Tuesday, September 10, 2019

JOKER: TIFF 2019 HIGHLIGHT #4



What I’m about to say applies to damn-near any movie but in the specific case of Joker, this is the kind of thing that’ll be whatever you want it be. If you want it to be a simple & entertaining comic book villain origin story with the slight residue of Christopher Nolan’s super-serious & dark DC universe - then that’s what it’ll be. If you paint this movie out as the poster child for toxic, sad, lonely, incel virgins in a time when everything is weirdly & personally politicized, then it’ll be that. There's a case for both...

Bottom line - this is a movie most folks won’t miss outside of a few people who have understandable comic book movie fatigue or are just genuinely not interested (believe it or not they do exist). So my opinion on it almost doesn’t matter. But if you’d like to know, I did enjoy Joker for the most part (there’s some editing & plot choices that I thought were strange) but it’s hardly a masterpiece or anything groundbreaking. Everyone needs to relax with those labels when it comes to this. Joaquin Phoenix’s performance is certainly solid but the movie is just fine.

Todd Phillips’ Joker origin story isn’t that much different from something like Unbreakable as far as I’m concerned. It just has a little more violence and “edginess” to it. While the present-day character we know is an evil mastermind who really shouldn’t be rooted for or cheered on, we still get some sympathetic insight in to why/how they became who they are. But we really have to disassociate & separate the past from the present when it comes to Todd Phillips’ iteration of the Joker (inspired by The Killing Joke graphic novel). Sure life shat all over pre-Joker Arthur Fleck (it truly did) and he is suffering from mental illness, but he’s also fully aware, in control & conscious of all the terrible things he eventually does towards the end of the movie. It could be argued that the tone of the movie is asking for us to quietly cheer for Joker but how is that any different than Stanley Kubrick with Alexander Delarge (A Clockwork Orange) or Martin Scorsese & Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver)? Filmmakers have been getting us to root for terrible people since the beginning of cinema and getting away with it by calling them “anti-heroes” when they’re really just bad people. Joker is no different. I’m not going to get all bent out of shape about the potential toxicity of this movie but at the same time, anyone who claims to relate to this particular Joker or has sympathy for him might want to look in to who they are as a person and maybe get a little help. For folks on the other side of the spectrum worried about the potential harmfulness of Joker - it's perfectly ok for "the bad guy" to be the main character in a movie.


And speaking of Travis Bickle - I can now absolutely confirm that Scorsese (specifically Taxi Driver & King Of Comedy) are single-handedly responsible for the tone of this movie. Influence is an understatement. Most of you reading this probably already know this without having seen the movie but there are actually people out there who question the influence. Now that I’ve seen Joker I can safely say that anyone who debates or questions the Scorsese influence is a fucking idiot or just likes to disagree for the sake of disagreeing because their lives are empty and pointless and they need something to do.

Not only is part of the basic premise of Joker right out of the book of King Of Comedy (an obsessed/dangerous person with dreams of being a famous stand-up comedian goes too far in their quest for fame & notoriety), there are some similar shots...
The King Of Comedy / Joker


As for Taxi Driver, Joker literally has scenes of Joaquin Phoenix pointing finger guns at his head in a pivotal scene...
Taxi Driver

Pointing a gun at his television in his lonely apartment...
Taxi Driver 


Keeping a journal of scary thoughts...
Taxi Driver

any of this sound familiar?

There are also just various random similar shots & scenes between both films...
Taxi Driver / Joker


Lets also not forget both director Todd Phillips and Joker co-star/Scorsese-regular Robert Deniro have flat out fucking said Taxi Driver & King Of Comedy outright influenced the new joker movie (unfortunately even those facts aren’t enough to convince some people).
I find it strange when movies that are considered highly influential by everyone actually show their influence on new movies and then suddenly those same people are like: “WAIT, WHAT??!”


Certain moments where we see Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck slowly transform in to the Joker also reminded me of Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now...
Apocalypse Now / Joker


Bottom line, this is probably the most hyped movie of 2019 so I don’t think any review is going to sway folks from seeing this weather they’re happily excited for it or have already judged it and convinced themselves to not like it ahead of time. At the end of the day I thought it was just fine.

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