Dir. Todd Phillips
It’s here- one of the most controversial comic book movies to date has finally arrived in theaters and despite the ongoing debate and Todd Phillips trying his best to alienate the audience, it is breaking October box office records as I write this. It accumulated tons of buzz at film festivals and people have been calling for Best Actor and Best Picture nominations for weeks- the trouble is, it’s not that good it just dresses the part.
Before going into the weaknesses of the movie, I will give credit to its obvious strengths. For one thing, it’s so darn pretty and nice to look at. The camera work was interesting, they played with the lighting in imaginative ways and on the whole it just had a strong artistic voice. It’s so stylish I would happily watch it again on mute.
And despite whatever behind the scenes dramatics that may have taken place- I can’t fault Joaquin Phoenix’s performance. He’s captivating. The camera is on him for at least 90% of the movie and he carries every minute of it. But it made me wish he was playing the joker in a comic book movie that’s proud of the title and its source material rather than someone’s original script with the name Joker slapped on. I think we really just scratched the surface on what his joker could have been if he’d actually had someone to bounce off of.
Speaking of behind the scenes nonsense, it was apparently Joaquin’s idea to lose an insane amount of weight, He lost 52 lbs in a two month span, effectively giving himself an eating disorder and lasting psychological symptoms for an emaciated look that could have been created digitally. (Josh Hutcherson in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay says hello.) I’ve seen talk that these extraordinary measures are part of why he should be in the Oscars conversation but all that does is reward sensational and potentially dangerous acting methods rather than the acting itself.
As I said earlier, the performance was extremely engaging and a joy to watch but it had nothing to do with the way the camera delighted in showing me every ridge of his spine. Also his spindliness made some of his more physical acts look a bit ridiculous unless Arthur’s superpower is the ability to channel his crazy into physical strength. The man looks like a medium gust of wind would send him flying but he’s manhandling people in a way that’s just not believable.
But the aesthetic excellence of Joker is essentially the depth of the excellence. Under the candy coating it was basically a cinematic Mr. Robot without the time to really develop the universe. There were multiple attempts at “social commentary” that didn’t get any time to breathe, criss crossing and running over each other until the only one left standing is “everyone ignored me until I got a gun and got to murdering, now I’m important”. It’s fairly self-evident why that’s a problematic message when we’re constantly seeing people commit violent atrocities for their day in the headlines.
However before its gun happy finale the movie attempts to cover class warfare, the lack of resources given to the mentally ill, as well as their alienation and societal mistreatment. All of which are very real issues but are portrayed in a two-dimensional way that only serves to make this movie seem deeper than it is.
*Very mild spoilers ahead* Thomas Wayne is the awkwardly shoe-horned in representative of the 1% who calls everyone who doesn’t like rich people clowns and thus encourages the clown mask protests and riots seen in the trailer. But the idea of the clown as a symbol of resistance against the rich just appears with very little explanation. Arthur’s actions somehow incite a political revolution in about a week’s time but the movie skips all the steps between the two. *mild spoilers over*
The movie suffered from an excess of telling over showing in terms of world building. There’s multiple scenes where characters commiserate over “what it’s like out there” in Gotham but aside from some truly grungy train graffiti you don’t really get shown what that means. I get the intent but I don’t like having to fill in the blanks myself. Especially considering we need to believe that Gotham is living on such a razor’s edge that after one push, thousands are willing to gather to support the Joker.
Arthur denies multiple times that he has any kind of political agenda but his rant at the end of the movie proves that he does. He rages against the people who’d walk by him if he was dead on the street but mourns the rich because another rich man says to. He’s a paragon of disenfranchisement and there’s nothing wrong with depicting him as so except for the troubling message that his sense of self and validation finally came from pulling a trigger.
Overall, I think this movie didn’t take advantage of the Joker name. Much is being said about how this is “a different kind of comic book movie” but because of that it ignores the vast range of creative possibilities. To point out the obvious, GUNS. ARE. BORING. Not to say the Joker has never used a gun because that’s of course not true, but for this iconic chaotic evil character to be just as lethal as any middle-aged white guy with a gun takes a lot of the fun out of it. The Joker is a show man, who enjoys the performance as much as the violence. Even in this movie, Arthur is prone to dramatics. So why give him a plain old gun? In making this film so “grounded”, an even greater disconnect between the name of the character and his actions in the film is created. (Not to divert the focus too much on comparisons, but the Birds of Prey trailer played right before the movie started so it’s hard to ignore- Harley has a pet hyena and blows up a car with a cartoon stick of dynamite at the end. She’s still doing a murder- but with pizzazz.)
If the second half of this movie had been the beginning of a Batman movie, with some adjustments, I think I could have loved it. Some guy calling himself the Joker does [redacted for spoilers] on live TV and gets sent to Arkham Asylum. He’s there a couple of years before he breaks out in a scene resembling the one at the end of the film, and in the time he’s been locked up he’s developed an extreme fascination with the newly emerged caped crusader. But that would be a proper comic book movie and this version of the Joker is too ashamed of it’s comic book identity to use it to its highest potential. This film would rather be a Scorsese/Mr.Robot rip-off that has all the set dressing of an Oscar-bait movie but with none of the creativity and intrigue that makes the IP it’s co-opting so well-loved.