The style is stellar, strong colour usage to guide us and a deft hand with action plus a real way with world building as the streets of Gotham City crowd in on us and let us cling to the anti-hero and silently plead with him not to be so mentally ill. Don't get me wrong; this film is superbly crafted and doesn't drag for a frame of its two hours on screen.
Arthur's condition makes him laugh when he's stressed and this often causes offence. That's ok as he has a card that explains this. That it doesn't mollify anyone who reads it is a major thematic statement. You just can't get away with a joke anymore. Part of the PR blitzkrieg for this film has been writer/director Todd Phillips claim that woke culture made him do it. That had the desired effect and kept everyone talking. Well, it's there on screen, like it or not, and it's presented openly.
But I started getting nagged by something even as I was sitting in a Hoyts plex watching and enjoying this movie: is this movie good because it's a good movie or is it good because it draws from great ones? By this I don't mean it reconstructs moments of mighty cinema because it plays pretty cleanly that way, too. You don't need Robert De Niro in his role ... unless you wanted to remind your audience of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. You do that because you want people to sit up, take notice and nod along with your bullshit about woke culture. The point is so compelling, is the suggeston, that we had to pretend to be Martin Scorsese to put it across. Try it in Hangover IV and who would notice?
I couldn't shake this off once it occurred to me and while I'm no champion of cultural coddling I have only weariness for attacks upon it and anyone who lunges on any figure or movement that, I mean this, just wants us to be a little nicer to each other (there are more complex ways of expressing that but I prefer the plain words). This is a pity. It's a pity because, in the middle of this, Joaquin Phoenix is delivering the performance of his career. It is nuanced and bold, brash here and almost silently subtle there, applying a jeweller's skill to a pond pebble. At major turns he's as thin as Travis Bickle or as cloying as Rupert Pupkin and it just makes me want to see those movies again (oh, and Network, but that's almost a spoiler) and let their higher style and greater depth weave their magic all over again.
I know, Marty himself wasn't above some vigorous cine-quoting even at his finest, but he always had more to say and none of it sounded like some old bastard ranting at a tramstop the way this film does. And this is much better than Wes Anderson busking Hal Ashby movies so violently you start wondering if the originals were any good or - Oops, I am become Ranter. Look, go and see it as a well made and substantial part of the superhero cosmos. It won't turn you into an incel or a social justice warrior but you'll get it (which you will if you see the movie, get it?)
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