Best Pictures #59
2019 (92nd) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee
2019 (92nd) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee
“What kind of clown carries a fucking gun?”
The definition of bad taste is having your hero, or
anti-hero in this case, who suffered severe trauma and abuse as a child, have
his triumphant moment set to “Rock and Roll Part 2,” the most famous song by
Gary Glitter. Of course, long before then you’ll know that Joker has no
taste, no heart, and no brain. That wouldn’t be so bad if the film didn’t
present itself as though it had meaningful subtext or social commentary. Instead this
film thinks it is being edgy and shocking when it is actually so plainly mean
and cruel and joyless that I found myself wanting to watch A Clockwork
Orange as an antidote. This is a meanspirited film with no redeeming
qualities, not even Joaquin Phoenix’s performance. Yes, it is a good
performance, and at this point Phoenix is a lock to win the Best Actor Oscar, but, frankly, I’m not
surprised that an actor willing to sacrifice his career to make a fake
documentary about becoming a rap star, I'm Still Here, gives a fully committed performance.
That’s just what Joaquin Phoenix does.
Todd Phillips, who previously directed comedies like Old
School and The Hangover, said in an interview with Vanity Fair that
he cannot make comedies like he used to because of the current “woke culture.”
With that mindset he co-wrote and directed an origin story about Batman’s most
formidable villain, the Joker. This supposedly standalone film tells the story
of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a working-class clown (literally) that is
constantly treated poorly by everyone he encounters, humiliated, and even randomly
beaten. Still, he dreams of being a comedian and meeting his idol, late night
talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). His shut-in mother, Penny
(Frances Conroy) is the only warmth he experiences, but it turns out she has
been hiding dark secrets from him.
In addition to being meanspirited and misguided, Joker
is also totally tone deaf. People of color are well represented in this version
of Gotham: Arthur is senselessly beaten by a gang of Latino youths, his black
female social worker is ineffectual, another black civil service worker won’t
help Arthur learn about his past, and a black woman on the bus and a black
co-worker are just flat out rude to him. The one person of color kind to Arthur
is his neighbor, played by Zazie Beetz, but her role is not what it seems and
her fate, and the fate of her child, are left to grim implications. Of course,
all of the white characters are also mean, rude, or obstacles for Arthur. The one decent person in the whole movie is Gary (Leigh Gill), a little person that works with Arthur at the clown precinct (complete with lockers and a punch card timeclock), but he
is also the target of cruel jokes about his size both from other characters and
the movie itself. Phillips’s gripe with
“woke culture” casts an extra dark pall over all of this.
After Arthur loses his job and government funded medications
for his mental illness, he reaches his breaking point when three Wall Street
types beat him after menacingly singing “Send in the Clowns” at him. He shoots
and kills them and the mysterious vigilante clown becomes an urban folk hero
for some reason. The violent mob of “protesters” wearing clown masks he
inspires consists of mostly, if not entirely, angry men. I’m not sure what to
make of the one we see carrying a sign that says “RESIST” just before young Bruce
Wayne’s parents are murdered in front of him. That mob, angry at the wealthy,
is reminiscent of the Occupy Wall Street movement, but that’s just one example of several potentially provocative points that the movie introduces and
never follows up on.
Joker establishes firmly that its main character is
someone with a serious mental illness that is not able to get the help he
needs. When this character turns violent it should feel tragic but instead it is played
as though this is a justified climatic triumph. This is an irresponsible and
reprehensible film to say the least. Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange is
perfect example of a film about an ultra-violent, mentally disturbed anti-hero
that successfully presents provocative and challenging ideas about society,
civility, and free will. To sum up, I’ll paraphrase the great critic Gene
Siskel, which I think is only appropriate since Joker borrows so much
from other films: Joker has the distinction of being one of the vilest
and most contemptible films I’ve seen. This is a hateful movie. I want to hate it
back but that means letting the Joker win, and as Batman said in The Dark
Knight, “the Joker cannot win.”
Nominees: Todd Phillips, Bradley Cooper, Emma Tillinger
Koskoff
Director: Todd Phillips
Screenplay: Todd Phillips & Scott Silver , based on characters created by Bob Kane, Bill
Finger, Jerry Robinson
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert DeNiro, Zazie Beetz
Production Companies: Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Films, Joint
Effort, Bron Creative, Village Roadshow Pictures
Distributor: Warner Bros Pictures
Release Date: October 4th, 2019
Total Nominations: 11, including Best Picture
Other Nominations: Director-Todd Phillips; Actor-Joaquin
Phoenix; Adapted Screenplay-Todd Phillips, Scott Silver; Cinematography-Lawrence
Sher; Costume Design-Mark Bridges; Makeup and Hairstyling-Nicki Ledermann, Kay
Georgiou; Original Score-Hildur Guðnadóttir; Editing-Jeff Groth; Sound Mixing-Tom
Oanich,Dean A. Zupancic, Tod A. Maitland; Sound Editing-Alan Robert Murray
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