I just got back from seeing Joker and all I can say is wow. It is pretty much what I had been hoping for - not a regular comic book movie but a study of a deeply flawed individual.
Almost right from the beginning I could feel the pressure that was building up in Arthur. Music, lighting and camera angles all helped to get Arthurs’ state of mind across throughout the movie.
Joaquin Phoenix was absolutely incredible in the role. I would say that it is an Oscar worthy performance. The tortured look of his body, the awkward way he runs and especially the way he dances really help sell the ‘disturbed person’ part of his character.
It is easy, at first, to feel some sympathy for Arthur but there did seem to be a point where he just sort of gave in to the inevitable which makes him less sympathetic. I think it was handled as well as it could have been because it would be a huge mistake to make him a sympathetic character.
Very good and well worth seeing. The direction is very good, it isn’t a huge budget movie but you wouldn’t notice. And Phoenix should finally win an Oscar for his work. Note there are a few scenes of punctuated violence in the movie.
did your place of viewing have the swat team milling around like some venues showing it planned on having?
heck, a lot of places were putting out content warnings and viewing restrictions like they didn’t want to even show it at all if the overnight nbc news report was correct …
I agree with every single thing the OP said. I saw it at the Navy Pier IMAX in Chicago and it was almost too overwhelming. It’s really an intimate story. I’ll see it again but on a smaller screen. Joaquin Phoenix is my favorite actor and I’m a DC fan (but not a purist) and I thought this was great. Phoenix does deserve an Oscar nomination though that probably won’t happen. I hope I’m wrong.
I’ve stayed away from reviews, articles and “thinkpieces” and I’m not about to start reading any of them now. I have gotten a gist scrolling on Twitter of some pearl-clutching regarding the violence, which just makes me roll my eyes.
On Sunday I’ll be going to see the new Takashi Miike movie FIRST LOVE. I assume it will be MUCH more violent than Joker, but nobody’s talking about how it could inspire violence. To quote Robert DeNiro, “that’s bullshit”.
Not really. Arthurs’ problems go much deeper than women not being interested in him. He really does a good job of playing the person you don’t want to be around. In fact, I would say that his interaction, in the elevator, with Sophie (Zazie Beetz) might be the one time in the movie anyone showed Arthur any warmth or human decency. Now this gets into spoilerish territory. Part of the movie is clearly taking place in Jokers head. These scenes are usually brighter with a higher contrast and the ugliness of day to day Gotham is gone. A few of these scenes show Arthur having a normal, friendly relationship with Sophie but a ‘reality’ scene disavows us of that later in the movie.
Just seen it. I thought it was very good. I’m not as enthusiastic about it as the OP, but I’d definitely recommend it.
First off, to address the elephant in the room; no, I don’t think there’s any danger of people “emulating” Phoenix’s joker. Phoenix’s Joker is isn’t like Ledger’s Joker. He’s not a cunning mastermind with a warped sense of humour. He’s delusional, severely mentally ill, and as about as “uncool” as it’s possible to get. There’s nothing there that anybody would want to emulate. Even the protest movement he manages to inspire isn’t about him. He just happens to be in the right place at the right time (you’ll see what I mean if you watch the film ). The media’s fears are completely unfounded, IMO, and seem to be based on the trailer rather than the film. Joker is basically Taxi Driver, with a Rent-a-Clown standing in for Travis Bickle - and no-one wanted to emulate him, did they?
Speaking of Taxi Driver, Scorsese is everywhere in this movie. Todd Phillips does a terrific job of emulating the look and feel of Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, and Robert De Niro’s part is a spot on pastiche of the Jerry Lewis role in King of Comedy. Even the few scenes set in Arkham Hospital owe something to Bringing Out The Dead.
Joaquin Phoenix is absolutely superb in the title role. It’s not so much that he carries the movie as he is the movie. He’s in every scene and so completely becomes the character that while the movie’s playing it’s hard to think of him as Joaquin Phoenix. He just is Joker. Though, like I said, this Joker is nothing like previous incarnations.
The only things I’d criticise are the pacing, which feels a bit off at times, and a subplot about Joker’s parentage, which is interesting, but which also felt a bit superfluous to me. Other than that, I thought it was terrific. I’d give it a very solid 8/10.
I haven’t seen the film but ran across this review coincidentally before coming here. I generally don’t like to read reviews before seeing the movie, other than to get a general idea if I think I will like it. I don’t want to inadvertently see any spoilers. So I only scanned the article, until I saw this:
I was immediately reminded of another reason I don’t especially like to read movie reviews: the reviewers can come off a pedantic know-it-alls. How does Matthew Rozsa know what the director “wants to acknowledge” or what he wants the movie to say? Perhaps Phillips wants to make a statement generic populists? Certainly they exist. This and also the implication that unless you seriously tap into the Scorsese zeitgeist, you are already going down the road to failure.
In any case, thanks for the thread. I definitely want to see it and probably would have forgotten about it completely.
I liked it. They said they wanted to sneak in a serious movie into a comic book movie and boy did they ever. It did not feel like a comic book movie at all other than some homages to the Batman universe. I thought Juoqin did a great job, but I could never see the character he played being any sort of threat to Batman, or a criminal Mastermind in any sense. He was a mentally ill common criminal.
Did Arthur kill Sophie? After he leaves her apartment, we see and hear sirens outside but are given no other hint of what may have happened. I’m leaning towards yes.
Is Arthur in fact Thomas Wayne’s kid? I also lean towards ‘yes’ on this one. His mother supposedly suffers from delusions and narcissistic personality disorder, but as viewers we’re not shown anything to support that in the movie’s present day. Based on what we see of Thomas Wayne, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to believe that the diagnosis was in fact cooked up to cover up his parentage.
Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. It was a little exhausting, and I think they could have tightened it up in the middle and maybe given us a bit more Joker at the end. I was also hoping to see Dr. Harleen Quinzel at the very end of the film, but I suppose that’s a bridge too far since Harley has her own movie coming out.
I saw it this afternoon and there were a pair of officers from the city force in the lobby by the counters where you buy tickets. I go to that theater at least ten times a year and have never seen uniformed police, although in this case, one of them was talking to two teenage girls. It’s possible they were there because the girls were trying to sneak into this movie, despite the R rating, but I just ignored them.
My wife thought he did kill hey but I didn’t get that at all. They did not really shy away from showing him killing, so if he did I think they would not be so subtle about it. I could see them cutting away after he went into the child’s room but that’s about it.
And even if he did, did he really? I mean, if he pretend dated her, maybe he pretend murdered her too. I’ll cut this movie a break, but I usually get annoyed with movies centering around an unreliable narrator or a crazy person. When I am not sure what is real I lose investment in what’s going on.
I thought it was very suspicious that his invitation to the Murray show was a figment of his imagination too, but, nope.
I don’t think so, unless Thomas was able to hide his birth and fake his adoption… That seems a bit unlikely. Maybe they did have a thing, but that’s impossible to know with no evidence besides her word and that photograph which could have been her handwriting.
In that regard the movie did a very good job at keeping the true identity of Joker a mystery. However, the idea that Joker and Batman might be half brothers is pretty damn juicy.
Assuming that Arthur Fleck becomes the Joker of comic book fame (it’s not clear if he or if someone else does), it doesn’t even matter whether he actually is the illegitimate son of Thomas Wayne and Penny Fleck; it’s enough for him to believe that he is.
Are you thinking of the very last scene, at the end, after he had the conversation with the psychiatrist? That scene took place in an insane asylum and the suggestion was that he murdered the psychiatrist. Sophie was his neighbor in the apartment building.