Not that the Joker really needs an origin story. There's no real way to get from a recognisable human being to the supervillain we all know and love (aside from Tim Burton's first Batman, but that was Jack Nicholson from beginning to end) and this doesn't even really try to reach that particular end point. This is the story of a regular, if disadvantaged, guy who eventually just gives up and decides to get violent; King of Comedy is the Scorsese film everyone's pointing towards as a touchstone but director Todd Phillips has put a heck of a lot of Taxi Driver in here too.
Sub-par party clown Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is struggling in early 80s Gotham City. He's bad at his job, he has a mental issue that causes him to burst out in inappropriate laughter, his dreams of being a stand-up comic aren't exactly supported by his performances, and as the city increasingly teeters on the edge of chaos his problems only get worse. But that only puts him ahead of the curve; after an impromptu act of vigilante violence makes him - well, the clown that people saw - a symbol of the building anger against the crumbling status quo, the question is, will this beat-down "Joker" cast aside any sense of right and wrong he once had and seize the day?
With the Scorsese influence loud and clear early on, and a lot of the actual Joker material lifted from the comics (between this and Batman vs Superman, about 80% of Frank Miller's classic The Dark Knight Returns comic has made its way onto the screen) and earlier films, this occasionally feels like a greatest hits compilation of elements from an earlier age this film is trying to transport across to the new, superhero-only era of cinema. But that's not automatically a bad thing.
For one, seeing a superhero movie commit so hard to realism - or at least, a heightened realism that stresses the grimy, physical side of things 70s cinema style - is something new. DC at the movies has constantly been looking to find a way to counter the slick family-friendly flash of Marvel / Disney (in much the same way as in the mid 80s DC Comics managed to break Marvel's X-Men led death grip on the comics industry with "grim & gritty" deconstructions of the superhero such as Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns), and this is definitely their most concerted push in that direction yet.
So Marvel couldn't make this movie; would they even want to? The DC Comic plan worked in the 80s because audiences were growing up and flashy superhero soap operas suddenly felt childish compared to serious takes on costumed characters. These days the idea of "growing up" as far as entertainment choices go is openly mocked; anything without a core of relentless optimism is considered too dark for our dark times. Entertainment, it seems, shouldn't reflect what's going on, it should be an escape from it, because reflecting whats going on only encourages the people who see themselves reflected.
On the other hand, Marvel is just fine with Captain Marvel basically being a hoo-rah commercial for the US military, so exactly where you come down on a movie showing people rioting in the streets because their wealthy leaders are openly mocking them for being poor really depends in part on what kind of power fantasies you want to indulge. If you want to dismiss this film as just edgelord posturing, fine (though you'll have to overlook Robert DeNiro's talkshow character, who delivers an impassioned lecture directly to Fleck on how everything he represents is entitled self-pitying whining) but every superhero movie is pandering to some kind of power fantasy, and many of them are just as distasteful as Joker's - if often more acceptably presented.
If anything, the problem here is that Joker doesn't go far enough. A populist uprising against an oppressive and unrepresentative government is presented as a bad thing, something for an anarchist supervillain - and while this film may initially side with Fleck, there's no denying that eventually our sympathies are expected to drain away - to revel in. A core problem of Batman's dynamic is that a billionaire who solves crime by punching muggers is the good guy; making this particular Joker the face of a seemingly justified working class uprising really doubles down on that.
Still, there's much to enjoy here on a purely cinematic level. The sense of building chaos as Fleck's life spirals downhill is compelling even when the occasional scene or reveal falls flat, the urban grime is atmospheric, the (occasional, nasty) violence actually has weight to it, and any film that might possibly send viewers back to The King of Comedy is definitely doing something right.
Phoenix's performance is what makes this film work. Aggressively grounded in the physical in a way that CGI-heavy superhero movies almost never are, he squirms and writhes through much of the film, and when he breaks out into dance (as he does surprisingly often), its defiant strangeness lifts the film to a whole new level. It suggests an otherness that's new to this (cinematic) version of the Joker, a music only he can hear - even if in the end the tune turns out to be one we've heard before.
- Anthony Morris
No comments:
Post a Comment