Jokery-Pokery

Rating: 7/10 (9 October 2019)

It's somewhat fortuitous that I saw the pilot episode of that dreadful Batwoman TV show on the same day I saw Joker. The two seem such polar opposites - one is rabid intersectionalist propaganda clumsily shaped by a newly-menstruating 13-year old into something that is almost *entirely* unlike anything recognizable as an actual story, with actual characters and believable situations, dialogue and acting.
The other is... well, something other than that - I'm not entirely sure what, but whatever that something is, it can't help but come as something of a relief.
The trailers at the cinema were for Feminist Terminator, Feminist Star Wars and 'The Emancipation of Harley Quinn': all explicitly anti-male, openly and unapologetically attacking and tearing down men and masculinity - and at the same time still fully expecting to appeal to the great majority of action, sci-fi and superhero fans, who have always been male.
In 2019 it's hard to be a man and go to the cinema or turn on the TV without being told you're obsolete, or 'toxic', or just the biggest problem facing the world today since cancer. In 2019, Joker is the only big film which doesn't do that, the only film which looks at a straight white man as first and foremost a fragile human being in need of love, care, protection and help. In 2019, this, apparently, is a terrible, dangerous, unforgiveable and revolutionary act.
Ho hum.
* * *
So look, the film has its strengths and weaknesses:
On the plus side there is, as everyone knows, Joaquin Phoenix's astonishing performance - one of the most gripping pieces of screen acting ever. His Joker is just every tortured, beaten, defeated soul wrapped up in a weak, paper-thin shell that is slowly tearing apart and open before our eyes. He does a great job of showing the effects of the 'double bind' - the strain of being constantly instructed to do (or not do) opposing, contradictory or sometimes impossible things, which can snap an overburdened mind and at least potentially play a role in bringing on schizophrenia. I noticed several deliberately placed moments illustrating this early on in the movie.
Secondly, the gorgeous cinematography, on grainy celluloid immediately makes one feel one is watching a stone-cold classic movie from the very start. It feels very much like it could have been shot in 1982 by Martin Scorcese, and there are vigorous nods to both Taxi Driver and The King Of Comedy, as well as a bunch of other 70s crime films. I enjoyed that paying homage aspect of it very much.
Thirdly, it is a gritty, realistic, serious and seriously made film - the like of which is rarely attempted today, and of course never as a superhero movie. This, though, is not entirely good news, which brings us to the minuses:
The minuses are it's not a superhero movie of any kind. Grey-haired Joaquin seems a little too old for an origin story, and tone-wise, the only film that this could conceivably be a prequel to is The Dark Knight, and even that at a considerable stretch. I repeat for emphasis: Joker is not a superhero movie. Nothing extraordinary or fantastical happens that diverges from the ordinary wretched reality you can read about each day in the newspaper headlines. Because of that, it is quite a considerable downer, never really feels as though it leaves the ground, and eventually one does long for the days of Cesar Romero trapping Adam West in a huge yellow shoe or something.
The more realistic you try to make a superhero comic book story, the less fantastical, and thereby enjoyable and entertaining the story will be. The single, solitary exception to this, the one film that captured lightning in a bottle, which DC have been catastrophically failing to repeat ever since, is The Dark Knight, and perhaps the greatest weakness of this present film is that it tries to take that realism even further, to a point where even the memory of the character the film is being based on in the first place is lost.
In the final analysis, the whole thing just doesn't up to an awful lot, and without the fantastical superhero element the premise in retrospect seems a small and silly thing to base a film on. It feels much more like a biopic of an overly-bullied high school shooter in a clown mask, not a supervillain able to take on little Bruce Wayne all grown up in a batcopter. Phoenix's Joker is so debilitated and weak, with not one single strength or talent on display, it's impossible to imagine him surrounded by henchmen and weilding joke-shop weapons of mass destruction while strapping on a hi-tech utility belt.
None of the other characters are fleshed out even a little, and no-one else's acting is in anything like the same league as the lead. Even though his King Of Comedy is an enormous influence on this film, every time Robert de Niro appears on the screen it just reminds us how he can't be bothered to act anymore, hasn't acted in decades, and now just turns up to collect the money. I have no real complaints about anyone else in the movie, but this is a one man show, and Joaquin Phoenix is the man.
Politically, the film seems to have nothing to say and the constant nods in that direction are muddled and confused and seemingly just there for show. No ideas introduced are dealt with or resolved. It's a film of surfaces.
For all this complaining, though, it's a shallow film that's still something of a must-see, for the mood, the look, the intensity, and Joaquin Phoenix's creepy ol' laugh.