![]() ![]() The essence of Phoenix’s performance - and the most lucid example of why it’s a worthy complement to Heath Ledger’s lip-smacking, carnival-esque take on the character - is that it’s always hard to tell if Arthur is laughing or crying, or which reaction would make the most sense. Once the Joker bleeds through, he becomes mesmerically unpredictable. Phoenix, meanwhile, follows his own muse wherever the hell he wants. It’s one of the many ways that “Joker” poses as a movie worthy of serious thought, but lacks the courage to behave like one. That literalness has its virtues, but it can also be insufferable Phillips blurs fantasy and reality in the same way that Scorsese did in “The King of Comedy,” but he insists on doubling back and drawing a clear line between fact and fiction. If Christopher Nolan’s Joker was an inscrutable force of nature, Phillips’ couldn’t be more human - all of his eccentricities are explicitly diagnosed. And just to make things worse, he suffers from a Pseudobulbar affect, which results in uncontrollable episodes of hysterical laughter (he carries a laminated card that he hands out to apathetic strangers who look at him askance, a ritual that would make anyone feel sorry for themselves). He’s one of the downtrodden - one of God’s unfortunate creatures. Emaciated and rippling at the same time, Arthur looks like a werewolf who got interrupted mid-transformation (which might explain his stringy mop of wet black hair). ![]() ![]() Living in the margins of an early ’80s Gotham City that was rotting long before the garbage workers started their ongoing strike, the Pagliacci-esque Arthur is first introduced as he stares into a mirror and paints on the makeup that he’s forced to wear for his miserable day job even in a room full of self-loathing clowns, this guy still feels like a special kind of sad. If Freddie Quell and Theodore Twombly stepped into the teleportation machine from “The Fly,” Arthur Fleck is who they would mutate into. The next “Lost in Translation” will be about Black Widow and Howard Stark spending a weekend together at a Sokovia hotel the next “Carol” will be an achingly beautiful period drama about young Valkyrie falling in love with a blonde woman she meets in an Asgardian department store.Īnd we haven’t even gotten to Joaquin Phoenix yet, whose hypnotic and inimitable performance would feel completely new if it didn’t borrow so much from his past work. “Joker” is the human-sized and adult-oriented comic book movie that Marvel critics have been clamoring for - there’s no action, no spandex, no obvious visual effects, and the whole thing is so gritty and serious that DCEU fanboys will feel as if they’ve died and seen the Snyder Cut - but it’s also the worst-case scenario for the rest of the film world, as it points towards a grim future in which the inmates have taken over the asylum, and even the most repulsive of mid-budget character studies can be massive hits (and Oscar contenders) so long as they’re at least tangentially related to some popular intellectual property. It’s possessed by the kind of provocative spirit that’s seldom found in any sort of mainstream entertainment, but also directed by a glorified edgelord who lacks the discipline or nuance to responsibly handle such hazardous material, and who reliably takes the coward’s way out of the narrative’s most critical moments. It’s also a toxic rallying cry for self-pitying incels, and a hyper-familiar origin story so indebted to “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy” that Martin Scorsese probably deserves an executive producer credit. Todd Phillips’ “ Joker” is unquestionably the boldest reinvention of “superhero” cinema since “ The Dark Knight” a true original that’s sure to be remembered as one of the most transgressive studio blockbusters of the 21st Century. ![]()
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