I finally watched “Joker” the other night. It met my expectations. And now — after making a billion dollars at the box office — it’s been nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. So, what the hell, let’s blame Trump, or whatever it is that created Trump.
Two things put me off seeing “Joker” in a theater.
1: I don’t have much interest in purely fictional psycho killer movies. I mean “Psycho” was terrific. But it took its time getting to Tony Perkins. He wasn’t set up as the ghoulish, fully gratuitous lodge pole of the entire picture.
And 2: I generally despise comic book movies. To be blunt, they’re simple-minded and adolescent. Which is fine if you’re both of those things. But not being a 14 year-old, cos-playing fan boy, capes, tights and wall-to-wall CGI action fail to move me to anything other than boredom.
Yet here was, quite clearly, a cultural phenomenon. Literally millions of people turned out to see “Joker”, likely as attracted by its connection to Batman as I was repelled. Then word got out about how “brilliant” Joaquin Phoenix was as the genuinely mentally disturbed main character, Arthur Fleck, a hapless punching bag for pretty much everyone in his orbit. Plenty of critics said “no thanks” to the whole grim adventure. But prizes were nevertheless won at prestigious film festivals.
It’s been maybe 50 years since I placed any great credibility in the movie industry’s notion of “art” or “best”. When “Oliver!” beat out “2001: A Space Odyssey”, (which wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture), it was an early lesson for little, young me that the voters in the movie business are mainly about their business — who they worked with, who they know and like, who they want to work for — and not about the side of filmmaking that thoroughly invested in the interweaving of art and imagination.
Hollywood 2020 isn’t so different, even with all the attention and effort given to bringing in younger and more diverse voters. A truly good film like “Moonlight” was likely lifted up as much by the movie industry’s “woke” culture as the film community’s appreciation of its storytelling and craftsmanship. This “wokeness” was even more evident with last year’s winner, “The Green Book”. (The movie business was very hinky about lending too much weight and credibility to Netflix and “Roma”.)
And now, “Joker”. A billion dollar winner at the box office, and with serious adults talking about how it isn’t just a comic bok movie. About how it really has something important to say about our cultural moment. To which I say, “Like what exactly?”
That damaged-in-youth, mistreated-through-life “losers” are a potential danger to their families, themselves and us? While I find it hard to disagree, I fail to see the fresh insight into the issue in a movie that depends on a connection to a more or less dystopian comic book to find its place on the stage of our times.
Phoenix does startling work as Arthur Fleck, and will almost certainly win Best Actor. But I gotta tell ya, as someone who has spent more time than I should have watching movies and chatting up actors over the years, I’ve long since stopped thinking playing a nutjob is difficult work. For an actor, playing crazy is like a horse on the open range. The reins are off. It’s remarkably feeing. A patently crazy character has no connections to any familiar parameters with which audiences can judge good acting from bad. I mean, the guy’s crazy! An actor can pretty much take that anywhere he and the director want to go. There’s no good way to measure it as “real” or bona fide.
Along with the stunning box office numbers, my guess is that Academy voters see “Joker” as a tap into the Trump-era zeitgeist. (“Zeitgeist” being one of those words you always need to drop to convince readers you’re smarter than you are.)
Here, in Arthur Fleck, a piece of human detritus, someone both abused and forgotten in a fundamentally corrupt society, controlled and exploited by the uber-wealthy. (Enter young Bruce “Batman” Wayne and his mega-macher father.)
We’ve watched these sad wretches go homicidal. Hell, a guy like Arthur shot up a movie theater playing a Batman movie a few years ago in Denver. Therefore, if you’re keeping score at home, “Joker” is a provocative comment on our ugly, abusive times … or … maybe only if you really want it to be.
My view, slumped in my chair watching on iTunes, was closer to “slick, crass exploitation.” As someone somewhere has already written, “Joker” is a variation on “Taxi Driver” for an era that wants its cultural commentary reduced to the wholly literal simplicity of a comic book.
If a mirror to the era of Trump is something you’re looking for, “Bombshell”, has far more relevance than “Joker.” And if you’re a film lover looking for where “art” meets “best”, track down “A Hidden Life” … which hasn’t been nominated for anything … and has a lot to say about our moral obligations in an era of corruption.
I feel obliged to speak up for us simple-minded adolescents who like comic book movies as much as we liked comic book books in our youth. I’m easily amused by a couple of hours of good CGI and a plot where at the end of the third reel, the good guys and gals kick the butts of the bad ‘uns. I watched Wonder Woman last night for the umpteenth time just to watch Gal Gadot blast David Thewlis into atoms.
I do, however, always wonder why Chris Pine didn’t just fly the plane full of poison to someplace where it could be blown up without him in the cockpit, but if the trailer for WW1984 is right, they’re fixing that issue.
As for deep and important messages, I’m hard-pressed to think of movies that actually changed stuff, where people walked out of the theater with a call to action that produced real and lasting change. Feel free to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.
I’m tempted to cry aloud, “Why must I be surrounded by philistines!” But I’ll make an exception. Besides acknowledging that you’re not likely to be invited to Marty Scorsese’s place anytime soon, I’m left wondering if I should put you down as pro-“Joker”? And for the record, I’m not looking for a movie that sets us marching against the man. But if we’re talking “best”, maybe something a wee bit more relevant to the human condition than the anguish of a psychological cripple.
Marty and I have – sadly – fallen out of touch. I think my reaction to The Aviator hurt his feelings, but I’m not sure because he never came right out and said so. I thought then, and still do think, that he was too enamored of De Caprio and made some iffy directorial choices because of it. It’s like he’s Marty’s muse or something.
And, of course, you can imagine how pissed off Leo was when that got back to him; we’re not just out of touch, it’s full-on cold war.
The Joker is emphatically outside my comfort zone – depressing, demoralizing, despairing – as I don’t go to the movies for reminders of the frailty of the human condition or the shitty things we do to one another (or don’t do) to make that condition worse (I flip on cable news whenever I want to level down that way). That said, I saw it twice because people I like invited me and it was worth seeing to spend some time with them. I would have seen it a third time if some other artsy-fartsy type (hint, hint) had thought to ask.
In an effort to find some common ground, how do you feel about Ex Machina, the sci-fi flick from a couple of years ago? I liked that one on my adolescent fanboy level and thought it was underpinned by some thought-provoking ideas about what it means to be “alive,” the nature of consciousnesses and our relationship with the evolving technology we increasingly live with: If my coffee maker is smart enough to figure out how to brew my favorite blend, is it my machine or my slave?
How’s that for deep? Gotta be good enough for a B in an undergraduate film appreciation class. Something for non-majors looking to check off their “arts” requirement.