"Savage satire morphs into a profound morality lesson"/ "'Joker' and 'Parasite' tap into fascination with anti-hero"

 Oct. 18, 2019 "Savage satire morphs into a profound morality lesson": Today I found this movie review by Peter Howell in the Star Metro:

(4 out of 4)

In his notes at Cannes for his Palme d’or winner “Parasite,” writer/ director Bong Joon-ho described his film as “a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains.”

That’s one way of looking at it, although the movie tests the definitions of comedy and tragedy, not to mention the film’s title as well.

The South Korean auteur has never seen a genre he didn’t want to mess with: “Okja” wasn’t just a children’s tale, “Snowpiercer” wasn’t just sci- fi and “The Host” wasn’t just a monster movie, to name a few of his earlier works. Bong’s films all contain a deep empathy for the underclass and an appreciation of the essential absurdity of life.

So it is with “Parasite,” his seventh feature and grandest mind-screw yet, which he cowrote with Han Jin-won, his assistant director for “Okja.”

“Parasite” begins as social satire, as a family of grifters in a South Korean metropolis connive to blend their lives with those of an unsuspecting rich family whom they’ve infiltrated.

The film becomes something else entirely, as satire morphs into a savage morality lesson that recalls the home invasion tales of Michael Haneke and Jordan Peele.

Aimless and jobless Ki-taek ( Song Kang- ho) lives in a crowded basement with his wife Chung- sook ( Chang Hyae-jin) and their two children: son Ki-woo (Choi Wooshik) and daughter Ki-jung (Park So-dam), both in their early 20s.

When not dozing, Kim Kitaek schemes of easy ways to make money or exploit opportunities, such as the “free” Wi-fi his family cadges from surrounding homes and shops. His family are every bit as wily as he is. In these respects, “Parasite” bears resemblance to “Shoplifters,” the 2018 Palme d’or winner by Japan’s Hirokazu Koreeda.

That’s only for a moment, though. Opportunity comes knocking — and so does fate — when a friend helps Ki-woo get a lucrative gig tutoring high schooler Da-hye ( Jung Ziso), the daughter of wealthy global IT company honcho Mr. Park (Lee Sun-kyun).

The lessons are inside the Park family’s luxurious mansion, which has a large picture window that looks onto a gorgeous garden. The Kim family has a window view, too, but it looks out into a garbage-strewn street.

Da-hye takes a shine to Kiwoo. So does her live- wire younger brother Da- song ( Jung Hyeon-jun) and their mother Yeon-kyo (Cho Yeo-jeong). Mr. Park is mostly distracted, just happy that his family is happy. But things started to get a little crowded.

Ki-woo coolly finagles ways to draw his father, mother and sister into the lives and home of the Parks, without reckoning on how this might affect the family and other people in their orbit.

That’s probably all you should know going into “Parasite,” which takes turns that are unforeseen even by people who know Bong’s work well. There’s talk in the film about the need or desire to have a plan, but no advance thought can prepare for what happens here.

Watch how Bong uses signs and symbols to increase tension and intrigue. The story makes creative use of Morse code, a sacred stone and a reference to human scent that hints of disdain and judgment.

Bong wants to flood our senses as he pricks our consciences. He succeeds, and then some.

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/starmetro-toronto/20191018/281706911453188


Nov. 22, 2019 "'Joker' and 'Parasite' tap into fascination with anti-hero": 

Today I found this movie review by Peter Howell in the Star Metro.  There is some psychology in this article because Kwame McKenzie, the CEO of the Wellesley Institute, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and director of health equity at the Centre of Addiction and Mental Health is quoted here:

Donald Trump and his family and friends saw the hit movie “Joker” last weekend in the White House’s private screening room.

The U.S. president joins the many people worldwide who have flocked to Todd Phillips’ dark portrait of a clownish villain — played by Joaquin Phoenix and drawn from Batman lore — who is driven to homicide and mayhem by mental illness, poverty and social scorn.

“Joker” just struck the $1-billion (U.S.) gong for global box office receipts, a rare achievement and the first “R”-rated movie to do so. Awards speculation is full throttle and a sequel is now planned.

Trump reportedly loved the film, but on what basis? He didn’t tweet or otherwise utter a reaction. Was he drawn to the drama of Phoenix’s searing performance? Or was he just revelling in a form of poverty porn, munching popcorn as an entitled member of the 1% minority, as he gawked at the lowest member of the other 99%?

It’s a question we could also ask of ourselves. After “Joker” debuted at the Venice Film Festival in August, where it won the fest’s Golden Lion for best film, it was followed by mixed reviews that included much critical hand-wringing about how it might inspire copycat killings.

“Does ‘Joker’ Have a Problematic Punchline?” read a story in trade journal The Hollywood Reporter. There were also reports of theatres beefing up security, fearing a repeat of the 2012 slaughter of Colorado moviegoers by a lone gunman at a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”

“Joker” opened without incident, and it has left behind its pre-release controversy as it has motored on to make movie history and fatten the bank accounts of director Phillips and studio Warner Bros

There’s still a question about the film’s message, however — and it’s not the one about copycat gun violence that everybody assumed.

The question is this: Do we really care about the desperate state of the poor and mentally unwell, or do we just like to gawk at them?

Joker poses the question himself, in a bloody scene in the film where he’s doing a standup routine on the TV talk show of Murray Franklin, played by Robert De Niro.

“What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a system that abandons him and treats him like trash?” he asks.

“I'll tell you what you get. You get what you f--king deserve!”

Joker is the alter ego of Arthur Fleck, who dons the killer-clown disguise to express his anger at being shunned by society and kicked to the curb by Gotham City, which has just cut funding for the medication and counselling he needs to control his outbursts. The city is in thrall to Thomas Wayne, a Trump-like billionaire running for mayor.

The anti-social theme of “Joker,” and also its popular appeal, has been mirrored in another film, Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite,” a bleak South Korean class satire which similarly won major film-festival laurels before arriving in theatres. It took the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May. It has since taken in $14.5 million (U.S.) at the North American box office, making it the most successful foreign-language Palme winner ever to hit these shores. It’s also deemed to be an Oscar contender. 

“Parasite” tells the story of an impoverished family, led by a man named Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), whose four members live as grifters in a big city. They conspire to infiltrate the lives of a wealthy family led by tech czar Mr. Park (Lee Sun-kyun), by getting hired on as tutors, a driver and a maid, but their scheme has explosively unforeseen complications.

The disparity between rich and poor is keenly felt, especially in a scene where Mr. Park, unaware that Ki-taek is hiding nearby, wrinkles his nose in disgust at the acrid smell of poverty he’s noticed on the rare occasion when he deigns to use the subway.

“For people of different circumstances to live together in the same space is not easy,” director Bong says in his notes on the film.

“It is increasingly the case in this sad world that humane relationships based on co-existence or symbiosis cannot hold, and one group is pushed into a parasitic relationship with another. In the midst of such a world, who can point their finger at a struggling family, locked in a fight for survival, and call them parasites?”

Who, indeed? But do we instinctively do this when we rush to see films like “Joker” and “Parasite,” eager to watch underclass misery?

I put this question to Kwame McKenzie, the CEO of the Wellesley Institute, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and director of health equity at the Centre of Addiction and Mental Health. He’s an internationally recognized expert on the social causes of illness and suicide and has also advised the Ontario and federal governments on poverty reduction.

He sees parallels between “Joker” and “Parasite” but also differences.

“In both ways, I think, it is possible to say they are trying to have a deeper understanding of marginalized people and their motivations,” McKenzie said via email.

“However, whereas ‘Parasite’ seems truly transformational — the film seems to normalize the lying and cheating of the protagonists within their sub-cultural context — ‘Joker’ is in some ways trying to explain why he became a ‘bad guy’ (with a hint of blaming society).”

McKenzie speculates that we are drawn to watch such films — and also such TV shows as “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad,” “Game of Thrones” and “Mindhunter” — because “we are becoming more fascinated with the psychology of the anti-hero.

“It is possible for me to imagine that people will be interested by revenge fantasy and alter egos that succeed by playing to their own rules because for many life is becoming harder, jobs more precarious, social justice seems difficult to come by and governments peddle a diet of fear to divide us and ease their chances of re-election.”

The desperate characters of “Joker” and “Parasite” would surely agree. But should the rest of us, including Donald Trump, just continue to munch our popcorn and enjoy their misery?

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/opinion/2019/11/22/do-joker-and-parasite-spur-empathy-for-desperate-people-or-are-we-and-donald-trump-just-gawking.html

My opinion: I won't be watching Parasite or Joker because they look kind of depressing to watch.

"Joker is just a symbol"/ "Labeouf looks back at troubled dad with sympathy"

 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.

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/toronto-star/20191129/282016149184371

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.