It has been a month since “Joker” had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and in that time Todd Phillips’ dark DC comic-book-villain movie has taken quite a journey. At Veni…
’ dark DC comic-book-villain movie has taken quite a journey. At Venice, it was greeted by rave reviews and rapturous audiences, and it won the Golden Lion . Yet in the weeks since, the movie has been caught in a twitterstorm of criticism, as well as a wave of opening-week reviews that are far from universally enthusiastic. Some love it, some hate it.
Actually, I’m joking! I did just go to see “Joker” for a second time, and I don’t believe the picture is any of those things. I think it’s a drama of enthralling and scabrous power, all rooted in the fantastic ambivalence with which we’re asked to view the central character.’s mesmerizing performance invites us, in every scene, to share a communion with Arthur Fleck, a mentally damaged geek with a curdled anger he has no outlet for.
On the surface, it’s sly to preempt the creation of Batman by suggesting that Fleck was in fact the original vigilante, before Bruce Wayne got the idea. But the logic doesn’t hold. Phillips shows audiences those three Wall Street bullies brutalizing Fleck on the subway, but the public can’t possibly guess that’s what happened, so it makes no sense that this clown would ignite some kind of “kill the rich” fervor the way he does in the film.
For the record, I’m not anti-comic books. I just dislike most of the movies they’ve spawned and the overall shallowness of character that audiences accept from the genre — which defies so much of what Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and others have brought to the graphic novel form. I tend to love the first act of superhero movies, when an ordinary guy struggles to adapt to a life-changing transformation, then tune out when characters start shooting lightning bolts out of their eyes.
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