Joker (2019)
There is obviously a conspiracy to push this movie down.
Why? I have no idea.
Why? I have no idea.
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January 2012
In a world where a film says a lot about society, the film has become society. Will society become a parody film? Tune in next time, same bat time, same bat station.
If anything youtubers and faux critics like Stuckmann and Randolph are loving it. It's with high profile critics that the film is struggling. Hence the 58 metascore and 48% top critics on RT.
Posts: 4794
Joined:
January 2012
I mean, for the most part, most people seem to get something out of it and it has managed to provide people a discussion about potentially interesting and relevant topics about the responsibility of the filmmaker when it comes to depictions of violence. I hope we can now have this discussion again with the next big action blockbuster as well. I get why American film critics might be a bit more on edge when it comes to content like this though.
I don't think it's a revolutionary masterpiece (yeah, the only really fleshed out character is the main character and it has some obvious Scorsese references but I don't see people using that sort of argument against high-profile directors like Tarantino whenever he makes something derivative of someone else's work). I can only speak for myself and I was impacted emotionally by the film and it had that impact imo because of Phoenix's powerful performance, because of how horrifying the ending was and how much I felt the director left me without a firm stance as to what had transpired.
The film, in my opinion, shows a selfish person with severe mental problems having certain expectations from people who do not know him at all and he finds himself in a world that he interprets as either intentionally or unintentionally sending him signals that show how much he does not matter as a result and his reaction is to resort to violence. I think the problems the film tries to tackle are much too big for any film to resolve in 2 hours quite frankly. Maybe one might hence question why a director would then even decide to tell that story in the first place, since the outcome is very likely to be very bleak. It might also come off as edgy for the sake of attention.
...that's a lot to unpack imo and that's without getting into the whole class aspect and so imo the film has the potential to lead to a lot of interesting discussions, which is why I cannot really get onboard with the reviews going out of their way saying how much this film has nothing to say about anything and is merely ripping off Scorsese. I might be reading things into the film but I only have the tale to go by.
I don't think it's a revolutionary masterpiece (yeah, the only really fleshed out character is the main character and it has some obvious Scorsese references but I don't see people using that sort of argument against high-profile directors like Tarantino whenever he makes something derivative of someone else's work). I can only speak for myself and I was impacted emotionally by the film and it had that impact imo because of Phoenix's powerful performance, because of how horrifying the ending was and how much I felt the director left me without a firm stance as to what had transpired.
The film, in my opinion, shows a selfish person with severe mental problems having certain expectations from people who do not know him at all and he finds himself in a world that he interprets as either intentionally or unintentionally sending him signals that show how much he does not matter as a result and his reaction is to resort to violence. I think the problems the film tries to tackle are much too big for any film to resolve in 2 hours quite frankly. Maybe one might hence question why a director would then even decide to tell that story in the first place, since the outcome is very likely to be very bleak. It might also come off as edgy for the sake of attention.