7:37 PM
Anyhoo, I finally got to watch The Joker.
Great movie, but obviously not the greatest.
The first 15 minutes immediately show you two things: 1) We have an Oscar-worthy performance. 2) The mood and the dialog is dark, but not deep.
By the end of the movie, the strong points are not that vivid and the weak points almost fade away.
Overall, and I'm still in the middle of forming my opinion on this, and it might not be my final stance, it deserved the praise it got, but, unexpectedly for me, the flak wasn't entirely unjustified either.
What it did good: The performance, and that goes without saying. The brutal death scenes were done pretty well, and I think the highest point in the film, for me, was when he found out his mother was a b!tch. That was shot and edited very well.
Also it was evident the whole setup was for Joaquin to go full Joaquin and that aspect was done right. Great actor, deserves the recognition he now gets.
What it didn't do good, or maybe just didn't work out for me, was the assumptions thrown early in the movie.
1) You don't idolize a frigging murderer. Not even if you're a certified graduate from lunatic university you don't. Maybe if the Joker went on social media and made some selfies and tried to present his case, there would have been a fringe fan base of similar minded lunatics. Kinda like how the real incel violence was coordinated and cheered.
If anything, if you hear someone murdered three people on a quiet day/night in a train, and you're a bad person, you would get more defensive, not idolize the murderer. The murderer, not having presented their case or their reasoning, would be a vague recent threat on the loose, and if anything, the fear of the vague would drive people nuts.
The motivation could be anything. It could have been self-defense, which it kinda sorta was here, it could have been a full-on assault, anything. That's why you don't sympathize with the murderer, and definitely not idolize them. If you also hate the victims based on a vague, however deep hatred of the rich or the system or whatever, you would say "good riddance". That doesn't automatically make the killer a hero.
2) I get it that the movie wants to maybe potentially probably say something, like a cautionary tale of look-what-happens when-you're-mean, then it needs to portray the society and its rejection of the "clowns" more carefully. It didn't need to include a character who sympathized with the Joker, I'm not saying that. I'm saying the real society would be more diverse in its meanness and rejection, if that makes any sense.
Everyone was rejecting Arthur almost at the same level. The lack of sympathy was not very variable. A lot of people aren't mean, compared to what Joker wants us to think, and a lot of people are meaner and more complex in their meanness than a few jocks paying a prank on a clown.
That's what would have given movie the depth it needed. It's really easy to shake our head at what a bunch of arseholes people are being to Arthur, and their rejection in the entire movie can be summed up in the first reaction Samwise Gamgee had when they encountered Gollum. It gets old, it's not really explained, and it doesn't evoke any complex reactions from our side.
LOTR is deeper because both Frodo and Sam go through a wide range of reactions and emotions to what Gollum does or says, ranging from empathy to sympathy to disgust.
And the weakest part of the movie, right now, to me, seemed like the therapist. It would be okay not to pay mind to a side character much in the movie, but this one really could affect the entire plot, despite what the director would intend. Think how things would have ended up differently if Arthur had someone to talk and listen to. Like, I'm not even doing it justice. She is part of Arthur's origin story. And the portrayal had been, well, careless.
God knows how many of them I've seen IRL. Not because I needed them, of course, but I have seen a fair share to know how one would act if they were uninterested and just . . . doing it for the money or somesuch. "[...] They don't give a shit about you" WTH is this?! Who would tell this to their patient, no matter how apathetic or incompetent they are? This isn't Whiplash. You're talking to a guy who bursts out laughing when they get nervous!
You're not talking to a sissy kid aspiring to be the next Beethoven, so as to crush their dreams and bring them down to human level. You're talking to your patient, and your effing job is making them feel content and secure, to say the least.
I've seen disinterested therapists, and they resort to boilerplate bullshit, not go J.K.Simmons on the patient. "Think about kittens" and positive energy and whatever. Arthur does hint she tells him those, in the 90s anti-hero comic fashion, but the therapist we see in the movie is as effective as a pair of boots.
Done. I guess my criticism got longer, because I had to explain my opinion, but don't get me wrong, it's a pretty good movie. I'm just not seeing how it can get remotely close to Ledger's material, and it's a pretty good example that the acting is not everything and you need quality material to go with it.
People keep saying things like it's as good or even a better Joker than Ledger's, but IMO it's not. People keep saying it was really harrowing and the most horrific thing they've seen on TV, but unless I've been 'desensitivized', it remotely wasn't. I guess I was going for shock value but it wasn't that high voltage.
Not to say it incorporated more Bruce Wayne than I liked, and more King of Comedy and Taxi Driver than I expected. If Scorsese directed it, good God, it could have easily rivaled The Dark Knight. Phillips just sounded like he couldn't have done it if those two movies didn't exist already.
Oh, and yeah, I'm definitely very certain there will be a sequel.
I'm a big fan of True Detective's Rust Cohle. Would anyone please recommend any other movies, books, TV shows that has a similar character? And I would be very happy if anyone could tell me if Nic Pizzolatto has similar characters in his any other works.
Thanks for your time.
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