So I've finally seen Joker.
I expect it will win a massive pile of Academy Awards. More's the pity. Because although it's an exceptionally well-made film with strong performances...it also hit me as painful art for the sake of painful art itself. In fact, it hits like a hardened fist wrapped in brass knuckles.
I've waited a handful of months to see it because I've been busy, but also because there was something in the previews that suggested this movie was going to be too dark for its own good. In that time I've heard a ton of comparisons to Taxi Driver. There's a definite nod to that masterpiece in both the setting and the story. Maybe a better comparison is found in another Scorsese classic, The King Of Comedy. I think the main character is more a heavily amplified version of a Rupert Pupkin than he is a Travis Bickle.
But neither of those films, vicious and dark though they are, compares to the disturbing level of violence in the movie. I think a better twin would be A Clockwork Orange. Bickle doesn't go to the extremes of Joker's Arthur Fleck.
As a film, Joker is very well made, and I understand what they were going for with the overall message. But in our current social climate the message is too much. The ending of the film says that acting in your own interest and following your madness and manic urges will end in reward.
It isn't necessary that a film have a happy ending, in my opinion. But this movie smacked of irresponsibility with the way it glorified the inner demon of a man's mental health issues, bastardized the Bernie Goetz story, borrowed the worst parts of the film Network, and bit firmly into the exposed shoulder of a society riddled with uncertainty and anxiety.
Its makers knew the audience would relate to it viscerally. It tapped into the anxiety and fear of our everyday lives. Personally, I go to the movies to escape that shit...not see it amped up on some sort of celluloid supercocaine.
One man's opinion: The movie was put together extremely well. And I hated it. I get the gist of what they wanted to accomplish. I just don't personally think it needed to be accomplished. I won't see it again.
