Joker – 4 out of 5
When I heard DC wanted to do an origin story for the Joker I was open-minded about it. Did I have faith that Warner Bros. and DC would make it good? Not really. When the trailer for Todd Phillips’ Joker arrived, I was very captivated by it and definitely wanted to see the exploration of the mentally insane villain. However, then came the toxic DC fans…between the ones who define their adulthood by watching R-rated films to the Edgelords who salivated at the thought of getting to act like an edgy douche over this film, my desire to see the film diminished. Then came Marc Maron’s childish trolling. He has a small role in this film and it came after he spent nearly two weeks on his podcast talking about how comic book films are garbage and the people who enjoy them are a bunch of stunted babies desperately grasping to their youths and not growing up. Well, Maron took to Twitter to act like he wasn’t a huge hypocrite for taking the role and acted like this film was the exception because “it was for adults.” Basically Maron became one of those toxic DC fans. And then came Todd Phillips playing the victim about our progressive society and says he can’t make comedies anymore because of “PC Culture.” Then came the fans who started calling in threats of violence with the film premiering and causing uproars in the theaters and it finally became all too much and I said that I’m not going to bother because there’s just too much shittiness gravitating and orbiting this film. However, my brother in law wanted to hangout and asked if I would see it so I agreed—because the company was more important than the film. With this long intro being said, I found the film intriguing and well-made but lacking in many areas that makes it kinda/sorta a huge steaming pile of shit. Yeah, my feelings on this one are very, VERY complicated.
 |
| Warner Bros. Pictures True to the source material. Who can forget the Joker's love of dancing on stairs? |
Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is trying to make it as a standup comic and a party clown in Gotham City in the early 80s. He lives an impoverished life with his elderly mother (Frances Conroy) while the city spirals into a world of crime. Fleck, suffering from a mental disorder, starts to become unhinged after he’s a victim of assault, his mother suffers a stroke and he becomes a laughing stock when footage of a standup set gone wrong ends up on a late-night television show hosted by Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). The result of all this leads to him breaking and descending into madness and becoming the fuse that ignites riots and violence in the city as he becomes the poster child for the disenfranchised and forgotten.
 |
| Warner Bros. Pictures He's also the poster boy for beating up aliens with a baseball bat and glasses of water. |
As I stated earlier, I have complicated and complex feelings toward Joker. On one hand, I think it is a very interesting exploration of an iconic comic book character whom, usually, doesn’t have a very concise or coherent backstory but, on the other hand, I think it is a sloppy exploration of mental illness that kinda/sorta feels like a weak subversion of the male Boomer vigilante fantasy—basically, it feels like a poorly constructed version of Death Wish but having racism be replaced with mental illness and class inequality. Overall, I really liked the film and found it an impressive piece of work but when this film hits the low points, it hits them very, very hard.
 |
| Warner Bros. Pictures Well, at the very least, this film made me forget about Jared Leto's awful portrayal of the Joker. |
Visually, the film looks terrific as it is capable of actually feeling gritty without the desperation of looking gritty like other DC films have been (looking at you, Snyder). The pacing has a tremendous flow to it where it never feels like it is moving too fast nor dragging when it needs to slow down for development purposes. Finally, the performance from Phoenix is absolutely incredible. He was capable of finding the right level to be at and what spectrum he needed to align himself with to best suit the scene. When you need to feel empathy towards Fleck, he knew how to appear as a legit victim and when he needs to be unsettling and outright frightening, he nailed that with absolute perfection.
 |
| Warner Bros. Pictures It's fitting to have De Niro in the film since it is trying so blatantly hard to be Taxi Driver. |
One of the issues I had was with how the more ambiguous moments played out. There are times in the story where what Fleck is going through may not be as it seems and may be figments of his imagination. These moments sometimes feel superfluous and a touch tacked on as they aren’t prevalent enough to really be a part of his character. The sloppy presentation of this dynamic too also presents ending moments that are very much up in the air. Due to the use of this ambiguity—almost an ambiguous use of ambiguity—you aren’t quite sure when or where it is being used and whether or not this was intended by Phillips or is just poor filmmaking. So, when the bigger moments of the ending happen and the film is reaching its close, I found myself wondering if I was seeing an ending that was intentionally ambiguous or just the product of a wonky storytelling. This ends up being a double-edged sword because if the ending is, in fact, ambiguous, it is a tremendous ending that allows the viewer their own interpretation of Fleck’s life-altering moments (or allow DC fans to get all Edgelord-y about the Joker possibly being portrayed as a Christ-like figure but I’ll get to that in a moment) but if it is just terrible filmmaking then it is incredibly frustrating.
 |
| Warner Bros. Pictures Perhaps Trump's America where literal Nazis are making a comeback isn't the best time to release a film where a psychotic villain is portrayed as a hero to the downtrodden. |
The final problem I had with the film is the overall feeling that the movie is occasionally weaponizing mental health issues and too often giving the hero treatment to the Joker. I’m not against the concept of an anti-hero and I understand this isn’t the comic book version of the Joker but the story has a tendency to treat his violence like it is a heroic thing. The story involves the entire city of Gotham coming to see him as a hero for the downtrodden and, as a concept, this is workable but it also neglects one of the major defining attributes of the Joker: He thrives on chaos, destruction and death. At times, it feels like his actions are leaning in this direction but then this feeling is often undone by the film, very unambiguously, calling him a hero to the city. Phillips even goes as far as providing some Christ-like images to sell this and ended up making this potentially working aspect feel very problematic. This issue can easily be resolved thanks to the production’s questionable ambiguity over whether or not the events are occurring as Fleck sees them but there was still no denying the overall uncomfortable feeling I had with seeing the Joker set up as a person of worship for the more toxic members of the fandom.
 |
| Warner Bros. Pictures The true origin of the Joker. He stepped on a LEGO piece and lost it. |
I’m of two minds with Joker because on one hand I found an incredibly well-made film with an amazing performance that explores an iconic DC villain from a different perspective but, on the other hand, I see a story that handles its subject material in an uneven way and presents a story that can be interrupted in a too ambiguous fashion and can motivate the wrong people in the wrong ways. I won’t go as far to say I loved the film but I won’t say I completely loathed it either. Overall, I found it to be an interesting and engaging feature but one that is being absorbed into a demographic that isn’t mature or insightful enough to handle the story and subject material.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar