➤ Joker, the review 🎮

Have you ever had a bad day? Arthur Fleck certainly, so many that, talking to his underpaid and listless psychologist, he admits that he has never been happy for a single minute in his entire life. With a hazy past and a present so disheartening that it is tender, Arthur works as a clown for an agency, lives with his mentally unstable mother and dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian. Too bad it doesn't make you laugh. On the contrary: he is the one who laughs, incessantly, rudely, transforming his face into a mask halfway between the grotesque and the painful. Due to trauma Arthur suffers from pathological laughter, which forces him to laugh whenever he is under stress or psychological distress. So very often.

Teased at work, unable to interact with others and build any kind of relationship, Fleck is a human wreck, a ship abandoned by everyone now in decay, in body and spirit, in which the pain is so strong and constant not to let him know if he is alive or not, if he is a ghost or a person. Yet Arthur wants to be seen, he wants to be loved. The only way to do that is a change: to understand that his life is not a tragedy, but a comedy. And that's how it comes in, little by little, Joker: the clown who does not care if others do not understand his sense of humor, because he is aware that, to have an identity, he must rise beyond the rules of society, no longer on the margins but above.

After the Joker pop's Tim Burton e Jack Nicholson and the emissary of the chaos created by Heath Ledger e Christopher Nolan, it was not easy to go back to revisiting the character created by Bob Kane, the antagonist par excellence, the other face of Batman and king of the criminals of Gotham City. Yet, against all odds, Todd Phillips, director of the Hangover trilogy, has been able to give new life to an iconic character, who seemed to have given and said everything possible, at least on the big screen. Presented as a world premiere at the 76th Venice International Film Festival, where he is in competition and got eight minutes of standing ovation, Joker will come in Spanish cinemas on 3 October and it is destined to remain in the collective memory for a long time.

Joaquin Phoenix to the role of life

If the Batman of Nolan's trilogy is extremely serious, in Joker the drama is declined in various forms, unpredictable and unexpected: the references to the cinema of the 70s by Martin Scorsese are evident (Arthur is a sort of Travis Bickle with clown makeup and it is no coincidence the presence in the cast of Robert De Niro, in the role of a TV presenter idolized by the protagonist, who immediately makes one think of King for a night), but it is those in the musical that amaze and are a winning key. Arthur does not use words to express his moods, but dances, following a rhythm and music that only he seems to hear. Halfway between Fred Astaire and Charlie Chaplin, this Joker dancer is unsettling: hypnotic and terrifying at the same time.

To play such a complex and layered character we needed the perfect interpreter e Joaquin Phoenix not only is he extraordinary in the role, but he seems born to play it. Impressively thinner, twisted into an expression that makes his face a mask, the actor did a monstrous body job, finding at least four different laughs, moving like a caged animal and dancing in a way never before seen at the cinema, a style that looks like a martial art but at the same time makes it seem light and incorporeal. The Oscar Prize for the best leading actor of 2020 is already awarded.

Todd Phillips and his Gotham City never so dirty and repulsive

Given his past as a director of idiotic comedies, many expected a film not up to par with the aforementioned Burton and Nolan and instead Phillips has blown everyone away. His Gotham City, never so dirty and repulsive, full of rubbish and mice, an asphalt jungle in which everyone, rich and poor, seems to have a total lack of empathy towards others, is a nightmare with open eyes and, despite the film is set in 1981, it couldn't be more relevant.

Totally at the service of its protagonist, who literally uses the film as a stage, Phillips displaces with a series of scenes destined to become iconic, demonstrating a refined taste for framing and details and above all an interesting ear: the use of sound is fundamental, as well as the soundtrack, which expertly mixes modern songs, such as Howlin 'for you by The Black Keys (used in the staircase scene, already cult), with classical music and the score composed specifically by Hildur Ingveldardóttir Guðnadóttir.

We are the Joker

There can be no Joker without Batman, but we won't reveal the Wayne family's role in the film: let's just say that Thomas Wayne here looks more like an unscrupulous politician than a philanthropist tycoon, and that Phillips wasn't afraid to take some liberties from the classic canon. A choice that will make comic fans discuss for months, but that adds charm to a film that is not afraid of getting its hands dirty, of letting blood and sweat flow, unlike the more politically correct Marvel films.

The most interesting intuition of Joker is right here: we are not dealing with a superhero film with glossy photography, but a real arthouse film, a drama that transforms the cartoon character into a man in the flesh. and bones, a victim of societal violence and a social injustice that causes anger and frustration. This Joker is not an enigmatic figure who rattles off philosophical phrases, but a man who suffers and who feels forgotten and invisible, a human being thrown like a bullet towards the abyss for which we end up feeling empathy and who sends us a disturbing reflection of us themselves. We all felt frustrated at least once, we all suffered injustice and thought terrible thoughts: Joker is all of us.

Comment

Resources4Gaming.com

9.0

Todd Phillips' Joker is an author's reinterpretation of the comic book character, which mixes different genres, from drama to musical, through comedy. Filled with iconic moments and with no fear of getting your hands dirty and detaching yourself from the canon of comics, the film is above all the stage for Joaquin Phoenix, who has done extraordinary work on the body and facial expressions. At the role of life, the actor deserves to win the Oscar.