Joker (2019) – Try on a happy face

The movie Joker (2019) Todd Phillips is certainly very good and impressive. And very sad. Especially if you watch it alone. Among other unfamiliar and possibly lonely people in the audience. Probably there were some. The stunning Joaquin Phoenix demonstrated his high-class acting skills and genuine reincarnation. He’s like Christian Bale in the Machinist – exhausted, slouched, stuck out his shoulder blade. And this scar on the upper lip corresponds to the image.

His Arthur Fleck is so sickly and unhealthy, but you can see that at the same time physically he can be very strong. With mental problems in general, I read somewhere that it would be better for you to have a healthy bully than a crazy drysch with a screwdriver. Flek runs very fast, there is something in him from an insect, no one has caught up with him in the whole movie.

And this dance on the stairs, such crazy charm and unhealthy dizzying beauty, is when in musicals the hero goes down the steps. And then he’s dancing and smoking, and two detectives are watching this action from above. Probably that music wasn’t playing in their heads. Sinatra sang New York, and Gotham City is New York, and the metropolis is like a separate character. As Limonov recalled, one day in 1977 New York was overtaken by a blackout, the city was plunged into darkness, there was no electricity for more than a day, thousands of shops were looted. The then chief of police said that New York would not survive a second such night. This is such a ghostly civilization, it is enough to turn off the lights and water, as people will quickly lose their human appearance. Once I watched the movie “High-rise”, it’s just about that. One hope for Batman.

I am very sorry for Arthur Fleck as a person. His life was hard and oh how unsweetened. As a child, he was beaten and bullied, and with the connivance of his crazy mother. She didn’t think much of it. It is strange, of course, that in general they left her a son in her deranged state. After all, you can’t even imagine how easy it is to commit physical violence against a child, what a fine line it is, how easy it is to cross. If you start, it is very difficult to stop. The child is weak and cannot fight back, he is absolutely defenseless. A parent can slide into a very dark abyss. And someone may never forgive someone.

At 40+, Arthur is in many ways like a child, he is naive, fragile, simple, eccentric. The freak is not of this world. This is often the case with people who live with their mother all their lives. The mother manipulates, inspires that you are still a child and simply does not let you grow up. She takes care of even if she doesn’t do anything herself anymore, and she can’t do anything. At the beginning of the film, there is still no anger and hatred in Arthur. Only sadness, confusion, disappointment in a cruel world, thoughts of death. “It’s better if I’m gone.” In the film, we see the transformation of Arthur Fleck into the Joker, who discarded goodness and morality, proclaiming chaos as his life credo.

Of the controversial moments, the episode where Arthur and the boy, the son of a mayoral candidate, is how Fleck lures him to himself. Why is he, Bruce Wayne, so trusting and careless? It is unclear. Yes, and also allows you to put your fingers in your mouth, making a “smile”.

The jokes in the movie are really good. The Joker has a special sense of humor:

“When I was little and said I was going to be a comedian, everyone laughed at me. And now I’ve grown up, become a comedian and no one is laughing.”

Jokes about death – shoot yourself in the temple or point a gun from below and bang! Or shoot the host live. What could be funnier? Especially after he laughed at you and made you look ridiculous in front of an audience of millions. Is that funny to you now, Murray Franklin?

When I think about having an affair with a Black woman, I think of Kerouac’s “Underground”. And yet it’s a pity that Arthur didn’t have anything with a black girl, everything turned out to be a figment of his sick imagination. She would probably have pulled him out of the abyss, made him normal. Ordinary women do this with men who are different from the rest, from the “normal” average mass. Dreamers, revolutionaries, madmen, adventurers – if they happen to fall in love with an ordinary woman, she will drag him into the world of ordinary people, into family life, where he will wallow in daily worries and forget about his lofty aspirations. Of course, there may not be tranquility here either, but this is a completely different sea, everyday.

The episode with the dwarf is really touching and cute in its own way. And I don’t feel sorry at all for the fat man, allegedly Arthur’s friend, who gave him a gun. This actor played a maniac in “True Detective”, a repulsive character, he got what he deserved here. If the Phoenix hero attracts, despite his madness, then Randall is definitely repulsive, he’s like a pig. He is indirectly to blame for what happened.

Arthur commits murder, yes, three at once, and he likes it. He makes a conscious choice, a step into his dark side. This gives him an incentive, a desire to live. “I was the soul of a sick society.” Uncontrollable fits of laughter gradually go away, and now he laughs deliberately, in a new way. To resist the system, you have to be crazy. Courage alone is not enough to challenge the establishment. The absence of fear of death is not enough, you really have to be crazy. That’s the beauty and freedom of this movie.

The Joker professes anarchy, of course not without reason, everywhere we see the power of rich usurpers over crowds of poor oppressed – this is the modern world. Super-rats, mountains of garbage, riots, uncontrolled violence – these are today’s realities. There are fewer and fewer peaceful places on the planet. It’s like a Bob Dylan song – times are changing. We must be prepared for the worst. I hope that these expectations will remain only expectations. At least for a long time.