j* Movie Reviews 2019

Joker (2019)

Finally something aligned with the Bat-franch* that nails my views of Gotham.

*Probably sorta somehow?

If you don't know that I hate Batman and will take any opp to restate how much, then it's like you don't know me at all. Batman is an annoying rich dude with toys indulging his fantasies. He's boring. He votes conservative. He's mildly philanthropic at best, with no actual super-powers, just money. There is a great line of thinking in the anti-Bat camp that if Bruce Wayne actually put as much money into socio-economic justice issues as he does cool cars and tight suits, that he'd be able to fix Gotham's crime from the bottom up. And this film takes that hypothesis and makes a whole excellent show about how he and his kin don't.

Even though I rarely make it through a Bat-film, Joker is my favourite character, because that "why so serious" encapsulates my whole experience of the Brucey. And Joaquin Phoenix's Joker is so breathily delicious. He's complex, channeling multiple mental health and neurological conditions into weird physicality. Weird, weird physicality, the kind of contortions that make you shiver a little. Somewhere between unco and dance queen, he embodies. And he embodies so hard, taking up space in eery and uncomfortable ways for the viewer. Taking up space that people wish he wouldn't.

If you're a Bat-fan, chances are you're in love with law and order. This is what most DC (& comic) stories seem to be about, preternaturally powerful men keeping control of the city in traditional and protectivist ways... we call those heroes. We call them heroes because you can only be with them, if you're against them they'll wipe you out. So you're on the team; or you're dead, expelled, banished. So I suspect that die hard bat-fans might find this one a strange pill... it's all about the inching escalation of agents of chaos to flashpoint. Those small steps that lead to riot and revolution and upheaval. And if you think this isn't relevant to the now, look at Tokyo, look at Chile, check out this list of our decade of rioting: . We are in riotous times and the rich don't riot.

There is so much written about if this is a political story or not. I'd say it is. But it's a little bit retro. I'd have called it 70s vibing, but content checkers pin it to 1981 exactly. And I think it has modern politics embroiled into a pre-digital era to try and reconnect us. As others have pointed out, this is a mirror, not a filter, and we're just so used to filters. If you can only read Fight Club as a story of a terrorist who sets up terror cells, because you've been trained in terror-noia by the post-S11-world, then yeah, you'll struggle to find this relatable. But if you can cast your mind back to the massive anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movements and sentiments of the 90s, this feels pretty normal. If you want to make an omelette you've got to break some eggs, and a few get cracked in this. There is some olde-school ultra-violence ala Clockwork Orange... and it's not comic booky, it's CSI. But there's not much violence. I really don't get why people are decrying the violence here... I have seen more violent films probably every second week I go to the movies.

It is all deeply personal for the Joker. Whilst his story is catalysed by a range of mental health budget cuts and hard-luck life, and the wonderful entwinement of his story to the Bat-story, it's also a spark for the wider experiences of the underclasses. We're wonderful at absorbing stories of revolt and revolution if they're set in some kind of alt-world fantasy, #starwars #hungergames, but a little less comfortable when it looks kinda like our own. I say think of this as a new version of V-for-Vendetta... right down to the masks. It's not just Joker's origin story, it's Gotham's. And tied up in that is Batman's.

I'm not going to lie, the moments where Joker is opening the letter his mother has written to Thomas Wayne (bat-Dad), and the anticipation of that (by then) inevitable reveal were electric. It was a glorious twist on what I feel was previously known and I'm totally in the Fleck-camp on this... rich guys do cover ups all the time. Particularly in the 80s.

It's a slow film, one that somehow dilates time in an intense way. Its two hours feel about four, but every one of them had a sense of weird tension. I was totally down the wormhole. I'm not sure if there are multiple "gorillas" hidden in plain sight in this, but Fakie says he saw multiple super-rats wandering about set. It also has spectacular use of space and architecture in that urban-gothic way. Joker haunts Gotham only as he is haunted by it. Architecture as psyche written large in glorious shots.

Send in the clowns.

J* gives it 5 stars.

PS. I agonised about 4 or 5 stars for ages, but in the end concluded it did nothing wrong and that I thoroughly enjoyed the exploration of ideas.

PS. I have no idea how it has generated so much "controversy" and "dangerous film" reviews.