Five steps to better mental health:
- Don’t bathe your mother.
- Have at least one balanced nutritional meal every day.
- Avoid magic tricks.
- Fresh underwear daily.
- Don’t bathe your mother.
I finally caught up with Joker last night, the final screening before it left my favorite theater. I’m still trying to process at what point exactly I came to turn on this movie. I had after all anticipated it more than I do most of what is released these days. That anticipation primarily fueled by the promise of another tour de force performance from Joaquin Phoenix. I so expected something different from this particular Hollywood Comic Book Movie, that I lifted my self-imposed ban on such fare. A ban that automatically excludes me from participating in what would seem to be fifty percent of what the movie industry has left to offer. Stricken by a dearth of original ideas and storytellers, all Hollywood seems capable of now is rehashing and recycling the same stories over and over again. We are constantly being fed the same stale bread, repackaged, regurgitated, spit-shined, darkened and degenerated but we keep gobbling it up because we are so hungry for stimulation and this is all that’s left in the pantry. Remember when The Joker was Jack Nicholson? That seems like fifty years ago. The addition of Joaquin Phoenix lent credibility and promise to the franchise but was it ever even necessary? How soon we forget the rave reviews that were heaped upon Heath Ledger a mere decade ago for his portrayal of the same character. Wasn’t that supposed to be the definitive Joker performance? The precedent for varied renderings of the same character is longstanding. I’m not suggesting that Benedict Cumberbatch shouldn’t have a go at Hamlet because Laurence Olivier already made such a fine job of it. I recognize and welcome the subtle nuances and overt alternate approaches that different actors bring to the same character but at some point, too many cooks are bound to spoil the broth. It happened to Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh), it happened to Star Wars (pretty much everything following The Empire Strikes Back) and it was bound to happen to the Joker/Batman saga.
None of this by the way is the fault of Joaquin Phoenix who starves himself crazy for the role in a manner that would make Christian Bale beam with pride. He pulls out all the right stops, laughing hyena hysterically at everything and nothing, grimacing like he just popped the lid off the Dionne Quintuplets’ diaper pail, weeping like he too had just endured the preview for Little Women starring (God help us), Laura Dern and Meryl Streep, coming Christmas 2019, and spontaneously dancing and prancing about like Shields and Yarnell at Caesar’s Palace or Bob Fosse with a toothache. It’s a boffo performance clearly intended to tug at heart strings and paint a sympathetic portrayal of one man’s struggle with mental illness, reality and a desperate need for love. I ain’t buying it.
I might have bought it if the performance hadn’t been tethered to the scripts glaring obsession with metaphorical references to 2019 America. I understand that Gotham City is a barely mythical allegory of New York City and in this case a broadly unspecific era of New York City encapsulating everything from 1970’s fashion and garbage strikes, to 1980’s Bernie Goetz vigilantism, to 1990’s Trumpian Wall Street money hustling. Take all that and saddle it with the bullshit, crybaby tactics employed by every political movement or cultural crusade of the right or left in America 2019 and you end up with one really callous, shitty, self-important society for poor Arthur Fleck to stumble through, burdened with all the petulant narcissism of a cosseted six-year old who didn’t receive a participation trophy. Poor Arthur occupies a world where everyone who doesn’t get their way hoist a ‘resist’ sign and riots in the street in protest of the injustice of the achievements of others, a world where even earnest young mothers want to shoot themselves in the head. What makes your particular gripe so unique Arty? So, life ain’t fair, suck it up buttercup!
You say you want love, sunshine and smiles for everyone yet you impede sidewalk traffic with your clowning around, you touch children inappropriately, you loofa your mommy at tub time before finally administering the Will Sampson Special, you scare the bejesus out of little people, you mouth kiss Dr. Ruth and you dream of blowing your brains out on live television and then finally when the opportunity comes you miss your mark and take out poor Johnny Corleone whose only real offense is his taste in sports coats. Ultimately, this movie has to be viewed as a celebration if not an outright endorsement of that insidious brand of lazy, default victim mentality that so pervades our society. My life is not going so well and for that somebody has to pay.
Moving forward Arthur, here are a few things to keep in mind. If you take up clowning as a career, expect not to make a whole bunch of money. If you wash you mother’s back in the bathtub, expect not to score the cute neighbor for a girlfriend. If you climb into the refrigerator for a nap, expect to catch your death of cold. If you stick your filthy hands in the mouth of a strange child, expect to receive a punch in the nose from that child’s father. If you take a scissors to your house guests, expect not to have much company calling. If you are determined to exit your cruel world, real or make-believe, try doing so quietly, in a closet, where you can cause no harm to others.
My only other take away from this movie is my desire to have the kind of GPS that allows me to drive an ambulance at high speed through a city the size of Gotham in the middle of a riot and time it so I can crash into an unseen specific speeding police car barreling down a perpendicular street at an alternate rate of travel, with a precision that will facilitate the death of both driver and front seat passenger while only slightly injuring the fellow in the backseat. That would be swell.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot one more thing. Apparently, Barron Trump is Batman.
Lord, do I miss Caesar Romero.
