joker (w&d todd phillips, w. scott silver)

So, just to follow the thread. The Joker came out, was lauded, was a box office smash, then came the backlash. Bradshaw in the Guardian really has it in for it: “a shallow, ugly, boorish film”. I missed it when it came out, and sometimes it’s better not to catch a movie until the froth of the hype is over and done with. Given its box office success (apparently close to breaking $1billon) and given the backlash, I went out of a sense of duty more than anything else. I am firmly in the Scorsese camp when it comes to the Superhero franchises, a genre which holds about as much appeal as a Brazilian soap opera. So I wasn’t expecting much. The film started and there was some neat retro footage of New York, an understated chase sequence, some evocative titles. Sad protagonist with sick mother was kind of predictable and for a while it felt like I was watching You Were Never Really There all over again. Then came the implausible romance, which was curious, and all the time this slow, increasingly compelling narrative build. Who is the Joker? Is he hero or anti-hero? When the Bruce Wayne character appears the answer to that question still wasn’t clear, to the script’s credit. This character, sure he’s got a bit of De Niro in him, but more than that, he’s got a lot of Mersault, or someone out of Cannetti’s Auto da Fe, and gradually the power of Phoenix’s performance began to crystallise into something extraordinary, something that isn’t De Niro at all, it’s far closer to Dean or Zbigniew Cybulski or Kinski. And it began to dawn on me that this director, Todd Phillips, whose credits include The Hangover (parts 1,2&3) and, get this - Starsky and Hutch, the 2004 movie - was making what in the good old days they called an “art movie”. Not only was he making an art movie, he has also somehow convinced $1billion worth of audience to pay up to see his art movie.  

And yes, it’s also completely zeitgeist. It flips the tedious Batman narrative on its head. The ersatz strong guy is in fact a bastard. This is a movie about a country that can elect Trump, (or Johnson), one that can be manipulated by the media like zombies. It’s Jungle of the Cities or Drums in the Night, as we wait for the sheeple to finally be snapped out of it by some masked anarchic joker.  That’s the reason the film has resonated. It’s not the narrative beats. This is a slow, lumbering film, which glories in a cello score (kudos to Hildur Guðnadóttir) and a downbeat grade. The violence is actually restrained (three incidents), it’s earned and it’s cathartic. Above all it’s a film that creates a platform for the finest actor of his generation to remind us that great screen acting is something that should be dredged up from the depths, from a place deep inside, the darklands of the mad, the vain and the brilliant.