Oct. 11, 2019 "Joker is just a symbol": Today I found this article by Sonny Bunch in the Edmonton Journal:
Spoilers ahead: This story contains plot points about Joker, up to and including the end of the film.
Worries that Joker — the new movie documenting one possible origin of Batman’s nemesis — would spark violence from disaffected young men in the “incel” community were overblown. There was no violence, and the film broke box office records.
More importantly, though, the Joker isn’t an inspiration for incels at all. Rather, the movie positions him as the forefather of antifa, the loosely organized left wing collective that has gained prominence in the Trump years for its sometimes-violent clashes with right wing protesters.
By film’s end, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) has inspired a mass protest movement. But it’s one that’s aimed squarely at the one per cent. Fleck’s murder of three investment bankers becomes a flashpoint, pitting Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen)
— a billionaire and would-be mayor who simply wants to make Gotham great again in the face of decline, corruption and violence — against a group of masked bandits wielding “RESIST” signs.
Indeed, Joker is one of the more fascinating documents of our time: Warner Bros. has spent US$55 million making a movie in which antifa kills Thomas Wayne and, we presume, creates the Batman. It’s no wonder the provocateurs at Venice rewarded the film the Golden Lion, while the stiffs at TIFF sniffed.
The Joker created by director Todd Phillips and Phoenix is not a mastermind so much as a symbol. He has no minions, exactly, but the streets by film’s end are filled with those he has inspired with his acts of vicious retribution. Phoenix portrays the Joker as no architect of destruction. Rather, he’s simply a flashpoint.
There’s a shot in Joker that echoes a previous iteration of the character: his head against a cop car window, staring out, he sees the chaos he has caused and begins to smile. One can’t help but think of Heath Ledger’s head out the window of a cop car, taking the wind in his hair like a dog whose owner has let him up in the front seat.
But the differences between the two characters are vast. Whereas Ledger’s Joker claimed to be an agent of chaos all while setting up infinitely intricate plans and plots, Phoenix’s Joker is that chaos.
If Phillips is a director whose main concern is cruelty, Christopher Nolan is a director whose main concern is identity. And in The Dark Knight, he uses the Joker as a means of getting at the identity of Gotham’s citizenry: Is it, at heart, vicious and base, and thus beyond redemption by a masked vigilante? Or noble, and thus worthy of said masked hero absorbing the sins of the city?
Nolan’s movies in general come across as extremely skeptical of Gotham’s public. In Batman Begins the masses are literally weaponized and turned against each other via the Scarecrow’s (Cillian Murphy) fear-inducing chemicals.
In The Dark Knight Rises, we see they need little encouragement from Bane (Tom Hardy) to start ransacking the homes of the wealthy. And even in The Dark Knight, we see them try to kill a whistleblower at the Joker’s behest, but by film’s end they refuse to cross the line into outright mass murder. One cheer for Gotham, I suppose.
But it’s Tim Burton’s Batman that comes closest to understanding group psychology. There’s a funny moment when the Joker (Jack Nicholson), who has hijacked a press conference about Gotham’s cancellation of the town’s bicentennial parade, finally gets everyone’s attention.
We’ve seen a cross-section of Gothamites — blue collar workers, punkish bikers, low-lifes in a bar — studiously ignore their TVS despite the strange things transpiring on it. Until, that is, the Joker says he’s going to be distributing $20 million in cash to anyone who shows up. This piques their interest! This gains him admiration.
And, at the end of the day, this has always been and may always be the most compelling iteration of the Joker. Incels, antifa, agents of chaos: that’s all interesting and timely, but temporary. The simple fact of the matter is that few of us are looking for a symbol. We just want a guy who will tell us what we want to hear and throw some money our way.
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/edmonton-journal/20191011/282368336402288
Nov. 29, 2019 "Labeouf looks back at troubled dad with sympathy": Today I found this article by Lindsay Bahr in the Star Metro:
“Honey Boy” will break your heart.
It hardly matters if you’ve never given a second thought to the circumstances of Shia LaBeouf’s life, his childhood or his rocky early adult years. But this is the kind of universally moving work that can only emerge from something immensely specific and personal.
It’s a portrait of a boy whose father doesn’t, or can’t, love him the way he needs. But broad isn’t the point. The salacious tabloid sell is that LaBeouf wrote this script about his life while in rehab. It was therapy, but besides the location, it’s not terribly unique that a storyteller might get some personal catharsis.
What separates “Honey Boy” from the standard confessional is the heart, precision and artfulness that LaBoeuf and director Alma Har’el employ to tell this story.
A key element that makes this endeavour so brave and empathetic is that LaBeouf plays his own father, who in other hands may not have been rendered in such a complex and nuanced light. His father is a Vietnam veteran, a registered sex offender and drug addict who also played manager to his son’s acting career.
In the film his name is James Lort. He’s got a receding hairline, John Lennon glasses and is emotionally and physically abusive to his kid, who he also clearly loves and cares about. He uses a motorcycle to transport his 10-year-old son Otis (played with a stunning worldliness by Noah Jupe) to and from the television show he’s starring on (a stand-in for Disney’s “Even Stevens” which La Beouf started acting in when he was around 10).
A motorcycle is obviously a terribly precarious way to transport a young kid (and, cynically, your only source of income) on the treacherous freeways of Los Angeles, and yet these scenes are some of the most beautiful in the film: The dangerous ride is a moment of silence and peace in this turbulent relationship where the son gets to just cling to his father, who he trusts despite everything, and enjoy the thrill of the ride. It’s the whole movie in miniature.
This is a father who gives his son cigarettes as a treat, but also demands adherence to child-labour laws even when no one in a production will. The bad outweighs the good here, but perhaps thanks to LaBeouf’s performance, or the writing, you can’t help but grasp at any string of hope dangled — like any abusive relationship, really.
Most importantly, he’s not the parent Otis needs. When Otis asks for affection or guidance, he’s met with hostility or mocking. When he tries to stand up for himself, it’s even worse.
Their roller-coaster existence goes into explaining why, when Otis is in his 20s (portrayed by Lucas Hedges) and in rehab, this young man who has never been to war is told that he has PTSD.
The later years, in rehab, are not quite as effective or heartrending as the flashbacks, save for a rollicking opening montage showing Otis’ on and offscreen debauchery. But it does all come together nicely in its closing.
Nov. 24, 2021 My opinion: I remember when I was a teen, I watched the sitcom Even Stevens. It was average. Then I see him grow up and do some more comedy roles in Constantine and Transformers. However, his personal life isn't going very well.
I'm probably not going to watch this movie because it seems depressing.
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