Joker

I guess I can't say I'm right all the time anymore. Back in April, I wrote that few would like Joker, the newest DC film that takes a radical step away in tone and style from other DC films. In the strictest sense, I was wrong: During its roller-coaster ride that has seen it win the top prize at the Venice Film Festival but also be the subject of multiple controversies, Joker has maintained a nearly seventy-percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an audience score of ninety percent. Clearly, many like the film, with some hailing it a masterpiece. That being said, the fundamental problems I predicted would be present are indeed there, namely that it provides too much of a good thing (in this case, an iconic figure in American pop culture) while at the same time sympathizing with a mass murderer in an era where that could have dangerous repercussions. As if that wasn't enough, this Joker is suffering from mental health issues, likely further convincing some people that violence of this sort is usually caused by people with mental health problems.

With all that stacked against it, Joker does (as predicted) feature a stellar performance from its lead. Joaquin Phoenix is the Joker here, filling large shoes of those before him, among them Caesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill, and Heath Ledger. Is his the best or one of the best? More on that later. At any rate, most of the time we do not see him as Batman's arch nemesis. Instead, we see him in the form of Arthur Fleck, a struggling clown-for-hire who is off in many ways, chief among them his poxy attempts at stand-up comedy (which is one of the few things the film adapts from previous comic book material). He lives with his ailing mother, played by Frances Conroy, whom he devotedly cares for. This is 1981, the era before a dozen late-night hosts, and so they almost religiously watch the late-night comedy of Murray Franklin, played by Robert De Niro. Arthur literally dreams of being on Murray's show.

A plot such as this does not lend itself to much alien fighting or saving the world in implausible fashion. A lot of the word of mouth about Joker has been that it's not really a comic book movie. Batman is not in this film (though there are several too-cute-to-spoil Batman Easter Eggs sprinkled throughout), and instead of being an action-packed CGI fest like Man of Steel or Suicide Squad, Joker channels notable influences from gritty Martin Scorsese-directed films from the 1970s and 1980s; Gotham feels like the New York City of Taxi Driver, and it's only when we get a few verbal reminders that it's Gotham that we remember we're viewing a comic book film. Other elements from the Batman universe here include Arkham Hospital and the character of Thomas Wayne, Bruce's father, played here in one of the film's best performances by Thomas Cullen. He's still a billionaire in this film, but also an insufferable plutocrat, smugly describing those struggling to get by in Gotham as clowns. Joker is surprisingly interested in classism and literal class warfare, and depending on your perspective, you will likely come away with different conclusions.

This is all fine, but it comes at a cost. A little bit of the Joker goes a long way (see all the other portrayals of him, particularly Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight). But having him in literally every scene is borderline taxing. Defenders of Joker might note that for most of the film, he's not the Joker, but Arthur Fleck. But it doesn't matter, for Fleck isn't all that interesting. Call my taste stale if you must, but I was so much more invested in watching Phoenix as the Joker than I was watching him as Arthur. It's hard to compare Phoenix to the other Jokers because to me he basically wasn't the Joker. When he is, it seems like it's over in a flash. One can tell the amount of thought and tribulations that went into his performance of Arthur; as the Joker, some of his choices are more perplexing. There was so much more potential there, and yet it seems like they ran out of time. But it's still the most interesting part of the movie; I think they were the only scenes when I wasn't looking at my watch.

The movie itself really wants to shout that it has little to do with comic books, but its best parts embrace it. Director Todd Phillips put it this way: "We're gonna take $55 million from Warner Bros. and do whatever the hell we want." Who could blame him for taking that attitude? This movie craves Oscar attention, and truth be told, Phoenix and cinematographer Lawrence Sher likely will (and should) be nominated during the awards season. But comic book movies rarely are rewarded with trophies, especially when articles gush about Leonardo DiCaprio being a global movie star without appearing in a superhero movie and iconic directors decry comic book movies as "not cinema". Joker wants to be "cinema", not "not cinema". You therefore have to put up with a lot of exigent Arthur stuff just to get to the Joker (even though the Joker is the reason why most audience members are actually going to see the movie), and then, like me, you might like those latter moments while still being befuddled by them.

Perhaps I was disappointed in Joker because I thought the film (especially the first half) engages in far too much bully porn. Arthur is attacked by a group of cruel kids who beat him mercilessly; not long after, practically the same thing happens to him by a trio of Wall Street jerks. The other for-hire clowns find him creepy. At one point, he's even hit by a car. Another reason why I believe this movie is not so great is that, as I predicted in April, the sympathy granted to such a maliciously evil character is unpalatable. There's a fine line between producing a portrait of a bullied, lonely man and producing a portrait that comes across as sympathizing with a mass murderer. The concern, written about ad nauseam by now, is that there are some young white men out there who feel like this story really speaks to them, and that is an alarming thing. We've all been reminded that the Aurora, Colorado shooter was dressed as the Joker and murdered audience members watching The Dark Knight Rises. (Joker has not been screened in Aurora.) And so, as is often the case with policy towards violence in the United States, we've all just been holding our breaths and keeping our fingers crossed.

Besides Taxi Driver, Joker is heavily inspired by The King of Comedy, the dark comedy directed by Scorsese from 1982 starring Robert De Niro as a terribly unfunny comedian-wannabe who kidnaps a late-night host played by Jerry Lewis. Having De Niro here as Murray Franklin, a Johnny Carson-esque late-night host similar to Lewis' character, adds extra weight. Arthur idolizes Murray, up until Arthur's stand-up makes him a comedic punching bag on Murray's show. It's rather surreal watching Arthur awkwardly on the Murray show, given that one of the most notable moments in Phoenix's career is the famous prank (if that's the right word) interview he did with David Letterman in 2010, which is still one of the most incredible interviews you can see.

One bright spot in this morbid film is Phoenix, who's fantastic. It's a showy performance, to be sure. He cries, he screams, he dances (and boy, can he dance). But the metamorphosis he went through for Joker is almost unparalleled. Even without the severe weight decrease and that unforgettable laugh, the minute details of his performance will stay with you, whether you know it or not, like the way his mouth shifts ever so slightly when he asks "what?", with just a hint of a slightly emphasized occlusive. Should he win an Oscar for his performance (an award long overdue), it would be only the second time two actors have won for playing the same character, with the other two being De Niro and Marlon Brando, who both played Vito Corleone in The Godfather films. I hope he wins, even if he's in an unremarkable movie that really wants you to believe is something more profound than it actually is.

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Prediction: Few Will Like Joker

Heath Ledger's verison of Bob Kane's famous Batman villain the Joker took some large leaps away from the days of Caesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, and Mark Hamill, in which the character had been compared to a crazy uncle with a knack for pranks. Ledger's Joker was a genuine terrorist, totally devoid of empathy and thus a very un-sympathetic man. It was a performance that won him an Oscar.

In Joker, the standalone comic book origin story centering on the famous antagonist and directed by Todd Phillips, Joaquin Phoenix takes over the role. Phoenix, one of the most admired actors around, will most likely be more appreciated than Jared Leto's divisive performance in Suicide Squad. Phoenix, from what we can tell from the recent trailer, seems to divert from the Ledger take in that it appears we are to sympathize with him and understand his transformation from God's lonely man to Batman villain. That might have worked twenty years ago, but these days, audiences will likely have problems with it. We live in an era of constant mass shootings, most of which are committed by white men. The Joker, or Arthur (as he's initially called in this film), is a white man who, certainly from the looks of the trailer and the canon, does terrible things (often with a gun). After gun shootings happen, the media, politicians, and the public are encouraged to avoid spreading the killer's name to prevent any glorification they might have been seeking. I'm worried this movie about a loser whom society hates will inspire others to commit mass shootings; recall that the Aurora, Colorado mass shooter was dressed as the Joker.

Joker's storytelling angle might have worked a few decades ago. Robert De Niro will appear in Joker as a late-night TV show host, and the implications are that Arthur, a struggling comedian, admires this host and might even try to forcibly take his show from him. Sound familiar? It should, because it's very reminiscent of The King of Comedy, the 1982 dark comedy directed by Martin Scorsese about an unfunny comedian (played by De Niro) who sabotages the life of his idol, a late-night comedian played by Jerry Lewis. There are also hints in the trailer of homages to Taxi Driver, the 1976 collaboration between De Niro and Scorsese. The delusions of grandeur of The King of Comedy and the loneliness and violence of Taxi Driver seem to heavily influence Joker. Indeed, Scorsese was at one point an executive producer on the film before departing due to a busy schedule. But the 1970s and 80s are over, and audiences are more skeptical of films that want viewers to feel pity for violent (often white) men.

Even with audiences who are willing to overlook the fact that we're told to watch the making of a terrorist, the movie is taking a big risk in showing the genesis of an iconic character that most don't want. Other than Alan Moore's influential The Killing Joke, origin storytelling of the Joker has made fans groan. The most famous example is in the 1989 blockbuster directed by Tim Burton, in which Nicholson's Joker was depicted as the murderer of Bruce Wayne's parents. (A young Bruce Wayne will appear in Joker, and I think he's the kid who Arthur is creepily forcing to smile at the 1:47 mark in the trailer.) In The Dark Knight, Ledger's Joker often asks his victims if they want to know how he got those terrible scars on his face. The first time, the explanation involves his drunk father and victim mother. Some audience members rolled their eyes. But later, he asks the same question, but this time there's a different story. It was further evidence of the character's embrace of chaos and unpredictability, and it worked. It worked because there was no origin. In Joker, it seems that's all we'll get.

Despite audience's complaints of the film, Phoenix will likely be universally praised. He's got the laugh down, and the way he uses his face and voice is unlike virtually any other actor these days. There are many actors who have never won an Oscar, and one thinks how this could be possible. Phoenix is one of the best examples of this. Other than Marlon Brando and De Niro, who both won Oscars for playing the character Vito Corleone, no other two actors have won for playing the same character. Perhaps Phoenix will help change this.

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Her

"There is no formula for generating love. It cannot be copied."
-Alan Watts

I must first admit that I put that quote there after reading Joel Stein's terrific article in Time about Spike Jonze and his new film "Her." The article--which incidentally tells us that the people whose opinions Jonze values include Woody Allen, Louis CK, and Bob Dylan (and Kanye West and George W. Bush)--describes the Watts connection like this: "[Jonze and I] talk about the philosopher Alan Watts, whose notion that a false belief in permanence--say, trying to be the same person you were the day before--causes pain is a key tenet of the film. It is, of course, an incredibly lonely notion, that we don't even have a yesterday self to relate to." The main character of "Her" is Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, a lonely man going through a painful divorce. He works as a letter writer for people who have difficulty expressing their feelings; he's quite good at it. Theodore is not social but he is incredibly likable, deserving, his dear friend Amy (Amy Adams) says, of great happiness. But happiness he has not. He cannot be the person he was yesterday, happy and in love.

His loneliness cannot be understated. He commands his ipod (or whatever the equivalent is in the future) to play a melancholy song and decides he'd rather not hear it. "Play a different melancholy song," he says. To help him escape such misery, he purchase an operating system, one which comes equipped with a personality, sweet voice, incredible intelligence, and organizing skills. She can go through his hundreds of emails in a second and recommend deleting unnecessary ones; how I wish I had something like this. The OS is named Samantha and is voiced by Scarlett Johansson in one of the year's most least appreciated performances. Too little praise has been sent her way for fulfilling such a difficult role so wonderfully. In the film, she has to demonstrate a character going through doubt, jealousy, lust and love, and do so while not being able to demonstrate it physically. Additionally, as a friend told me, she does not even have some kind of animated character to embody her voice. She has nothing to assist her. Even Hal 9000 had the easy task of providing just a flat, emotionless speech; Johansson as Samantha, not so. Oddly enough, this might be Johansson's best performance. (She was also terrific in this past year's "Don Jon.") Along with "American Hustle" and "Blue Jasmine," this movie features one of the finest group of performances in a movie from 2013. The roles are perfectly cast. Phoenix is exceptional as always. Considering that he has given us an incredibly diverse plate of performances in films like "Gladiator," "Quills," "Signs," "Walk the Line," and "I'm Still Here," I'm sure he didn't hesitate for a second to be in a movie where he reluctantly performs erotic phone sex involving an imaginary dead cat. Compare his performance in "Her" to his performance in "The Master" the year before and no explanation is needed.        

Most viewers will likely relate to the film in one way or another. Loneliness and melancholy are cultural universals, I assume. Phoenix's Theodore is the perfect vessel to embody those emotions. Theodore and Samantha become flirtatious and romantically involved. Not to give too much away (and if you're sensitive to even the slightest hint of a spoiler, then I recommend looking away), but remember that scene in "Taxi Driver," where the camera pans away as Travis is being painfully rejected over a payphone? A slightly similar event happens here, only it involves a bit of romance between Samantha and Theodore. Painful? Not really. Awkward? Probably. Watching on the screen two people making love can be awkward; so, too, is watching a person make love to an inanimate object. The movie is also fairly satirical. There are obvious allegories to the modern-day obsession with technology, and it pokes fun at various things in our society, from foul-mouthed video games to postmodern documentaries (and both appear to be getting far worse in the future).    

I think most viewers' longest lasting memories of "Her" will be its acting, but there are other features that need to be discussed positively. It features the most interesting use of colors in a movie probably since "Dick Tracy." In terms of originality, this is the most creative film of the year. It is also a most thought-provoking one. One cannot help but think about what the point is of an operating system of this kind--to help us humans practice the handling of emotions, or perhaps to keep us company? Can someone really fall in love with something not real, and vice versa? Does Theodore's relationship with Samantha make him one of the lonely people? It's complicated. But thought, visuals, and performances can only take you so far. Unfortunately, half way in, the film starts to lose steam.  The previous films by Jonze--"Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation," "Where the Wild Things Are"--demonstrate that the trajectory of his movies appears to be downward.  The movie, nevertheless, is intriguing and at many times delightful. You ought to see it.  

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