JOKER (2019) Discussion Thread Starring Joaquin Phoenix (Update 9/12/19) Leaked Footage.. GOOD GAWD
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Joaquin Phoenix's Joker wins Golden Lion prize at 76th annual Venice Film Festival
Published: 17:27 EDT, 7 September 2019 | Updated: 18:28 EDT, 7 September 2019
- Joaquin Phoenix's Joker scooped the Golden Lion prize at Venice Film Festival
- Director Todd Phillips thanked 'Warner Bros. and DC for stepping out of their comfort zone and taking such a bold swing on me and this movie'
- Heaping praise on the film's star, Phoenix, the director said: 'There is no movie without Joaquin Phoenix. Thank you for trusting me with your insane talent'
Published: 17:27 EDT, 7 September 2019 | Updated: 18:28 EDT, 7 September 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Lion
The Golden Lion (Italian: Leone d'Oro) is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most prestigious and distinguished prizes. In 1970, a second Golden Lion was introduced; this is an honorary award for people who have made an important contribution to cinema.
The prize was introduced in 1949 as the Golden Lion of Saint Mark (the winged lion which had appeared on the flag of the Republic of Venice).[1] Previously, the equivalent prize was the Gran Premio Internazionale di Venezia (Grand International Prize of Venice), awarded in 1947 and 1948. Before that, from 1934 until 1942, the highest awards were the Coppa Mussolini (Mussolini Cup) for Best Italian Film and Best Foreign Film.
The Golden Lion (Italian: Leone d'Oro) is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most prestigious and distinguished prizes. In 1970, a second Golden Lion was introduced; this is an honorary award for people who have made an important contribution to cinema.
The prize was introduced in 1949 as the Golden Lion of Saint Mark (the winged lion which had appeared on the flag of the Republic of Venice).[1] Previously, the equivalent prize was the Gran Premio Internazionale di Venezia (Grand International Prize of Venice), awarded in 1947 and 1948. Before that, from 1934 until 1942, the highest awards were the Coppa Mussolini (Mussolini Cup) for Best Italian Film and Best Foreign Film.
2010 Somewhere Sofia Coppola USA
2011 Faust Фауст Alexander Sokurov Russia
2012 Pietà 피에타 / Pieta Kim Ki-duk South Korea
2013 Sacro GRA Gianfranco Rosi Italy
2014 A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron Roy Andersson Sweden
2015 From Afar Desde allá Lorenzo Vigas Venezuela
2016 The Woman Who Left Ang Babaeng Humayo Lav Diaz Philippines
2017 The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro USA
2018 Roma Alfonso Cuarón Mexico
2019 Joker Todd Phillips USA
2011 Faust Фауст Alexander Sokurov Russia
2012 Pietà 피에타 / Pieta Kim Ki-duk South Korea
2013 Sacro GRA Gianfranco Rosi Italy
2014 A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron Roy Andersson Sweden
2015 From Afar Desde allá Lorenzo Vigas Venezuela
2016 The Woman Who Left Ang Babaeng Humayo Lav Diaz Philippines
2017 The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro USA
2018 Roma Alfonso Cuarón Mexico
2019 Joker Todd Phillips USA
Joker Laughs Its Way to Winning the Venice Film Festival
By Devon Ivie@devonsaysrelax
Photo: Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.
He’s maybe a smoker and likely a midnight toker, but Jokeris now also a serious Oscars contender. The Venice Film Festival awarded the Joaquin Phoenix-starring drama with the coveted Golden Lion, an honor that recognizes the festival’s best film. Joker, which gives our lipstick-loving superhero villain an incredibly dark backstory, is directed by Todd Phillips and follows the character as a failed stand-up comedian in Gotham City. (Robert De Niro, Marc Maron, and Zazie Beetz co-star.) Roman Polanski also snagged the festival’s Grand Jury Prize for his new drama, An Officer and a Spy, which was met with a long standing ovation at its premiere. The full list of competition winners is below.
Golden Lion: Joker, Todd Phillips
Grand Jury Prize: An Officer and a Spy, Roman Polanski
Silver Lion for Best Director: Roy Andersson, About Endlessness
Volpi Cup for Best Actress: Ariane Ascaride, Gloria Mundi
Volpi Cup for Best Actor: Luca Marinelli, Martin Eden
Best Screenplay: No. 7 Cherry Lane, Yonfan
Special Jury Prize: The Mafia Is No Longer What It Used to Be, Franco Maresco
Marcello Mastroianni Award for Young Actor: Toby Wallace, Babyteeth
By Devon Ivie@devonsaysrelax
Photo: Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.
He’s maybe a smoker and likely a midnight toker, but Jokeris now also a serious Oscars contender. The Venice Film Festival awarded the Joaquin Phoenix-starring drama with the coveted Golden Lion, an honor that recognizes the festival’s best film. Joker, which gives our lipstick-loving superhero villain an incredibly dark backstory, is directed by Todd Phillips and follows the character as a failed stand-up comedian in Gotham City. (Robert De Niro, Marc Maron, and Zazie Beetz co-star.) Roman Polanski also snagged the festival’s Grand Jury Prize for his new drama, An Officer and a Spy, which was met with a long standing ovation at its premiere. The full list of competition winners is below.
Golden Lion: Joker, Todd Phillips
Grand Jury Prize: An Officer and a Spy, Roman Polanski
Silver Lion for Best Director: Roy Andersson, About Endlessness
Volpi Cup for Best Actress: Ariane Ascaride, Gloria Mundi
Volpi Cup for Best Actor: Luca Marinelli, Martin Eden
Best Screenplay: No. 7 Cherry Lane, Yonfan
Special Jury Prize: The Mafia Is No Longer What It Used to Be, Franco Maresco
Marcello Mastroianni Award for Young Actor: Toby Wallace, Babyteeth
Something is very wrong or very Hollywood about that top picture.
@largebillsonlyplease ill @ViCiouS
The Resentment of Joker
By David Edelstein
Toronto Film Festival 2019[/paste:font]
After the eight-minute standing ovation for Joker at the Venice Film Festival, the 20 seconds or so of enthusiastic (seated) applause at the Toronto International Film Festival came as a relief, at least to one critic. Perhaps Canadians are temperamentally less inclined to shout “Bravissimo!” for operatic celebrations of psychosis. More likely, they chose to restore some balance by recognizing an accomplished movie with a tour-de-force leading performance, but also one that’s monotonous, unpleasant, and morally blech. Its director, Todd Phillips, playfully referred to it as “bonkers” in his Toronto introduction, but he’s giving himself too much credit. The thinking behind the film is very conventional. As Hannah Arendt saw banality in the supposed evil of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, I see in Joker an attempt to elevate nerdy revenge to the plane of myth. That’s scary on a lot of different levels.
Although this is an “origin” story, Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is a volatile party clown well before he adopts that fabled moniker. But there’s a key difference: He’s a victim, more sinned against than sinning. Oh, what a litany of injuries: In the first scene, a group of teens steal the sign he carries for a Going Out of Business sale and bash it over his head when he gives chase, after which — insult to injury — his boss accuses him of stealing the sign and deducts the cost from Arthur’s wages. A colleague gives him a gun and then — when the weapon clatters to the floor during a party for sick kids — denies it. An attractive single mother (Zazie Beetz) in his rundown apartment building can barely keep from grimacing in the face of his greasy leering. Social services are being cut to put money in the pockets of Gotham City’s wealthy — among them Thomas Wayne, soon-to-be-murdered father of Bruce, who’ll go bats — which means Arthur no longer has easy access to his meds, which means he could provoke still more scummy thugs with his Tourette’s-like tendency to break into laughter in moments of stress. Sure enough, he’s attacked on the subway, this time by drunken yuppies who happen to work for Wayne. A popular talk show host, Murray Franklin (Robert DeNiro), cruelly ridicules his attempt to be a stand-up comic at an open-mic event. Add to this an overbearing, sickly mother (Frances Conroy) and a history of childhood abuse — is it any wonder the outcast/victim sees only two possibilities: suicide or assuming the guise of a supervillain? You have to admire Arthur for his self-actualization. It sure beats impotence — or nonexistence, which is the ultimate impotence.
We want Joker. We need Joker, if only to end the slow, masochistic trajectory. Kill someone, anyone! Rescue our eyes from those underlit interiors with their pools of red and green and yellow light — harlequin colors with a brackish tinge — and rusted-out, graffiti-ridden ’70s New York fire escapes and back alleys. We get the allusions — that Arthur is a melding of two Martin Scorsese protagonists, Rupert Pupkin and Travis Bickle (hence the gimmick casting of DeNiro, who doesn’t seem like a natural talk show host). If Arthur could be Pupkin’s sibling, he’s cousin at least to Charles Bronson’s urban vigilante in Death Wish. At no point are we troubled by the people he kills — they’re “free-range rude” in the words of Hannibal Lecter, another psycho transformed into an Existential hero after an origin story in which some mean Russians forced him to eat his little sister. Watching Arthur trudge up and down a long outdoor staircase evokes The Exorcist and its demon, Pazuzu, sometimes referred to as a clown called Captain Howdy. But here there’s no exorcist in sight. We think, “Come into Arthur, Captain Howdy!”
Joker is the ultimate Joaquin Phoenix role, which is not necessarily a compliment, though not a disparagement either. He’s the best unhinged movie actor in the world. Phoenix never seems happier — or at least more at home — than when miserably lost in a character’s mind, his features translating every short-circuiting synapse. There’s music in his head, now flowing, now spasmodic, and when Arthur throws up his arms and twirls or does a little soft shoe, it’s as if he’s freeing himself from the oppression of acting sane. Take that, normalcy! When he finally makes an appearance on Franklin’s talk show with his clown face and rust-colored suit, he refuses to connect with the host’s rhythms, and you flash on Phoenix’s nutso act with David Letterman, when he stopped the world and made it squirm. The downside to the performance is the downside to the whole movie: It’s essentially repetitive. It goes nowhere you can’t predict. And the other actors offer no relief. DeNiro is ill-suited to a part that calls for showbiz savvy, Beetz functions as a male projection, and Brett Cullen’s Thomas Wayne would lose a charisma contest to Mike Bloomberg. Frances Conroy has a lyrical moment or two as Arthur’s mom, but she’s so obviously off her rocker that she functions as yet another antagonist to Arthur. The movie comes to life visually — this time imitating The French Connection — when the greasepainted Arthur flees detectives by losing himself on a subway packed with protesters dressed as clowns, but I began to dread the inevitable outcome: that Arthur will be recognized as a Clown God in the circus of horror we call urban life.
Joker has been called an anthem for incels, which isn’t wrong. I agree with Time’s Stephanie Zacharek that’s it’s less an exploration of a modern pathology than a symptom of it. The movie brings to mind Stephen Metcalfe’s incisive 2012 essay in Slate, after a disturbed man opened fire in a theater showing The Dark Knight Rises. Metcalfe didn’t blame the movie, exactly, but he did trace a connection between civil massacres and portraits of supervillains. The young men who committed these acts believed “they had been grossly undervalued by the world — so much so, their lives had become one long psychic injury.” In response, they cultivated a “charismatic malevolence” and put modern technology to “creatively annihilative” uses. They aggrandized themselves as Mephistophelean. Building on Arendt’s work, Metcalfe said the best way to discourage incidents like the one in that theater (way more frequent since he wrote that piece) is to “divest evil of its grandiosity or mythic resonance by completely banalizing it.” In other words, make them look like the loser schmucks they are.
Although Phillips and the screenwriters sought to make Joker more realistic than its DC Comics predecessors, it exalts its protagonist and gives him the origin story of his dreams, in which killing is a just — and artful — response to a malevolently indifferent society. Arthur/Joker might be repulsive, but in a topsy-turvy universe, repulsive is attractive. I’m not arguing that Joker will inspire killings (it might, but so might a lot of other things) — only that it panders to selfish, small-minded feelings of resentment and as such is profoundly boring. It’s a one-joke movie.
The Resentment of Joker
By David Edelstein
Toronto Film Festival 2019[/paste:font]
After the eight-minute standing ovation for Joker at the Venice Film Festival, the 20 seconds or so of enthusiastic (seated) applause at the Toronto International Film Festival came as a relief, at least to one critic. Perhaps Canadians are temperamentally less inclined to shout “Bravissimo!” for operatic celebrations of psychosis. More likely, they chose to restore some balance by recognizing an accomplished movie with a tour-de-force leading performance, but also one that’s monotonous, unpleasant, and morally blech. Its director, Todd Phillips, playfully referred to it as “bonkers” in his Toronto introduction, but he’s giving himself too much credit. The thinking behind the film is very conventional. As Hannah Arendt saw banality in the supposed evil of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, I see in Joker an attempt to elevate nerdy revenge to the plane of myth. That’s scary on a lot of different levels.
Although this is an “origin” story, Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is a volatile party clown well before he adopts that fabled moniker. But there’s a key difference: He’s a victim, more sinned against than sinning. Oh, what a litany of injuries: In the first scene, a group of teens steal the sign he carries for a Going Out of Business sale and bash it over his head when he gives chase, after which — insult to injury — his boss accuses him of stealing the sign and deducts the cost from Arthur’s wages. A colleague gives him a gun and then — when the weapon clatters to the floor during a party for sick kids — denies it. An attractive single mother (Zazie Beetz) in his rundown apartment building can barely keep from grimacing in the face of his greasy leering. Social services are being cut to put money in the pockets of Gotham City’s wealthy — among them Thomas Wayne, soon-to-be-murdered father of Bruce, who’ll go bats — which means Arthur no longer has easy access to his meds, which means he could provoke still more scummy thugs with his Tourette’s-like tendency to break into laughter in moments of stress. Sure enough, he’s attacked on the subway, this time by drunken yuppies who happen to work for Wayne. A popular talk show host, Murray Franklin (Robert DeNiro), cruelly ridicules his attempt to be a stand-up comic at an open-mic event. Add to this an overbearing, sickly mother (Frances Conroy) and a history of childhood abuse — is it any wonder the outcast/victim sees only two possibilities: suicide or assuming the guise of a supervillain? You have to admire Arthur for his self-actualization. It sure beats impotence — or nonexistence, which is the ultimate impotence.
We want Joker. We need Joker, if only to end the slow, masochistic trajectory. Kill someone, anyone! Rescue our eyes from those underlit interiors with their pools of red and green and yellow light — harlequin colors with a brackish tinge — and rusted-out, graffiti-ridden ’70s New York fire escapes and back alleys. We get the allusions — that Arthur is a melding of two Martin Scorsese protagonists, Rupert Pupkin and Travis Bickle (hence the gimmick casting of DeNiro, who doesn’t seem like a natural talk show host). If Arthur could be Pupkin’s sibling, he’s cousin at least to Charles Bronson’s urban vigilante in Death Wish. At no point are we troubled by the people he kills — they’re “free-range rude” in the words of Hannibal Lecter, another psycho transformed into an Existential hero after an origin story in which some mean Russians forced him to eat his little sister. Watching Arthur trudge up and down a long outdoor staircase evokes The Exorcist and its demon, Pazuzu, sometimes referred to as a clown called Captain Howdy. But here there’s no exorcist in sight. We think, “Come into Arthur, Captain Howdy!”
Joker is the ultimate Joaquin Phoenix role, which is not necessarily a compliment, though not a disparagement either. He’s the best unhinged movie actor in the world. Phoenix never seems happier — or at least more at home — than when miserably lost in a character’s mind, his features translating every short-circuiting synapse. There’s music in his head, now flowing, now spasmodic, and when Arthur throws up his arms and twirls or does a little soft shoe, it’s as if he’s freeing himself from the oppression of acting sane. Take that, normalcy! When he finally makes an appearance on Franklin’s talk show with his clown face and rust-colored suit, he refuses to connect with the host’s rhythms, and you flash on Phoenix’s nutso act with David Letterman, when he stopped the world and made it squirm. The downside to the performance is the downside to the whole movie: It’s essentially repetitive. It goes nowhere you can’t predict. And the other actors offer no relief. DeNiro is ill-suited to a part that calls for showbiz savvy, Beetz functions as a male projection, and Brett Cullen’s Thomas Wayne would lose a charisma contest to Mike Bloomberg. Frances Conroy has a lyrical moment or two as Arthur’s mom, but she’s so obviously off her rocker that she functions as yet another antagonist to Arthur. The movie comes to life visually — this time imitating The French Connection — when the greasepainted Arthur flees detectives by losing himself on a subway packed with protesters dressed as clowns, but I began to dread the inevitable outcome: that Arthur will be recognized as a Clown God in the circus of horror we call urban life.
Joker has been called an anthem for incels, which isn’t wrong. I agree with Time’s Stephanie Zacharek that’s it’s less an exploration of a modern pathology than a symptom of it. The movie brings to mind Stephen Metcalfe’s incisive 2012 essay in Slate, after a disturbed man opened fire in a theater showing The Dark Knight Rises. Metcalfe didn’t blame the movie, exactly, but he did trace a connection between civil massacres and portraits of supervillains. The young men who committed these acts believed “they had been grossly undervalued by the world — so much so, their lives had become one long psychic injury.” In response, they cultivated a “charismatic malevolence” and put modern technology to “creatively annihilative” uses. They aggrandized themselves as Mephistophelean. Building on Arendt’s work, Metcalfe said the best way to discourage incidents like the one in that theater (way more frequent since he wrote that piece) is to “divest evil of its grandiosity or mythic resonance by completely banalizing it.” In other words, make them look like the loser schmucks they are.
Although Phillips and the screenwriters sought to make Joker more realistic than its DC Comics predecessors, it exalts its protagonist and gives him the origin story of his dreams, in which killing is a just — and artful — response to a malevolently indifferent society. Arthur/Joker might be repulsive, but in a topsy-turvy universe, repulsive is attractive. I’m not arguing that Joker will inspire killings (it might, but so might a lot of other things) — only that it panders to selfish, small-minded feelings of resentment and as such is profoundly boring. It’s a one-joke movie.
Joker Wants to Be a Movie About the Emptiness of Our Culture. Instead, It’s a Prime Example of It
JOKER - Final Trailer
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It’s official. With Joker, Joaquin Phoenix is a certified graduate of the Acme Academy of Dramatic Arts. You want acting? Come and get it.
Skills on display include but are not limited to leering, jeering, airhorn-style blasts of laughter timed for maximum audience discomfort, funky-chicken style dance moves, the occasional blank, dead stare and assorted moony expressions indicating soulful lonerism.
But don’t for a minute think Phoenix isn’t funny, too. They say you never forget Clowning 101, and Phoenix hasn’t: He hops around like an unhinged Emmett Kelly, twisting his physique into weird and unsettling shapes. His body has a rubbery angularity, like a chicken bone soaked in Coca-Cola.
In Joker — playing in competition here at the Venice Film Festival — Phoenix is acting so hard you can feel the desperation throbbing in his veins. He leaves you wanting to start him a GoFundMe, so he won’t have to pour so much sweat into his job again. But the aggressive terribleness of his performance isn’t completely his fault. (He has often been, and generally remains, a superb actor. Just not here.)
Director Todd Phillips — who made frat-boy comedies like Road Trip and Old School before graduating to dude-bro comedies like The Hangover movies — bears at least some of the blame, and the aggressive and possibly irresponsible idiocy of Joker overall is his alone to answer for. Phillips may want us to think he’s giving us a movie all about the emptiness of our culture, but really, he’s just offering a prime example of it.
Joker is a stand-alone origin story that dovetails with, but does not strictly follow, DC Universe Batman lore. Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck — he’ll later become one of Batman’s nemeses, the Joker, in case you didn’t already know that — is an odd, lonely guy who lives at home with the mother (played by a wan Frances Conroy) he love-hates.
Arthur works for a sad rent-a-clown joint, and nothing ever goes right. This is clear from the moment we meet him: he’s tense and nervous and he can’t relax. The movie is set in a Gotham City that’s a lazy approximation of gritty 1970s-era New York, complete with garbage strikes and “super-rats” overrunning the city. On the job in clown costume, Arthur gets beaten up by a mob of nasty punks — and then almost gets fired because they stole and broke the “going out of business sign” he was twirling for a client.
More bad stuff happens, day in, day out. He gets angrier and more isolated by the minute. No one is ever kind to Arthur; he’s the world’s saddest punching bag.
When the city’s social services close down, he can no longer receive counseling there, or get his meds. (He carries around a little laminated card that he holds out helpfully whenever he laughs inappropriately, which is pretty much all the time. It reads, “Forgive my laughter, I have a brain injury.”) The one bright spot of his day, or night, is watching a Johnny Carson-style talk-show host, Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), on television. He dreams of being a stand-up comic and someday being on the show. His wish will come true, but life will have beaten the poor lad down interminably before then.
Read more: Here Are All the Upcoming Joker Movies
As you can probably guess, all of Arthur’s travails are leading up to a series of “See what you made me do?” brutalities, most of which happen while he’s dressed up in his clown suit. Violence makes him feel more in control, less pathetic. Killing — usually with a gun, but scissors or a good old-fashioned suffocation will do just fine — empowers him.
But it’s not as if we don’t know how this pathology works: In America, there’s a mass shooting or attempted act of violence by a guy like Arthur practically every other week. And yet we’re supposed to feel some sympathy for Arthur, the troubled lamb; he just hasn’t had enough love. Before long, he becomes a vigilante folk hero — his first signature act is to kill a trio of annoying Wall Street spuds while riding the subway, which inspires the masses to don clown masks and march enthusiastically around the city with “Kill the Rich!” placards.
Arthur also tries to work out a personal beef with rich asshat and aspiring city mayor Thomas Wayne, father of you-know-who. Because, it turns out, Arthur has some daddy issues too. Who would have guessed?
Zazie Beetz, Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips attend a photocall for the film "Joker" on August 31, 2019 during the 76th Venice Film Festival.
ALBERTO PIZZOLI—AFP/Getty Images
Joker — which was written by Phillips and Scott Silver — doesn’t have a plot; it’s more like a bunch of reaction GIFs strung together. When Arthur gets fired from his clown job, he struts by the time-clock, deadpans, “Oh no, I forgot to punch out” and then, wait for it, socks it so hard it dangles from the wall. Make a note of the moment, because you’ll be seeing it a lot in your Twitter and Facebook feeds.
The movie’s cracks — and it’s practically all cracks — are stuffed with phony philosophy. Joker is dark only in a stupidly adolescent way, but it wants us to think it’s imparting subtle political or cultural wisdom. Just before one of his more violent tirades, Arthur muses, “Everybody just screams at each other. Nobody’s civil anymore.” Who doesn’t feel that way in our terrible modern times? But Arthur’s observation is one of those truisms that’s so true it just slides off the wall, a message that both the left and the right can get behind and use for their own aims. It means nothing.
Meanwhile, the movie lionizes and glamorizes Arthur even as it shakes its head, faux-sorrowfully, over his violent behavior. There’s an aimless subplot involving a neighbor in Arthur’s apartment building, played by Zazie Beetz, in an underdeveloped role. (Beetz also appears in another movie here at the festival, Benedict Andrews’s Seberg, where she’s given much more to do.) Arthur has a crush on her, and though he does her no harm, there’s still something creepily entitled about his attentiveness to her. He could easily be adopted as the patron saint of incels.
Arthur is a mess, but we’re also supposed to think he’s kind of great — a misunderstood savant. Dressed up for his big TV moment in a turquoise paisley shirt, marigold vest and dapper cranberry suit (admittedly a marvelous feat of costume design), Arthur struts down an outdoor stairway like a rock’n’roll hero. It’s the most energizing moment in the movie, but what is it winding us up for? Arthur inspires chaos and anarchy, but the movie makes it look like he’s starting a revolution, where the rich are taken down, the poor get everything they need and deserve, and the sad guys who can’t get a date become killer heroes. There’s a sick joke in there somewhere. Unfortunately, it’s on us.
JOKER - Final Trailer
JOKER - Final Trailer
Current Time 0:03
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Duration 2:24
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It’s official. With Joker, Joaquin Phoenix is a certified graduate of the Acme Academy of Dramatic Arts. You want acting? Come and get it.
Skills on display include but are not limited to leering, jeering, airhorn-style blasts of laughter timed for maximum audience discomfort, funky-chicken style dance moves, the occasional blank, dead stare and assorted moony expressions indicating soulful lonerism.
But don’t for a minute think Phoenix isn’t funny, too. They say you never forget Clowning 101, and Phoenix hasn’t: He hops around like an unhinged Emmett Kelly, twisting his physique into weird and unsettling shapes. His body has a rubbery angularity, like a chicken bone soaked in Coca-Cola.
In Joker — playing in competition here at the Venice Film Festival — Phoenix is acting so hard you can feel the desperation throbbing in his veins. He leaves you wanting to start him a GoFundMe, so he won’t have to pour so much sweat into his job again. But the aggressive terribleness of his performance isn’t completely his fault. (He has often been, and generally remains, a superb actor. Just not here.)
Director Todd Phillips — who made frat-boy comedies like Road Trip and Old School before graduating to dude-bro comedies like The Hangover movies — bears at least some of the blame, and the aggressive and possibly irresponsible idiocy of Joker overall is his alone to answer for. Phillips may want us to think he’s giving us a movie all about the emptiness of our culture, but really, he’s just offering a prime example of it.
Joker is a stand-alone origin story that dovetails with, but does not strictly follow, DC Universe Batman lore. Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck — he’ll later become one of Batman’s nemeses, the Joker, in case you didn’t already know that — is an odd, lonely guy who lives at home with the mother (played by a wan Frances Conroy) he love-hates.
Arthur works for a sad rent-a-clown joint, and nothing ever goes right. This is clear from the moment we meet him: he’s tense and nervous and he can’t relax. The movie is set in a Gotham City that’s a lazy approximation of gritty 1970s-era New York, complete with garbage strikes and “super-rats” overrunning the city. On the job in clown costume, Arthur gets beaten up by a mob of nasty punks — and then almost gets fired because they stole and broke the “going out of business sign” he was twirling for a client.
More bad stuff happens, day in, day out. He gets angrier and more isolated by the minute. No one is ever kind to Arthur; he’s the world’s saddest punching bag.
When the city’s social services close down, he can no longer receive counseling there, or get his meds. (He carries around a little laminated card that he holds out helpfully whenever he laughs inappropriately, which is pretty much all the time. It reads, “Forgive my laughter, I have a brain injury.”) The one bright spot of his day, or night, is watching a Johnny Carson-style talk-show host, Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), on television. He dreams of being a stand-up comic and someday being on the show. His wish will come true, but life will have beaten the poor lad down interminably before then.
Read more: Here Are All the Upcoming Joker Movies
As you can probably guess, all of Arthur’s travails are leading up to a series of “See what you made me do?” brutalities, most of which happen while he’s dressed up in his clown suit. Violence makes him feel more in control, less pathetic. Killing — usually with a gun, but scissors or a good old-fashioned suffocation will do just fine — empowers him.
But it’s not as if we don’t know how this pathology works: In America, there’s a mass shooting or attempted act of violence by a guy like Arthur practically every other week. And yet we’re supposed to feel some sympathy for Arthur, the troubled lamb; he just hasn’t had enough love. Before long, he becomes a vigilante folk hero — his first signature act is to kill a trio of annoying Wall Street spuds while riding the subway, which inspires the masses to don clown masks and march enthusiastically around the city with “Kill the Rich!” placards.
Arthur also tries to work out a personal beef with rich asshat and aspiring city mayor Thomas Wayne, father of you-know-who. Because, it turns out, Arthur has some daddy issues too. Who would have guessed?
Zazie Beetz, Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips attend a photocall for the film "Joker" on August 31, 2019 during the 76th Venice Film Festival.
ALBERTO PIZZOLI—AFP/Getty Images
Joker — which was written by Phillips and Scott Silver — doesn’t have a plot; it’s more like a bunch of reaction GIFs strung together. When Arthur gets fired from his clown job, he struts by the time-clock, deadpans, “Oh no, I forgot to punch out” and then, wait for it, socks it so hard it dangles from the wall. Make a note of the moment, because you’ll be seeing it a lot in your Twitter and Facebook feeds.
The movie’s cracks — and it’s practically all cracks — are stuffed with phony philosophy. Joker is dark only in a stupidly adolescent way, but it wants us to think it’s imparting subtle political or cultural wisdom. Just before one of his more violent tirades, Arthur muses, “Everybody just screams at each other. Nobody’s civil anymore.” Who doesn’t feel that way in our terrible modern times? But Arthur’s observation is one of those truisms that’s so true it just slides off the wall, a message that both the left and the right can get behind and use for their own aims. It means nothing.
Meanwhile, the movie lionizes and glamorizes Arthur even as it shakes its head, faux-sorrowfully, over his violent behavior. There’s an aimless subplot involving a neighbor in Arthur’s apartment building, played by Zazie Beetz, in an underdeveloped role. (Beetz also appears in another movie here at the festival, Benedict Andrews’s Seberg, where she’s given much more to do.) Arthur has a crush on her, and though he does her no harm, there’s still something creepily entitled about his attentiveness to her. He could easily be adopted as the patron saint of incels.
Arthur is a mess, but we’re also supposed to think he’s kind of great — a misunderstood savant. Dressed up for his big TV moment in a turquoise paisley shirt, marigold vest and dapper cranberry suit (admittedly a marvelous feat of costume design), Arthur struts down an outdoor stairway like a rock’n’roll hero. It’s the most energizing moment in the movie, but what is it winding us up for? Arthur inspires chaos and anarchy, but the movie makes it look like he’s starting a revolution, where the rich are taken down, the poor get everything they need and deserve, and the sad guys who can’t get a date become killer heroes. There’s a sick joke in there somewhere. Unfortunately, it’s on us.
Joker has been called an anthem for incels
gentlemen if THIS becomes the the label for this film they are in BIG trouble
gentlemen if THIS becomes the the label for this film they are in BIG trouble
Fuck them
someone came and shot up Batman they ain't say shit
Someone went and shot up that Amy Schumer movie they ain't say that
so
Are at ALL surprised that a damn Joker movie with this type of BIG NAMES attached and awards and standing ovation etc
is getting so much backlash?
nope they just hating.
talking about incels lol
incels are being bred online in call of duty and world of warcraft and the president.
Incel Joker. Lol
Excuse for every pathetic cac male child. It's not his fault the world is tough.
Excuse for every pathetic cac male child. It's not his fault the world is tough.
Joaquin Phoenix's captivating, unsettling Joker is no laughing matter
By Leah Greenblatt
September 10, 2019 at 10:28 AM EDT
FBTwitter
NIKO TAVERNISE/WARNER BROS.
Joker (movie)
10/04/19
TYPE
Is Joker art, or is it ugly, empty nihilism? Maybe that question shouldn’t matter; it might honestly be both. But the truth is that entertainment doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and a movie with the message this one hammers home again and again — that life is nasty and short; that no one cares; that you might as well burn it all down — feels too volatile, and frankly too scary, to separate from the very real violence committed by young men like Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck in America almost every day.
Todd Phillips’ film is an origin story, which means that we know approximately where it’s all headed, just not quite how he’ll get there. And so Arthur, a lonely part-time clown who lives in a crumbling tenement with his sickly mother (Frances Conroy), goes through his early stations of the cross: the romantic rejections, the random beatings by teenage street punks, the countless small humiliations that make up his daily life. The only good thing, maybe, is his blossoming romance with a neighbor, luminous single mother Sophie (Zazie Beetz).
When a trio of drunken Wall Street goons attack Arthur in a subway car, he reaches a breaking point. The fallout from that incident lights the match for an already on-edge Gotham City — plagued by garbage strikes and “super rats” and general civic decay — sending angry mobs into the streets in protest.
There are other plot threads to follow, several of them heavily expositioned toward the Wayne family and Arthur’s own murky past, as well as his dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian and finding a way to meet the man he pictures as a sort of kindly father-figure surrogate, late-night host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). But for all that’s going on, Phillips’ viewpoint is often feverishly interior and self-contained; a narrative stricture that serves the purpose, perhaps, of allowing viewer into the nightmarish, nonlinear world Arthur’s tortured mind occupies.
It should be said that Phoenix is stunning in the role: a figure adjacent but entirely apart from Jack Nicholson’s leering cartoon or Heath Ledger’s giddy, commanding anarchist. He feels possessed by the part, communing with Arthur’s hurt and rage and raw vulnerability even as he falls deeper into whatever kind of spiders-in-the-brain psychosis the willful halting of his meds lets in.
The details of his performance — the manic laughter and mood swings and wild, demented dancing — are indelible; maybe that’s why it’s so hard to watch him become the movie’s hero to the extent that he does. Phillips doesn’t just observe his (de)evolution; he seems to revel in every rung of madness that Arthur descends, and in the growing fame and adulation it brings him.
Maybe he only sincerely means to capture and reflect the times; a mirror held up to the anger and alienation and class disparities that have shaped the world we find ourselves living in. The rules of the movie’s moral universe, though, don’t point toward some greater good as much as they just seem to celebrate — or at least tacitly approve — chaos as a cure for hopelessness, or merely for its own destabilizing sake.
Which is not to say that the vast majority of grown adults who see the film won’t be able to recognize that, or differentiate between Hollywood fiction and real life. But in a moment when internet culture can cancel a movie as minor as The Hunt for fomenting “anger and hate,” the wider impact Joker is poised to make seems far more dangerous. And the idea that even one viewer might take its convictions at face value, and then act on them, feels like no joke at all.
(We’ve chosen not to grade Joker, which had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and comes to theaters Oct. 4)
By Leah Greenblatt
September 10, 2019 at 10:28 AM EDT
FBTwitter
NIKO TAVERNISE/WARNER BROS.
Joker (movie)
10/04/19
TYPE
- Movie
Is Joker art, or is it ugly, empty nihilism? Maybe that question shouldn’t matter; it might honestly be both. But the truth is that entertainment doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and a movie with the message this one hammers home again and again — that life is nasty and short; that no one cares; that you might as well burn it all down — feels too volatile, and frankly too scary, to separate from the very real violence committed by young men like Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck in America almost every day.
Todd Phillips’ film is an origin story, which means that we know approximately where it’s all headed, just not quite how he’ll get there. And so Arthur, a lonely part-time clown who lives in a crumbling tenement with his sickly mother (Frances Conroy), goes through his early stations of the cross: the romantic rejections, the random beatings by teenage street punks, the countless small humiliations that make up his daily life. The only good thing, maybe, is his blossoming romance with a neighbor, luminous single mother Sophie (Zazie Beetz).
When a trio of drunken Wall Street goons attack Arthur in a subway car, he reaches a breaking point. The fallout from that incident lights the match for an already on-edge Gotham City — plagued by garbage strikes and “super rats” and general civic decay — sending angry mobs into the streets in protest.
There are other plot threads to follow, several of them heavily expositioned toward the Wayne family and Arthur’s own murky past, as well as his dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian and finding a way to meet the man he pictures as a sort of kindly father-figure surrogate, late-night host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). But for all that’s going on, Phillips’ viewpoint is often feverishly interior and self-contained; a narrative stricture that serves the purpose, perhaps, of allowing viewer into the nightmarish, nonlinear world Arthur’s tortured mind occupies.
It should be said that Phoenix is stunning in the role: a figure adjacent but entirely apart from Jack Nicholson’s leering cartoon or Heath Ledger’s giddy, commanding anarchist. He feels possessed by the part, communing with Arthur’s hurt and rage and raw vulnerability even as he falls deeper into whatever kind of spiders-in-the-brain psychosis the willful halting of his meds lets in.
The details of his performance — the manic laughter and mood swings and wild, demented dancing — are indelible; maybe that’s why it’s so hard to watch him become the movie’s hero to the extent that he does. Phillips doesn’t just observe his (de)evolution; he seems to revel in every rung of madness that Arthur descends, and in the growing fame and adulation it brings him.
Maybe he only sincerely means to capture and reflect the times; a mirror held up to the anger and alienation and class disparities that have shaped the world we find ourselves living in. The rules of the movie’s moral universe, though, don’t point toward some greater good as much as they just seem to celebrate — or at least tacitly approve — chaos as a cure for hopelessness, or merely for its own destabilizing sake.
Which is not to say that the vast majority of grown adults who see the film won’t be able to recognize that, or differentiate between Hollywood fiction and real life. But in a moment when internet culture can cancel a movie as minor as The Hunt for fomenting “anger and hate,” the wider impact Joker is poised to make seems far more dangerous. And the idea that even one viewer might take its convictions at face value, and then act on them, feels like no joke at all.
(We’ve chosen not to grade Joker, which had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and comes to theaters Oct. 4)
Joker director says Joaquin Phoenix would sometimes walk off set
By James Hibberd
September 11, 2019 at 02:00 PM EDT
FBTwitter
WARNER BROS.
Joker (movie)
10/04/19
TYPE
Joaquin Phoenix has been winning raves from critics for his performance in the deeply unsettling new film Joker, and even garnering early Oscar buzz.
But a New York Times story about the film reveals the 44-year-old actor “lost his composure on the set, sometimes to the bafflement of his co-stars.”
“In the middle of the scene, he’ll just walk away and walk out,” Joker co-writer and director Todd Phillips said. “And the poor other actor thinks it’s them and it was never them — it was always him, and he just wasn’t feeling it … If he goes on Jimmy Kimmel and walks off after two minutes, I’d be like, ‘That’s my boy.'”
Phoenix did not, however, ever walk out on his most esteemed costar Robert De Niro, who plays a late-night talk show host in the film. “Joaquin was very intense in what he was doing, as it should be, as he should be,” De Niro said, and called Phoenix a consummate professional.
Phoenix, a three-time Oscar nominee, has said he lost 52 pounds for his role in the dark drama, which reimagines the iconic DC Comics supervillain in a disturbingly plausible and contemporary way.
Joker recently won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, yet is also generating some controversy. EW’s review of Joker took the unusual step of not grading the film, noting, “entertainment doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and a movie with the message this one hammers home again and again — that life is nasty and short; that no one cares; that you might as well burn it all down — feels too volatile, and frankly too scary, to separate from the very real violence committed by young men like Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck in America almost every day.”
Joker is released Nov. 4.
By James Hibberd
September 11, 2019 at 02:00 PM EDT
FBTwitter
WARNER BROS.
Joker (movie)
10/04/19
TYPE
- Movie
Joaquin Phoenix has been winning raves from critics for his performance in the deeply unsettling new film Joker, and even garnering early Oscar buzz.
But a New York Times story about the film reveals the 44-year-old actor “lost his composure on the set, sometimes to the bafflement of his co-stars.”
“In the middle of the scene, he’ll just walk away and walk out,” Joker co-writer and director Todd Phillips said. “And the poor other actor thinks it’s them and it was never them — it was always him, and he just wasn’t feeling it … If he goes on Jimmy Kimmel and walks off after two minutes, I’d be like, ‘That’s my boy.'”
Phoenix did not, however, ever walk out on his most esteemed costar Robert De Niro, who plays a late-night talk show host in the film. “Joaquin was very intense in what he was doing, as it should be, as he should be,” De Niro said, and called Phoenix a consummate professional.
Phoenix, a three-time Oscar nominee, has said he lost 52 pounds for his role in the dark drama, which reimagines the iconic DC Comics supervillain in a disturbingly plausible and contemporary way.
Joker recently won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, yet is also generating some controversy. EW’s review of Joker took the unusual step of not grading the film, noting, “entertainment doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and a movie with the message this one hammers home again and again — that life is nasty and short; that no one cares; that you might as well burn it all down — feels too volatile, and frankly too scary, to separate from the very real violence committed by young men like Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck in America almost every day.”
Joker is released Nov. 4.
There are some leaked Joker scenes ... I'm trying to find them.
I have one link
Jesus!!! GOOD LORD!!!
Heavy Spoiler... You have been warned.. Heavy Spoiler.... but Jesus.. for those saying this is going to suck... Shiiiieeeeeetttt!!!
https://peervideo.net/videos/watch/215413ec-f1dc-4aad-a2f2-b170085faf48
Jesus!!! GOOD LORD!!!
Heavy Spoiler... You have been warned.. Heavy Spoiler.... but Jesus.. for those saying this is going to suck... Shiiiieeeeeetttt!!!
https://peervideo.net/videos/watch/215413ec-f1dc-4aad-a2f2-b170085faf48
So.....umm..... When them tickets go on sale?
Fuckin cac gonna feel good about doin more mass murders now smh
So can I say I'm not impressed? So the Joker dropped a F bomb? Shot a muthafucka.....he's the Joker he's suppose to shoot muthafuckas...."You set me up over a woman..........A WOMAN!!!!!!"
There's other links out there fam... that I'm trying to find. One with a gory scene... but most people who have seen the three links are coming away wowed. I think you are going to be alone on this one.
I've seen two. This one and part 1 of this scene.
I'm watching them, but I hate the mf who films this shit and spoils it for everyone.
this scene is a series of moments (envisioned by multiple Batman writers over the decades)
- it looks pretty good - but it will amount to nothing if the story is lacking
(a la BvS, Shazam or SuckerPunch etc)
everything I've seen so far in trailer and leaks still feels like someone trying to do Nolan while skipping the pathology...
I really hope I'm wrong about that when I finally get to see this film
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God-Of-War-420
Mr. Pool
his performance is not impressive based on that scene, nowhere near the level of jack and def in no way approaching the evil of ledger. It felt like he was acting in that scene. You don’t even see heath ledger when you look at his joker. I think it’ll be a good movie that’s goi to be way overhyped by one side and hated on for being incel fuel by the other. But I do want to see it. I don’t see how that scene would move anyone. Like you said oh wow he shot someone lol he also killed robin and sexually assaulted barb gordon, he literally brain washes and abuses Harley Quinn but oh wow he shot a guy on tv lol lol lol I know the constant onslaught of bubble gum brightly colored marvel fluff has everyone wanting more from movies but idk
So shock value....yea it's a no for me dog...these studios have to understand Deadpool worked because the comic book was gory.....I'll see it eventually but not in the theatre and I'm not paying no money.