The Joker is probably the most coveted film in the festivals, centered on a comic book character. And it's understandable: it doesn't look like a comic book movie. On the other hand, why tie it to Batman?
Clearly, why: to go on it fans of comics and make it a bigger cash register. If the character of such a movie was some left uncle, not the future chief antagonist Batman, I would not go on it. I don't like this kind of movie.
There are movies, you know, heavy, but the weight can be different. It can be thick, sticky, as if not yet frozen in the jelly, and it's boring. You want to get rid of such sticky gravity as soon as possible - and it is easy to do, you can leave the session or close the player's window. "Joker" is not dense, it is oppressive by a terrible hopelessness of the broken destiny and romanticization of mental disorders and violence. There is no escape from this hopelessness.
Like any self-respecting comic book character that has existed for several decades, the Joker has several stories of origin. And none of the comic book does not coincide with what was shown in the movie Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix.
Phillips told the story of a sick man. He has real problems with his head, he has no money, he has a disabled mother, and the world around him is a cruel world that either does not notice him or wipes his feet. The tie is a banal one. The plots in which the little man begins the revolution, angry at the system, the car and a small bogie. The difference between "Joker" and "Joker" is that here the revolution began by accident. And the purpose of the film is not in it at all.
The main word in my head, which was spinning while watching - is "hurt". It hurt to see what was happening on the screen, it hurt to hear excessively backward whistling tops in the cinema, slightly muted by the thunderous bass of the soundtrack Hildur Goodnadottir, it was painful to understand where everything leads and how it will end.
The advantage of the comic strips is that, however motivating and pseudo-detailed they may be, they are unrealistic. The geniuses who build nuclear reactors into their breasts don't, and neither do super-soldiers, magicians, demons, parallel dimensions, or anything like that (at least until science has proved or made public the existence of all these things). Therefore, comic strips are entertainment of pure water, a window into a nonexistent world for a couple of hours while watching, even if they raise some important or acutely social issues.
And if there are no superheroes, there are sick people. Arthur Flack, played by Joaquin Phoenix and reincarnated in the Joker finale, in the interpretation of Todd Phillips becomes frighteningly close to reality. Such people are close by. They walk down the same streets, maybe live on the same landing or work in the same building.
The film is good. Through the secondary, it is compared everywhere with "Taxi Driver" with De Niro and similar paintings, and not in vain - there are really many common moments. But in the "Joker" story, picture and sound are intertwined in such a whole, a single lump of pain and despair that it is simply scary.
Do I need it?
The problem is that this film does not need to be a Joker movie. The term "any two guys" is often used in online literature to refer to stories where you can replace the names of characters with any other ones, and nothing will change from that. With the movie "Joker" the story is similar: instead of Joker himself, Thomas Wayne, other characters can be substituted with any names - and nothing, nothing, nothing, not a bit will change neither in the plot, nor in the message, nor in the gravity of the story. Yes, it is possible to make from the main character some other symbol of revolution instead of a clown, so that copywriters do not eat with giblets. You can easily leave all the strings that connect the movie with the comic strip DC - and then attentive viewers smote a thousand articles about the Easter eggs, references and "possible connection of the new movie with the comic book giant.
And the film would have remained good. I think it would have been even better. And it would not be afraid to put in the festival programs and reward more often than now.