His long career has been marked by much weight lost and gained in the service of his craft, while working with some of the great directors and crafting memorable bad guys. I’m speaking of course of Robert De Niro, for it is his cinematic soul that brings Joker to life.
De Niro and director Martin Scorsese surely had no idea they were laying this film’s foundations, 43 years ago, when the actor played a mentally unstable, gun-obsessed loner in Taxi Driver. Nor did they likely give it much thought when they re-teamed six years later for The King of Comedy, with De Niro as an unsuccessful stand-up who fixates on a talk-show host played by Jerry Lewis.
And yet here is De Niro, a spry 76-year-old, as a brusque late-night figure named Murray Franklin, who books Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck after seeing a videotape someone shot of him flailing and failing ignominiously at a Gotham comedy club. (“Check out this joker,” he says by way of introduction. Arthur asks him to upper-case the J.) Arthur has long dreamed of being on Murray’s show – literally so in one scene that finds him half-asleep in front of the TV and hallucinating his way inside.
Ok, I’ll grant that Phoenix’s performance is also strong. Arthur is a socially awkward citizen, living with his mother (Frances Conroy), crushing on his single-mom neighbour (Zazie Beetz), but unsure what to do about it, and working as a rent-a-clown, which involves everything from hospital appearances to holding up going-out-of-business signs.
Going out of business looks to be a growth industry in Gotham, which combines the worst bits of mid-century New York, including subway graffiti, rampant muggings, failing social services and a garbage strike to rival the one in ’68.
Production designer Mark Friedberg has worked on Autumn in New York, Synecdoche, New York, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, so his N.Y. cred is solid. And there’s a great, cello-heavy score by Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadóttir, who has worked with Denis Villeneuve on Arrival, Prisoners and Sicario, and probably wishes she were old enough to have been part of the Jaws theme.
But the real behind-the-camera surprise is the director, Todd Phillips, who for the last 10 years stopped making Hangover movies only long enough to make the road-trip comedy Due Date with most of the same cast. He also made 2000’s Road Trip. And, ok, 2016’s dark comedy War Dogs.
But that darkness has nothing on Joker, which is R-rated – like Deadpool, but not for the same silly/naughty reasons. This is a fascinating movie, but I wouldn’t call it fun. It heaps derision, scorn and misfortune on Arthur until you wonder how he can handle any more.
Of course, he soon can’t. We know where Arthur’s going to end up, even if we don’t know the precise route. And what a film Joker would be if it were sprung on audiences unawares, without a half-century of clownish baggage courtesy of everyone from Cesar Romero to Jared Leto.
But every generation gets its own Joker. Jack Nicholson’s was acid-dipped into his perpetually grinning mug. Phoenix’s wears simple face paint, but carries his own psychic scars in the form of a Tourette’s-like condition that causes him to vomit out laughter at inopportune times. He even carries a little card to alert people, although (A) it shouldn’t require a “MORE ON BACK” flip-over and (B) he really should produce it at the first sign of trouble, not the third or fourth.
I don’t mean this to sound like victim blaming, though that is what happens to Arthur through most of the movie. Gotham’s a rough town, the thinking seems to go, and people should tough it out or get out. Trouble is, Arthur has nowhere to go but down, especially after coming to the conclusion that billionaire mayoral candidate Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), who briefly employed his mom, is in fact his dad. Wayne violently rejects this accusation. (He also has a legitimate son, Bruce, with whom you may be familiar.)
Like riders on a nihilistic seesaw, as Arthur goes down, Joker ascends. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a scene set to Gary Glitter’s 1972 hit “Rock and Roll” (The “Hey” Song), in which Joker dances on a long set of stairs on which Arthur has previously trudged every day
The scene in question follows a sudden explosion of graphic violence. Soft-shoeing on the stairs, Phoenix looks almost skeletal, so much weight did he lose for the role. But he’s added something intangible for the scene, something that completes the transformation of his character. It’s disturbing, but you can’t take your eyes off him.
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October 03, 2019 at 11:13PM
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