Friday, October 4, 2019

Review: Joker

There is no punchline. 
I can't recall another film that's received a lot of heat before it came out due to the main character being a very popular villain in pop culture like the Joker.  I have no doubts that once the audiences see it over the weekend it'll get everyone talking about it especially those like me who were reserving their judgement until the film came out. Media outlets have already given out warnings that the film is dangerous and might influence certain groups of people to start mass shootings. To be frank, the talk around the film since before it came out made me feel like I've already seen it because of all the controversy surrounding it. People's fears are justifiable but one can't help but feel that this applies more to American audiences because of their history in mass shootings. Joker stars Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Douglas Hodges and Dante Periera-Olson and directed by Todd Phillips. A failed stand-up comedian Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) walks the streets of Gotham City looking for connection, bullied and rejected Fleck slowly descends into madness and murder which ushers in his ascension as Gotham's Clown Prince of Crime.

Gotham City in 1981












1981. Gotham City; dirty, messy and just generally awful to live in particularly for those less fortunate with super rats infesting the city as Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) announces he's running for mayor to solve the city's problems. Arthur Fleck is one of the unfortunate residents of Gotham who works as a party clown, he suffers from a condition that involuntarily makes him laugh, and outside of work he takes care of his ailing mother Penny Fleck (Frances Conroy) who previously worked for the Wayne family thirty years ago. Arthur finds solace in Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), a comedian and host of Live! with Murray Franklin and sees Franklin as a hero of his while he's just trying to get through the day.

Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck
I thought the movie had it's strong moments but nearly all of them come off particularly wrong that by the second act of the film you already come to dislike Arthur. The script by Todd Phillips and Scott Silver tries hard to tell us something about how society treats people with mental illness and each other but all it does is point fingers on those who are to blame and all of them are nearly blamed (for the most part) on women in the form of his mother Penny Fleck, and his apartment neighbor Sophie (Zazie Beetz) who's a single mother and even the social worker assigned by the city's social services. The direction by Phillips is decent albeit trying to go for the early-Scorsese directed films in atmosphere, but you wonder if he should've left the script entirely to Silver or anyone else because it honestly made me cringe in certain parts especially when the Joker goes on a rant in the climax. It's a film that doesn't know what it wants to be but I'll give the credit to Phillips who I feel wrote most of the dark humor in the film.

Arthur in his party clown costume.

The film does feature a great performance by Joaquin Phoenix who for the first time in years wasn't mumbling his lines but speaks them all with clarity and seems to have developed an impulse to do yoga in unexpected places for the film and a cackle. The supporting cast led by Robert De Niro are frankly wasted, they are only there to serve the story as the reason as to why Fleck embraces his Joker persona. Phoenix is no doubt in the current lead for Best Actor during next year's Oscar race along with the haunting original score by the Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir who recently won this year's Emmy for Best Original Score in a Limited Series for her work in HBO's Chernobyl. Once Fleck turns to a life of crime and sheds his skin becoming the Clown Prince there's absolutely no sign left of him anywhere, only the Joker while accompanied by Guðnadóttir's score the scene becomes even more disturbing and unsettling. The cinematography by Lawrence Sher is gloomy, but it doesn't nearly feel or look as overly color-graded as most of the DC films (the movie isn't part of the DCEU by the way) but it's well-lit and goes well with the costumes by Mark Bridges that feel like they were inspired heavily by the comic books. The production values outside the ones I mentioned are all well-done since the atmosphere felt absolutely believable but the final product reminds me of how David Benioff and D.B. Weiss handled Game of Thrones when the show started going downhill. 

It's only the Joker now.

Despite it all, one wonders if the movie was doomed to be what it is in the first place; numb, hallow, empty and distressing since that's pretty much the character, it's exactly how I felt when I had a Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) episode even with the performance by Phoenix and the very competent artisans like Guðnadóttir. The Joker might be pop culture's most iconic villain but this movie wasn't needed and I don't think there will ever be a time when it will be.

2 1/2 stars.

2 comments:

  1. Yes! Finally someone who agrees about Phoenix mumbling. Jesus, he just exists on screen in most of his movies and people praise this as great acting. The film looks pretentious and boring to me tbh.

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    1. I like Phoenix in his early stuff but the recent one I saw of his was 'You Were Never Really Here' and I just can't understand what he's saying so I had to turn on the subtitles lol. I'm not gonna lie, first time I saw it I felt like I was watching a farce.

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