Yes the cello was haunting, in fact the whole score was top of the game. Still a bit suspect about using Gary Glitter music but it sure suited and enhanced the scene.
This is one the best movies I have seen in a long time.
The scene dancing on the cop car brought tears to my eyes.
But, then again… how was somebody as unhinged as Penny Fleck able to adopt as a single mother? Even in, roughly, the mid-1950’s. How didn’t she spend a decade or more locked in Arkham? How was she given custody of the abused kid again?
None of that makes sense, unless some really powerful people were involved in a cover-up.
I didn’t catch the sirens as he left Sophie’s so make of that what you will, but I didn’t get the sense that he killed her. He let the little person clown go for always being nice to him so what reason would he have to kill Sophie? Even if most of their interactions were fantasies?
Can somebody spoil the gore in the movie for me? I kind of want to see it and a certain amount of gore doesn’t bother me (I’ve gotten more desensitized to it, as long as it’s not of the “spring-loaded cat” jump-scare variety) but I’d like to know what I’m getting into before I go. If I didn’t mind the “Watchmen” movie and routinely watch gory medical show like “House” and “The Good Doctor,” will I be okay with this?
As I remember, there was very little gore in the movie.
There’s one particularly brutal murder scene involving a whole lot of stabbing. There are a number of bloody shootings. That’s about it.
Okay, thanks. That, I can handle.
Maybe, who knows? I think they really wanted that whole thing to be totally ambiguous. I will say that I don’t see social services for Gotham, as depicted in that movie, doing right by a child.
I keep reading that the movie is a political statement. Then I read the director said it isn’t. So is it or isn’t it?
I really enjoyed it. Phoenix was great. In particular i really enjoyed the bizarre physicality he brought to the role in many different ways: the way he ran, the dancing, that one scene in the alley where -after being fired- he was kicking a trash can in frustration (that last one seemed just perfect for the joker to me), and of course his gaunt appearance.
I don’t know if this is a cold take (i avoided reviews/articles before seeing it last night) but i can’t help but wonder if the entire move was in his head. As in… was he just a troubled person in an asylum that after hearing about the Waynes being murdered, he just created an entire fantasy in his head about how he was somehow a part of it (which was the joke that the therapist wouldn’t get).
At first, both Phoenix and Phillips had indicated that this movie was a one off and there was never any intention of a sequel. However, it seems that after the initial success, they are now both open to a sequel. I would love to think that some behind the scenes bribes at Arkham got the Arthur/Penny thing cleared up for the Waynes and that it was Hugo Strange who made it happen. That could make for an interesting sequel and would probably mean that Stranges knows the identities of both Joker and Batman.
Well, I’m not 100% sure, but I think that there was a reason the originally wanted Alec Baldwin to play Thomas Wayne…
I hadn’t thought that when seeing the film, but I think that is a legitimate reading and I don’t think there is anything that specifically goes against that theory. Was
the therapist he talked to earlier the same actress as the one in Arkham at the very end? If they were the same person, then I think your theory may actually be accurate! I just thought that the car crash at the end and scenes of Joker acolytes cheering while he danced on the car was in his head and he was actually just arrested and brought to Arkham.
If the movie is entirely in Arthur’s head, then what’s the point? Who cares?
The movie would still be a study of a flawed person.
I’m down with that, but I really want a young Batman in there. Pheonix would have to be done up considerably older of course, which may be a problem, because he looked old as shit in this movie (I was shocked to find out he is only 44, I thought he was a bit older than me). I also don’t know how this version would be a real threat to Batman.
Yes, that’s all well and good. But then there’s no emotional involvement. It would mean no one died in the entire movie. It would be an interesting, but hollow, movie. A nice episode of a tv show, but not a Major Motion Picture.
I don’t mind an unreliable narrator, but the core of the movie should be grounded in the cinematic reality within. The audience should be able to tell to some extent what is true by the end of the film.
I like the theory that Joaquin’s Joker might not be THE Joker. There sure were a lot of folks in Joker masks rioting at the end of the movie. It wouldn’t even have to be one of them, but a younger criminally insane mastermind, more contemporary with Bruce, that takes inspiration from Joaquin’s Joker 25 years down the road.
Also, this Joker doesn’t start off with an ability to ever ‘go big’. Ledger’s take on the guy had a knack for explosives and other military hardware; Nicholson’s was meant to have a real aptitude for mass poisonings, plus tricks with acids. This one, though, doesn’t seem to have anything extra up his sleeve; he’s just, y’know, mentally ill.
You see, it’s the name that matters - I, as you know, am not the real Joker - I met him when he kidnapped my family and he took me in as one of his goons - it was my laughter as he cut my sisters throat that drew him to me - each day we’d cause some chaos and he would tell me “good job, wesley - I’ll most likely kill you in the morning” and then tie me to the floor so I could sleep.
Well, except for The therapist at the end of the movie. After killing her and leaving bloody foot prints in the hall, he escapes and goes on to actually become the Joker from his fantasy, but the entire backstory is a fantasy, and he had nothing to do with the Waynes murder