Bear’s Haiku Movie Review:
Well, it’s The Joker.
So, you know, shit gets batshit.
What did you expect?
The problem with “The Joker” is the main attraction, The Joker himself. He comes with so much baggage and means so many different things to so many different people.
I say this because the movie would have been better if it had just been a movie about an average guy, not a known quantity. A guy like Rupert Pupkin, Travis Bickle, or even William Foster.
But I get it, The Joker is a brand that is easier to sell. It is also easier to display what happens on screen in these times if we know beforehand, “Oh OF COURSE there is horrific violence, it’s The Joker!”
Basically it detaches the audience from the mythology on screen in a way because The Joker is a super villain. Not one of us. Not an every man even if starts out that way.
And it is this point that for me in some ways I feel makes the film is less than it could have been. It would’ve been more risky to just have some average shlub commit the acts that occur in the film.
Because in trying to create some empathy for a comic book villain while not necessarily bad, as I said, let’s the audience of the hook a little too much. And that bothers me. And I have yet to meet a comic villain that was truly scary by the way. For all the menace I heard about the film. I felt it played pretty standard with no real surprises. A comic book psycho is gonna psycho. At least unlike other super villains he has no “superpowers”. That makes him kinda unique.
By now I’m sure you have heard the kerfuffle in the news about how this film will inspire people to release their anger and rage in a similar way in an attempt at recognition or fame. Pffttt…. That’s a cliched trope that goes back decades and has been regularly proven false. And probably is either a fringe element or the media creating it’s own hype.
However, the difference of opinion from many critics and the film going public is interesting.
And my theory is that this movie for many film goers was fun and in some way a release of tension from what society has been feeling overall in the past several years. We wish we could stab people we hated and kill the rich and set things on fire.
As an example how many of us have thought about killing that bully we endured in high school or the asshole boss at the office? But we don’t because we see ourselves as decent and moral people.
But one cannot deny that destruction and violence can be a satisfying release of emotion. It is why we like it so much when the death star blows up or the bad falls to his death. It’s also why people throw or break things in a rage or why teenagers blow toys up in the backyard. It releases tension.
On some level I think those who liked the film, even if mildly, relate to the feelings presented on screen and see some small part of themselves in this iteration of The Joker created by cruel people in a cruel society. And for some viewers I imagine that could be just a tad be bit scary to feel those feelings.
For all it’s flaws the movie is very cathartic. As I said above it allows the viewer to get away with things that in real life most of us would never do. Killing entitled rich assholes is just one example from the film.
So why then do so many critics seem to be so negative in their views. The main gripe seems to be that the film wants it both ways or that it can’t pick a lane a commit. But I think it is much simpler. Critics are in some way public figures and they fear that giving great praise to a film with such violence and no happy ending might be seen as condoning the violence and might reflect back on them that this is how the really feel too. Also, I think they fear the wrath of the fringe internet mobs who like to get people fired through shaming if a critics shows anything that might not align with the mobs ethos. This similarly why I think many new albums get blank praise to avoid the Stan backlash.
Personally, I feel like anyone who comes away finding the film disgusting or reprehensible is in denial of their own ability to be as violent and disgusting or they are afraid to even entertain the thought.
There is much talk about the film so badly wanting us to be on the Jokers side. And yeah it does seem like that is a strong argument being made. But I felt more like it was really acting as a mirror for us to confront our own duality.
Who would we kill or let live and why?
What sort of anger do we have hiding beneath our skin that has gone unchecked?
Why do we act one way in public on-line become savages in the way we use language to beat up others?
I think had this film been set in modern times (it’s is set in 1981 if you go by what is showing at the cinema shown in the movie) The Joker would have hung out on 4chan and found his troll family there.
Speaking of modern times another thing in the film that bugged me was they so BADLY wanted to have some sort of reference to viral media and how that drives this on-line culture of fame-seekers but they chose an era without household computers and so the way they go about shoehorning it in felt forced and untrue in the film’s overall setting.
I recognized myself on screen many times in the film. And I know in my own life there has always been a fear that one wrong street here or one sandwich with onions there I could’ve snapped.
But it turns out unlike the Joker I turned all my anger inward at myself in real life.
Seeing this kind of violence on screen was nothing new for me so it didn’t really move me one way or the other emotionally as film. I already empathize with angry outsiders I don’t need a comic book origin story to help me with that.
And rooting for the “bad guy” didn’t bother me either because, let’s be honest, Batman/Bruce Wayne at the end of the day is a total entitled asshole himself with a questionable moral code and mental state who is basically upholding the wealthy status quo that helped birth people like The Joker.
The only reason we root for him is because the people he kills we have been led to believe are the “bad guys”. The Joker as a film in some ways is saying MAYBE that’s not the case and certainly it is saying it is not so black and white.
How that was handled was a mix bag for me though and I wish they would have gone further in bringing the line between hero and villain closer. THAT would have made this much more interesting overall.
There were two scenes in the movie that I felt really missed, one takes place on a talk show and the other one I forget. But both scenes have the same problem of telling us and not showing us. The dialogue and exposition from the Joker explaining why he feels what he feels and does what he does felt cliched, like they were trying to spell it out for the audience to make sure you knew he didn’t start out bad.
“See, he was a nice guy in the beginning! So we didn’t just make a violent R-rated comic book movie to make a violent R-rated comic book movie. Nuance!” And who knows maybe it is in character for the Joker to wax on like a Bond villain. And if so then that further bolsters my feeling The Joker is the biggest problem with his own movie.
It is a well made film for sure in terms of costume and sets and acting. Though, I did find the music score to be a little obnoxious at times, where a lighter touch like that of Jerry Goldsmith would’ve suited the tone better. Sometimes the cello seemed to be overacting or trying to upstage whatever Joaquin Phoenix was doing.
For me there is nothing truly at stake when it all occurs in a fictional city called Gotham with a fictional character (one who has died MANY times before) and not an everyman but one the most well loved villains in pop culture. So it was hard for me to be as invested or on edge because I knew The Joker was going to do some Joker stuff as all live action Jokers before him have done (save for MAYBE Caesar Romero’s tenure).
And you don’t get to be the most popular villain in comics if people don’t already like and empathize with you on some level so the whole trying so hard to make you like the Joker was not needed. People LOVE him that’s in part why they came to see the movie, to see what batshit crazy he does this time out.
The Joker is in a way like a reliable friend, you know what to expect and that in itself is a comfort in a real world that seems more and more surreal by the day with villains not even comics can muster. I just wish the movie had not chosen to focus on a villain but a real life “nobody”, that would have been more heroic.
