Joker 2019 Review

Joker premiered on the world billboard after becoming the first film based on a superhero to win the highest award at a top-level festival such as Venice.

Chaired by the Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel, the award was justified under the premise of being "... remarkable that an industry that cares about business took the risk of making this film, made for the box office but which is a reflection on antiheroes and where the enemy is not a man, it is the system”.

Henceforth that flag was taken on the reflection and guilt of the system to make believe the depth (fairly existing) of the Joker. The deduction that this is a movie designed for the box office, as Martel says, sheds a lot of light on the matter and already hinted at a strong contradiction in his comment.

Joker, the director warned, is not a film that should be labeled within the superhero genre , precisely because it was not based on any comic. "We're not even doing the Joker, but the story of becoming him." Therefore, it is unfair to weigh it at the level of being the best film of this exploited genre as so many other enthusiasts proclaim (Logan, for example, yes it is). Much less should it be considered the best film of the year, the decade or the century. But why?

It was nothing, but absolutely not difficult for this risky story to fall into the opposite of what it was looking for: the justification of violence . Let's be bad because there is merit to be (there never is). Let's be bad because a mob is asking us to be and someone has to sacrifice themselves and lead that rebellion and amplify the chaos. “I, shielded by my traumas, can validate it.” Joker walks (and crosses) a very fine line between exploiting evil and vindicating it. In these times where speeches and actions have become extreme, it is not uncommon for this film to permeate and give it all that dimension of importance.

Arthur Fleck's psychological thriller takes us to an eighties Gotham city submerged in a social crisis, under the thesis that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Fleck is part of the marginalized, not only because he lives in conditions that detract from his quality of life (damn steps), but also because he suffers from a rare disease that makes him laugh uncontrollably and that apparently breaks out when he is under pressure or situation uncomfortable. Unaware of this, the reaction of the people is hardly logical, although overwhelmed. He depends on the medical social service to take his medicine and besides, Arthur is a withdrawn man, who earns his living as a clown and trying to make people laugh as a comedian, he lives with his mother and must take care of her who is sick and with whom has an unhealthy relationship of loving dependency.

All of these ingredients are the breeding ground for Fleck to awaken his psychopathic self . Todd Phillips has an absolutely sympathetic point of view towards the supervillain of all time in the Batman universe. Not only are they shown, but there is constant pressure for the viewer to end up justifying (as they have done) and empathizing with the character – played by an actor who enjoys worldwide sympathy. Nothing more accommodating, manipulative and blockbuster than that. And nothing easier! Because it was playing it safe, making the character identify as a man who struggles to fit into society, who suffers from people's indifference or bullying and who has enormous difficulties in relating and finding a partner. The intention is not just to feel sorry for the villain but to feel sympathy for him.

All these components are not shown in depth (although it seems. In this film there is a constant game of appearances) but with reiteration and a tedious and unnecessary anti-rhythm. The blows he receives are not strong enough to justify his actions, at least not as shown. The characters around him, who could justify his evil with more interest, remain in the background. They are really decorations, as well as their repeated and awkward dancing and laughing. Specific characters such as the mother (Frances Conroy) and the presenter of the "Talk Show" (Robert De Niro, exploited in his already well-known gesture), could be decisive in the character's psychology, beyond appearing as almost caricatured characters.

The problem with the Joker is his direction, not wanting to go into deep bases. Joker is a compendium of making it seem that we are talking from the root of things, when it is very well enlivened (and harmonized) by the form: a very careful aesthetic, a suffocating atmosphere and an outstanding soundtrack, plus a Joaquín Phoenix that covers everything that Phillips can be criticized with his committed performance, but that in any case does not surpass that of Heath Ledger. Phillips, the director of comedies like The Hangover and Due Date , doesn't have the sense to turn this story into a really dark tale with a convincing or provocative political moral.

In the end, the film is incomparable with “Taxi Driver” (not because its director says he was inspired by it, it is), having elements of Travis Bickle that should have inspired Phoenix to build his role, or “The King of Comedy ”, remaining only as clumsy approximations to the cinema of Martin Scorsese.

Before considering this film as one of the best in history (even considering it) it would be appropriate to remember the interpretations of psychopaths or sociopaths in the cinema such as those of Christian Bale in American Psycho, Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men, Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Perkins in Psycho, Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange.