Film Review: 'Joker'
- Cizonite
- Oct 8, 2019
- 6 min read
The origin of Joker is upon us.
Context.
I'll paint you the time period this film was released, to understand all the controversy for the readers some years on:
We're living in times of disruption. A tweet, a line of dialogue, a speech, an ad,...anything can be a sensitive topic for discussion and often times, vitriol. I remember a few years ago when the world couldn't get enough of Harlem Shake or Gangnam Style, using online platforms as a means of entertainment, rather than a combustible shotgun.
With films, especially mainstream films, it's becoming harder to please everyone. Disney seemingly has the perfect formula, a checklist if I may: cultural representation for superheroes; a "female-empowerment" scene, no matter how forced and inorganic it may seem; no hard R-rated films; broad humor for even the most common denominator to understand,...You get the idea. But even Disney can have their missteps: James Gunn (almost) lost the director gig for Guardians 3 after his decade-old tweets resurfaced; Toy Story 4 drew ire for the 'Forky mental illness' storyline; whatever Star Wars' fans thought of The Last Jedi,...
'Joker' premiered at the 76th Venice International Film Festival with considerable fanfare after impeccably crafted teasers and an ingenious marketing campaign. The film went on to win the prestigious 'Golden Lion', and hype went into overdrive. But nearing its release, raging backlash and controversy dogged the film's conversation, damning it for its supposed inspiring and incitement of real-life violence amongst the incel community.
Context over.
Was Joker a "triggering of anti-capitalist, anti-rich movement"? No.
Was Joker correctly heralded as 'the greater danger to society may be if you don’t see this movie'? No.
Was Joker a well-made, well-structured, semi-ambitious, but ultimately fictional work-of-art? Absolutely.
Joaquin Phoenix
There's a lot to love about this film, but it would be for nothing without Joaquin Phoenix's transformative, mesmerizing, slightly-overacted turn as Arthur Fleck. A man with a pathological illness to laugh at inopportune times, disregarded by society, Phoenix immerses in the character to a horrifying fault, and it is through his embodiment that we ultimately empathize with the Clown Prince of Crime, despite his horrid actions and chaotic incitements.
The film is nary a moment not told through Arthur's perspective, with Phoenix being on-screen at all times, and he is relentless in intensity and tenacity, showing off every ounce of his acting gauntlet on-screen, sometimes even on a crudely unsubtle level that still meshes well with Arthur's persona and slim physique. Arthur's laughing throughout, a painful laughter, and in no way are you laughing with him.
But when Phoenix transforms into Joker, he is the Joker. With the stride of a man in control and eyes brighter than fireworks on the 4th of July, he is the one who will shoot the blazing gun and laugh.
Phoenix is a proven leading-man: His turn in 'Her', 'The Master' and 'You Were Never Really Here' had already cemented his legacy as a fascinatingly offbeat and multi-talented actor, preferring to take on distorted characters and unconventional career choices (most notably his retirement from acting, give it a read, it's fascinating) rather than breaking into the studio mold. With Joker, he delivers his best mainstream turn, establishing himself as the actor of the moment, piercing zeitgeist in a way only Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. had been able to do with Titanic and Iron Man respectively, and this could may well be his to lose come Oscar night.
For his performance alone, Joker is a must-watch.
Art Direction - Cinematography - Score
The film features arguably career-best work from production designer Mark Friedberg ('The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou', 'Synedoche, New York') and cinematographer Lawrence Sher ('The Hangover'), who both outdid themselves with the gorgeous, downtrodden landscape of Gotham.
It is always said, that besides Batman and Joker, Gotham is the most prominent character in the Batverse. Both Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan have designed great, gritty takes on arguably the most well-known fictional city in mainstream media, but their visions have always lacked a certain 'dirtiness', despite Nolan's more grounded approach to the superhero: their Gothams never felt alive, as if a vigilante dressed as a bat could actually, plausibly pay their dues there.
Todd Phillips' Gotham is as real as it gets: A city coming alive in each frame, you are subtly imprinted upon the impression of New York, what with its jazz-cornered dime stores, retro aesthetic, low-lit midnight comedy clubs, run-down apartments and a cold, bruising color palette (a shoutout to the film's color-grading: it's spectacular). Sher used long lenses to capture the city's glory and blurry depth-of-field on the background when Arthur is on screen, a great technique to highlight his distance and seclusion from his surroundings. Coupled with Friedberg's dizzying set design and brilliant on-location camerawork, and you have a sickeningly pleasing film to look at.
Sticking with the 'realism' of Joker's origin, Gotham is lived-in, with corrupt politicians and a society on the brink of collapse, prompted by one man's act of random violence, which subsequently turns into a symbol for defiance and uprising. It's highly reminiscent of such scenes nowadays in Charlotte, Chicago, New York,...in this divisive political turmoil, which Joker neither encourages or prohibits: It's a representation, not a propaganda film.
And the film's score. Major props to Todd Phillips and Hildur Guðnadóttir for collectively deciding to score the film based on the script, rather than the edit, helping the film's overall lived-in feel. The result is an arousing orchestra for the ages, one that you simply have to experience.
Script - Story
The film tackles many issues, including, but not limited to: mental illness, child adoption, child protection, gun violence, identity crisis, political riots, class debates,... It's trying very hard to be the "it" movie of the moment, to be the center of every conversation in every debate in media. In some respect, it certainly succeeded in creating controversy and conversation; as a movie, though, it did not.
Structure-wise, the script is well-written: provocative dialogue might dilute the film's subtlety points to bar-none, but we buy into Arthur's descent. It's brilliantly structured: it's a film where you can follow and believe each step that Arthur steps down to. You can pinpoint where it all went wrong, you see why it went wrong, you see why "the wrong was actually right", and Arthur's character development was actually served with meticulous plotting.
Suffering from its own identity crisis, Joker aspires to be a gritty, pre-modern take on a man's descent into madness, corrupted by his own society, something in the veins of 'Taxi Driver', which it draws heavy, and I mean heavy, inspiration from. But whereas Taxi Driver benefitted from a nuanced story aimed at standing as a film, Joker is weighed down in its quest of finding the villain in Arthur, by trying to be a statement.
Todd Phillips handling of the film's message and throughline conjured all the sensitivity of a combatted edgelord rather than the masterfully deliberate harshness of Martin Scorsese. The director is trying too hard, reveling in the film's buzz validation and "it" factor to actually surpass what Joker inherently is: a work of fiction.
I couldn't stress how impromptu Joker feels, well-structured as it may be. It's made all the more evident in many of the films' discontinued shot selections and wild camera movements during certain scenes. Arthur's dance in the bathroom, for example, should have been a goosebumps-inducing moment; instead, the camera's scattershot nature robbed Phoenix of his Oscar reel.
The film wanted what it couldn't have. It shied away from "crossing the line" to actually warrant anything worth of substance, but plays with it just enough to surround itself with controversy: the subway scene that propped Arthur's journey of violence, for example, works well as a tipping point, but in the end, where it was also the 'shocking' revelation, felt unearned, merely serving as a plot device for the city's uprising, rather than a catalyst for Joker's metamorphosis.
The last 15 minutes of the movie is truly its most glorious achievement, yet its worst downfall: you wouldn't believe for a second that any of that could happen, breaking Joker's momentum entirely. The film loses you in going back to its origin: being a superhero movie.
In 'Taxi Driver', we understood what Travis Bickle wanted to become: a symbol. In Joker, Arthur Fleck warranted the same dream. It's just not as believable
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Overall: B
Despite its flawed script and Todd Phillips' overbearing direction, Joker still succeeds in being a rich character study and overall intriguing film, unquantifiably propelled by Joaquin Phoenix's volcanic performance, one that the film simply didn't deserve.
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