-
JOKER: I loved the first ten minutes. I was completely drawn in by Joaquin Phoenix's incredible central performance and I really sympathised with the character. But then I began to realise that all the film had was this incredible performance.Permalink On Internet Archive
On twitter.com
❤️ 6 Favorites
-
Phoenix's performance is terrific and, for a character like the Joker, very subtle, built of tiny facial movements and vocal tics. But the film around him is tremendously unsubtle. Which would be fine if the film clearly didn't think it was being incredibly clever.Permalink On Internet Archive
-
JOKER wants to be seen as ambiguous when it's not. It wants to be seen as having clever twists when it doesn't have any. It wants to be the Scorsese films and other gritty American films of the '70s that it's referencing but it's just not.Permalink On Internet Archive
-
Everything about the central character feels so atomised and isolated. If I were being charitable, I'd say that that's intended to reflect Arthur's atomisation from society but I think the film just doesn't know how to ground him in political and social context.Permalink On Internet Archive
-
As the story of a man descending into madness, it wasn't subtle enough to work. As a comic-book movie about the Batman villain, the Joker, it simply didn't work because this vision of the Joker is so far removed from its original context as to only share the attribute of 'clown'.Permalink On Internet Archive
-
JOKER is the filmic equivalent of that one person in your seminar group who has read a lot and speaks up a lot and thinks they're making great, groundbreaking points but it's actually just a confused mess.On Internet Archive
-
As @JennyENicholson puts it in her critique, "I don't like it when movies carry themselves like they're very clever and they have big themes and then fail to follow through and actually have well-developed themes." youtube.com/watch?v=0tsdOo_wO44Permalink On Internet Archive
-
Permalink
On Internet Archive
-
@JennyENicholson Another good review from @MillicentOnFilm. This is what I meant by the atomised nature of the character and how it's not even really about the Batman villain, the Joker. "It is so far removed from its supposed origins that it’s just an empty imitation." screen-queens.com/2019/10/05/joker-review/Permalink On Internet Archive
-
@JennyENicholson @MillicentOnFilm JOKER isn't an origin story for the Clown Prince of Crime because Arthur doesn't commit any crimes apart from murder. It's not about the DC Comics character who schemes and plots to disrupt society and commit crime because none of that happens.Permalink On Internet Archive