Put On a Happy Face

Kaleidoscope’s latest is on Village Roadshow Pictures & Warner Bros. Production of “Joker”.  Directed by Todd Phillips, the movie stars Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Frances Conroy, & Zazie Beets.  Rated ‘R’, it has a running time of 2 hr., 2 min. 
The setting is 1981, and Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) & his mother Penny (Conroy) live in a run-down apartment building in Gotham City.  As in many other depictions of Gotham, it is a city rife with crime, unemployment, & poverty.  As with many parts of our actual country today where the disparity between rich & poor continues to widen, Gotham is experiencing large swaths of its population feeling disenfranchised & in the throes of penury.  In addition to being a part of this environment that surrounds him, Arthur suffers from a neurological disorder that causes him to have bouts of laughter at inappropriate times.  To combat this, he regularly visits a social worker provided by the state & receives medication.  Arthur works as a rent-a-clown for a company operating out of a building in a seedy part of town.  One day he is assigned by the clown company to hold a sign, while in clown makeup, that advertises a company that is going out of business.  A gang of young punks destroy Arthur’s sign.  He runs into an alley after them, and the gang attacks & beats him up.  When he returns to work, a co-worker lends Arthur a gun for self-protection.  Arthur is also a big fan of a Johnny Carson-like late-night talk show host, Murray Franklin (De Niro).  Arthur visits the show & erupts into sustained laughter.  Hearing this, Franklin invites Arthur onto the stage & interviews him.  Arthur also has a side-gig as a stand-up comedian.  After encountering Sophie, (Beets), a pretty single mom who lives in his building, one afternoon, Arthur invites her to the club where he is performing.  Although he is not really amusing, Sophie applauds his act.  Towards the end of Act I, Arthur is entertaining at a children’s hospital; while he performing, his gun falls onto the floor.  Because of this, Arthur is fired by his company.  While still in his clown makeup, Arthur is riding the subway home; also, in the car is a trio of Wayne Enterprise businessmen who are all drunk.  They begin taunting Arthur as Act I comes to a violent conclusion. 

Phillips, a veteran director of comic films (I.e.: “The Hangover” trilogy, “War Dogs”, “Old School”, etc.), has helmed a singular movie in “Joker”.  If you are an aficionado of the Marvel & DC Universes, you have not seen anything like this movie.  While there were aspects of a dark interpretation of the Joker in Heath Ledger’s performance in “The Dark Knight”, nothing has prepared the viewer for Phoenix’s incarnation & Phillips’s anarchistic & nihilistic tonal viewpoint in this film.  Phillips has taken comic-book evil to new heights (or depths) of depravity unlike anything previously seen in either Universe.  Phillips maintains this vision throughout the film.  The dark tone & palette build to a crescendo that erupts in the movie’s third act.  Parallels to our country today are unavoidable; Phillips seems to be saying that as our nation’s disparity between rich & poor continues to increase, if our nation’s elected officials continue to blind themselves to what is happening here & around the world both environmentally & economically, “Joker’s” conceptualization may not be that far-fetched.  Phillips uses his camera in a voyeuristic way in many scenes, as if the camera is letting the audience view Arthur when we really should not.  He uses canted framing in inventive & natural ways; we are left as off-kilter as Arthur is at many times.  Additionally, Phillips’s camera movement coupled with Phoenix’s moves & the pulsating music in the background create an almost balletic and/or operatic look to several scenes.   Phillips’s & Scott Silver’s screenplay is fully in synch with Phillips’s visual mood & motifs.  Comparisons to Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” is spot on.  Even more so are the comparisons of De Niro’s performances as Travis Bickle in “Driver’ and as Rupert Pupkin in Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” to Phoenix’s; the seeds of Arthur Fleck are fully in the DNA of these other 2 societal outcasts.  Which brings us to Joaquin Phoenix’s outstanding transformational performance.  As De Niro did in “Raging Bull”, Phoenix lost an astounding loss of 52 pounds for this role.  His emaciated look is difficult for the viewer to watch, at times; however, it adds immeasurably to the verisimilitude & dynamism of his performance.  His visage, the unsettling nature of his laughter, the believability of his transformation from patsy to leader of insurrection is truly amazing.  The effectiveness of his interpretation should be rewarded a Best Actor nomination early next year and may even get him the coveted award that was denied him in 2005 for his role as Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line”.  One cannot look away during every second that Phoenix is on-screen; it is truly mesmerizing.  De Niro & Conroy are excellent, as well, as 2 people who use Arthur for their own purposes in different ways.  Beets is fine, if underused, as Arthur’s one hope of normality.  Lawrence Sher’s cinematography is completely in line with Phillips’s concept of composition.  They seem to be working in tandem—one inseparable from the other.  Finally, there is Hildur Guonadottir’s hypnotic, jarring, explosive score that underlines with exclamatory precision and reflects Arthur’s & the varying sequences’ emotions, tensions, themes, & violence.  The promise inherent in her scoring for HBO’s “Chernobyl’ is fulfilled here. 

I give “Joker” 9 out of 10 nuggets.  This is a visceral experience that will stay with the viewer long after it completes its 2-hour running time.  Run to your nearest cineplex for this staggering time at the movies!  

Kaleidoscope’s latest is on Village Roadshow Pictures & Warner Bros. Production of “Joker”.  Directed by Todd Phillips, the movie stars Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Frances Conroy, & Zazie Beets.  Rated ‘R’, it has a running time of 2 hr., 2 min. 

The setting is 1981, and Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) & his mother Penny (Conroy) live in a run-down apartment building in Gotham City.  As in many other depictions of Gotham, it is a city rife with crime, unemployment, & poverty.  As with many parts of our actual country today where the disparity between rich & poor continues to widen, Gotham is experiencing large swaths of its population feeling disenfranchised & in the throes of penury.  In addition to being a part of this environment that surrounds him, Arthur suffers from a neurological disorder that causes him to have bouts of laughter at inappropriate times.  To combat this, he regularly visits a social worker provided by the state & receives medication.  Arthur works as a rent-a-clown for a company operating out of a building in a seedy part of town.  One day he is assigned by the clown company to hold a sign, while in clown makeup, that advertises a company that is going out of business.  A gang of young punks destroy Arthur’s sign.  He runs into an alley after them, and the gang attacks & beats him up.  When he returns to work, a co-worker lends Arthur a gun for self-protection.  Arthur is also a big fan of a Johnny Carson-like late-night talk show host, Murray Franklin (De Niro).  Arthur visits the show & erupts into sustained laughter.  Hearing this, Franklin invites Arthur onto the stage & interviews him.  Arthur also has a side-gig as a stand-up comedian.  After encountering Sophie, (Beets), a pretty single mom who lives in his building, one afternoon, Arthur invites her to the club where he is performing.  Although he is not really amusing, Sophie applauds his act.  Towards the end of Act I, Arthur is entertaining at a children’s hospital; while he performing, his gun falls onto the floor.  Because of this, Arthur is fired by his company.  While still in his clown makeup, Arthur is riding the subway home; also, in the car is a trio of Wayne Enterprise businessmen who are all drunk.  They begin taunting Arthur as Act I comes to a violent conclusion. 

Phillips, a veteran director of comic films (I.e.: “The Hangover” trilogy, “War Dogs”, “Old School”, etc.), has helmed a singular movie in “Joker”.  If you are an aficionado of the Marvel & DC Universes, you have not seen anything like this movie.  While there were aspects of a dark interpretation of the Joker in Heath Ledger’s performance in “The Dark Knight”, nothing has prepared the viewer for Phoenix’s incarnation & Phillips’s anarchistic & nihilistic tonal viewpoint in this film.  Phillips has taken comic-book evil to new heights (or depths) of depravity unlike anything previously seen in either Universe.  Phillips maintains this vision throughout the film.  The dark tone & palette build to a crescendo that erupts in the movie’s third act.  Parallels to our country today are unavoidable; Phillips seems to be saying that as our nation’s disparity between rich & poor continues to increase, if our nation’s elected officials continue to blind themselves to what is happening here & around the world both environmentally & economically, “Joker’s” conceptualization may not be that far-fetched.  Phillips uses his camera in a voyeuristic way in many scenes, as if the camera is letting the audience view Arthur when we really should not.  He uses canted framing in inventive & natural ways; we are left as off-kilter as Arthur is at many times.  Additionally, Phillips’s camera movement coupled with Phoenix’s moves & the pulsating music in the background create an almost balletic and/or operatic look to several scenes.   Phillips’s & Scott Silver’s screenplay is fully in synch with Phillips’s visual mood & motifs.  Comparisons to Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” is spot on.  Even more so are the comparisons of De Niro’s performances as Travis Bickle in “Driver’ and as Rupert Pupkin in Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” to Phoenix’s; the seeds of Arthur Fleck are fully in the DNA of these other 2 societal outcasts.  Which brings us to Joaquin Phoenix’s outstanding transformational performance.  As De Niro did in “Raging Bull”, Phoenix lost an astounding loss of 52 pounds for this role.  His emaciated look is difficult for the viewer to watch, at times; however, it adds immeasurably to the verisimilitude & dynamism of his performance.  His visage, the unsettling nature of his laughter, the believability of his transformation from patsy to leader of insurrection is truly amazing.  The effectiveness of his interpretation should be rewarded a Best Actor nomination early next year and may even get him the coveted award that was denied him in 2005 for his role as Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line”.  One cannot look away during every second that Phoenix is on-screen; it is truly mesmerizing.  De Niro & Conroy are excellent, as well, as 2 people who use Arthur for their own purposes in different ways.  Beets is fine, if underused, as Arthur’s one hope of normality.  Lawrence Sher’s cinematography is completely in line with Phillips’s concept of composition.  They seem to be working in tandem—one inseparable from the other.  Finally, there is Hildur Guonadottir’s hypnotic, jarring, explosive score that underlines with exclamatory precision and reflects Arthur’s & the varying sequences’ emotions, tensions, themes, & violence.  The promise inherent in her scoring for HBO’s “Chernobyl’ is fulfilled here. 

I give “Joker” 9 out of 10 nuggets.  This is a visceral experience that will stay with the viewer long after it completes its 2-hour running time.  Run to your nearest cineplex for this staggering time at the movies!