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+--- Thread: Joker (/showthread.php?tid=7219)
Joker - Sacred Jellybean - 12th October 2019
Joker is A-MAZ-ing. Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant. You can read whatever political agenda you want into it (having seen it, it seems like a Rorschach test in that regard) but at the heart of it, it's a character study of a man who's already deranged, then pushed over the brink.
I don't think it's much a spoiler (I'm pretty sure it's in the trailer) to reveal that the Joker inspires an anti-capitalist movement without really trying. The protesters have made his clown persona into an avatar, but he feels no connection to it and takes no responsibility. I feel that the movie is the same way: apolitical at its core, but the viewer sees what they want. Is it about oppressed masses confronting their wealthy, corporate overlords? Is it about bloodthirsty, embittered anarchists, who unfairly blame capitalism for their problems? I had the notion that the movie was actually poking fun at the Resist movement at times. Then apparently, someone got incel vibes from it, which... I don't see at all.
Whatever window dressing you get out of it, Phoenix's performance is phenomenal, and worth the price of admission alone. I'll be hearing that maniacal cackling in my ears for a week.
RE: Joker - Dark Jaguar - 13th October 2019
It's no accident this movie is set in 1981, the same year Reagan ended the national mental health program. I mean, it features as a major plot point, so yeah, no accident.
It's Taxi Driver, and in that respect, it isn't as good as Taxi Driver, but it does one thing better than that older movie, it reaches a much wider audience and gets it's ideas out there. I definitely think they could have done without the Wayne family entirely in this one and been a stronger movie for it (a common complaint I admit) but it is a stunning and frankly shocking movie. The whole thing is basically a study on what can drive someone to go to those lengths. That resistance movement would likely not have ended up in the form it did if not for the Joker's actions, it may have ended up more peaceful and less anarchistic. There's no way to tell, but what is clear is that there were systemic issues plaguing the city and the movie reveled in it.
I do appreciate Murphy's teardown of the Joker's defenses at the end. At first the Joker says he believes in nothing, then he goes into a diatribe, then that gets shot down, so Joker just sh- well see the movie. The Joker's meant to be sympathetic, but isn't at all meant to be emulated. If he's an "incel", then he makes incels look bad (which they didn't need any help doing, admittedly). In reality, he's damaged, and he didn't even need a tattoo to convince you of it.
RE: Joker - Sacred Jellybean - 14th October 2019
SPOILERS AHEAD
That's true that a cut to a social program helped kick off Joker's insanity. But let's not forget that the therapy didn't seem to be doing much for him. I suppose the drugs kept him stabilized to some degree, but he also claims that they aren't working and he needs more, even though he's on six of them already. He also goes off on a rant to his counselor about how she doesn't listen. I wasn't convinced she was that much interested in what he had to say, just there to do a job. An austere conservative could point to that and claim it's an obvious case of government being bad at helping people and a waste of taxpayer money.
Joker's gripe against Thomas Wayne ended up being a farce. It's not this rich elitist who's to blame for his problems. It was his crazy mother who adopted him for underhanded reasons and put him into a bad situation. Maybe I missed something, but I don't recall seeing Wayne actually DOING anything to screw over the lower class. He was running as mayor to "clean up Gotham", but we don't know his politics. As a philanthropist, maybe he actually did want to help people? Are Gotham's citizens so sick of wealthy elite in politics, that he gets caught up in their anti-rich animus?
We know that the rich assholes that accost Joker had provoked him. But no one else knows that. If you hear about three people being slain on a train, is your first instinct, "good, they deserved it"? Or do you save that for after you learn that they were rich and pampered? The boys don't necessarily have to be assholes BECAUSE they're rich. Hell, we saw a bunch of street rats in the beginning do the same exact thing. Yet, we see rich boys get slaughtered, and it catalyzes an anti-wealthy movement, because "they had it coming"? It seems absurd. Certainly there could be a host of other reasons that the protesters went crazy, but I don't recall seeing them. Is the city-wide rat problem a symbol of that their neglect?
If anything, we should be sympathizing with Wayne when he punches Joker in the nose after finding out he was the extremely creepy guy that talked to his son and strangled his butler. I know I did. I actually didn't really sympathize with Joker all that much. To some extent, yeah. He's been dealt an absolutely terrible hand in life. I loved seeing him stand up against his aggressors, even though killing them is pretty harsh. But as time went on, I sympathized with him less, as he became more and more unhinged. It became less a matter of sympathy and more a matter of staring at him in fascination, almost clinically, the way you might a serial killer.
That being said, I still loved seeing him shoot De Niro in the head, and for the shit to absolutely hit the fan in the city. I could see how that could put some people off. A guy on facebook called the movie "art with no point", so maybe some see that as nihilistic. But it captured the "meaning" of Joker (the character), which is that... there is no meaning. He's an utterly nihilistic person who only wants to destroy everything.
One of the lines I loved is Joker declaring that he realized his life isn't a tragedy, it's a comedy. It's inherently absurd. Isn't laughter a mechanism that traumatized people use to deal with their emotional problems? A lot of comedians had dark backgrounds. So it makes perfect sense that this utterly insane person would develop a compulsive, nervous laughter. I found it very chilling.