The Joker movie - starring Joaquin Phoenix (MOD: May contain Spoilers)

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

A mixed bag if ever there was one... a sometimes visceral curiosity, but a curiosity nonetheless.

It does look and feel the part, even if there’s not much bubbling beneath the surface. When you hire Joaquin Phoenix you know you’re getting something good, and the man offers an intense, physical performance that while maybe not his finest work (that’d be something like The Master or You Were Never Really Here or Her - the man boasts one hell of a CV) is definitely a hell of an effort nonetheless. Just a full-on, physically gruelling performance. The film looks and sounds good for the most part - never as good as the many films it explicitly and implicitly draws influence from, but nonetheless a big step up as far as modern comic book films go. I saw it on a proper IMAX screen, and I appreciate how the camera focuses so much on Phoenix’s distorted expressions. And it does boast the sort of discordant, invasive soundtrack that has you quietly squirming throughout. It looks pretty cool throughout all round, especially since it takes a few opportunities to step beyond just being a vision of grim urban despair.

Speaking of comic book films... It seems mental to type this about a film based on one of the most iconic comic characters ever created, but bear with me a second: One of Joker’s major flaws is that it misjudges how isolated it wants to be from its comic book origins. At times this could be any grubby, bleak New York psychological character study. But the

overt references to Batman lore are neither needed nor handled well. It drags the film down in the middle act particularly, and I genuinely feel the film would have benefited from divorcing itself more completely from what came before. That we get again see the Waynes being murdered only adds to that frustration.

At worst, I think it only serves to demystify the Joker somewhat - given the character is at his very best when there’s a sense of mystery around him (like Heath Ledger’s take, with the ever-shifting, never-reliable backstories).

On the opposite side of the spectrum, it’s too hesitant to address real world issues as anything other than background colour - and this is only an issue because it wades straight into the territory.

The impromptu radical protest movement that springs up around Arthur’s action is random, nonsensical and barely explored as anything other than a series of broad slogans; actual social issues like police violence are addressed with kids’ gloves.

This film wants to be provocative, but it’s too shallow to say much of substance - a reminder that we’re firmly in the realm of mainstream studio movie. This wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t hint at this stuff - but it does, and therefore left me feeling quite unsatisfied with where they went with it (i.e. nowhere).

There’s a point explicitly referenced in the film (quite rightly) that Joker as a character is without ideology beyond chaos - but this film on the whole comes across as confused rather than artfully chaotic. This is also all compounded by the film’s rather underwhelming vision of Gotham - basically just 1970s New York, but with the odd CG enhanced building with a sign saying ‘Gotham XXXX’ on it.

The film is most effective then, as a sort of psychological spectacle film - a raw, persistently bleak portrait of a broken man being pushed over the edge into the realm of a psychopath, all done with a more cartoonish style than that type of material usually gets. It’s like Taxi Driver or King of Comedy, but defanged. While there are definite accomplishments here in that regard, there are limits too. The first act is the strongest, because that’s when you’re not quite sure what to make of everything.

I got this potent sense of everything being off kilter and not right - there was clearly a murky line between Arthur’s reality and Arthur’s fantasy. I think the film sadly goes too far in making those blurred lines overt - the big neighbour reveal IMO would have worked much better had they not slotted in those flashbacks to underscore the point. The unreliable narrator aspect is basically a really good idea - initially handled well, but just becomes rather less effective as the movie travels towards its final destination.

There’s also a busyness here that you usually see in messy first features or overindulgent sophomoric ones, even though this is neither. The film has four or five different strands going throughout - this means it’s unfocused, but again not in an artfully chaotic way that would befit the character. Instead there’s a sense of interesting subplots battling for space, and key ideas can be pushed to the side for reasonably long stretches before feeling somewhat under explored.

It’s not a bad film, but it’s far from a great one - often pleasing in the moment, but frustrating as a whole. Todd Phillips isn’t Lynn Ramsey or Martin Scorsese, and for the superficial similarities to other, better works there’s just not the depth here to push it to another level. Don’t get me wrong: I’d take this over pretty much any other comic book movie of the past half decade (Spiderverse, as ever, excluded). It’s pushing in the right direction, and lower budget (although let’s not pretend for a second this DC, Warner Bros film based on an iconic character is an underdog ) oddities are a better idea than dozens of virtually identical hyper-blockbusters. But if movies like this want to play in the same territory as some giants of modern cinema, they’re going to be held to the same standard. Joker is, in that respect, an interesting failure.