phoenix manages to make this iteration of the Joker feel
wholeheartedly unique and fresh, especially in the sense that he fully
commits himself to portraying the character's alter ego in Arthur as a man
severely beaten down into an emotionally scarred pulp (he dropped 50
pounds to plausibly inhabit the frame of this sickly man). But when Arthur's downfall into lunacy completely takes hold
Phoenix unleashes himself in the dangerously charming, but sadistically
unstable monster that's unpredictably capable of anything.
Phoenix finds the wounded humanity of Arthur while later harnessing
this future maniac's rage, which makes JOKER so thoroughly squirm inducing
throughout; he has never been so hauntingly mesmerizing in a film. All of this, yes,
brings me to the avalanche of pre-release controversy that has been levied
on the film for months, mostly coming in the form that JOKER is too
sadistically violent and that it props up this serial killer as some sort
of hero that could inspire certain viewers to copycat his extremes.
On a level of violence, JOKER is indeed graphic, for sure, but it
never wallows in rampant bloodshed, nor does it even have a body count
that would come close to rivaling other comic book and action films.
Plus, it never glosses over its violence and uses it for
sensationalistic effect. The
few deaths that Arthur is directly guilty of here have a shocking, stomach
churning immediacy, but it's never glorified for cheap titillation.
We've had so many sanitized PG-13 super hero epics that feature
thousands upon thousands of humans being murdered (DC and Marvel are both
guilty of this), but those deaths happen on the sidelines and fringes, are
rarely ever shown in any detail, and dramatically mean nothing.
Here, Joker's kills feel like a nightmarish and realistic
by-product of his unraveling psyche. When people die in this
film...you sickeningly feel it. The violence is
shocking here, but there are attempts to at least comment on the whys of
these depraved acts, which helps erode the more fear mongering criticism
that JOKER is a dangerous movie that makes it killer a sympathetic
anti-hero. Arthur is
absolutely a figure worthy of deep pity early in the film, and we are made
to feel sorry for him. But
when he completes his journey into becoming Joker it's clear that Phillips
and company are never once condoning his choices or sadism.
If anything, there's so much more thematically going on under the
hood of this film that's never seeing the light of day in media headlines,
like how JOKER works as a cautionary parable and speaks towards of the
ever widening gap between the haves and have nots and how the rich and
powerful of Gotham (including Thomas Wayne) have all but turned their
backs on the poor and sick, leaving their city as a whole fractured,
divided, and dangerously unstable, fostering a climate that allows for the
making of monsters like Arthur's Joker.
The film becomes an indictment of a lack of available social
services and mental health support systems, which has eerie parallels to
our world of today. Granted,
that doesn't fit neatly on a click bait headline copy as easily as
"JOKER is Dangerous, Controversial, and Violent!"...details at
11. All while watching JOKER I was reminded of something that Oliver Stone once said: "Films have to be subversive in order for them to be any good, because they force you to look for and ask hard questions that don't have simple and easily defined answers." In an age when oh-so-many comic book blockbusters offer up perfunctory VFX heavy spectacle, the fact that JOKER - for as difficult as it is to sit through and take in - is actually about something that compels debate and reflection is pretty groundbreaking for the genre, when you think about it. And the genre needs more films of JOKER's ilk to mature and evolve, even if it means driving a hypodermic needle into its heart to wake it up to transcend and subvert tired formulas. This film ventures into the darkest psychological underbelly than any other modern comic book effort has, but Phillips and DC deserve props for taking multiple creative risks that have handsomely paid off. It's pretty clear now that the DC film universe is no longer a laughing matter. |
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