Warner He had been betting heavily on the DCEU for several years to build his own superhero universe when he gave the green light to ‘Joker’, a film that did not quite fit within it. Interestingly, the lukewarm performance at the box office of ‘Justice League’ had its weight for the studio to bet on a different film that had also taken many liberties to offer its vision on the origins of the mythical enemy of Batman.
However, it was the signing of Joaquin phoenix What ended up animating the study, an actor very careful with his career who had already rejected Marvel on more than one occasion. He was the great ace of the film’s sleeve, something that would not take long to be confirmed when we could see ‘Joker’, for which took home a deserved Oscar, and that today you can recover in La 1 from 22:05.
The keys to ‘Joker’
‘Joker’ had the honor of being the first independent film to the DCEU, reason why it enjoyed a greater creative freedom than it would have obtained in other conditions. That is not something Todd Phillips always know how to take advantage of it, but from the outset it allows you to give it an irreproachable formal personality, moving us from it to a decaying Gotham reminiscent of the New York of ‘Taxi Driver’, although in the plot the connection is greater with ‘The king of the comedy’.
Once immersed in that city in which there seems to be no place for Arthur Fleck that does not go beyond the delusions fruit of his mind – and it is that in ‘Joker’ it is never entirely clear that something really happens like that or is the logical consequence of having a little or no reliable narrator. There it is true that Phillips could have gone deeper instead of being seduced by the absolute immersion of Phoenix in a character that he makes his own.
My partner Kiko commented at the time of its premiere that ‘Joker’ “It’s a movie that’s much more concerned with constantly molar than digging deep“, a statement that I only share in part. It is true that there are several solutions to the script signed by Phillips and Scott silver that tend to repetition, giving the feeling that it is to be cool, but there is also at all times the feeling that Arthur is simply circling about the same thing until the great explosion of violence arrives that shakes the foundations of the story and culminates in his transition from Arthur to Joker.
Along the way, Phillips and Silver greatly influence the idea that it is society that corrupts the individual and the existence of a rotten system to highlight the victim’s condition of the protagonist of ‘Joker’. For this, perhaps he relies more than necessary on the sensational interpretation of Phoenix, returning often about recurring ideas for a steamroller effect that paves the way for what’s to come.
That is accompanied by a tone that seeks greater realism, thus placing this Joker at the antipodes of the one played just three years earlier by Jared Leto in ‘Suicide Squad’. That leads to influence that existential crisis that Arthur Fleck suffers from the beginning of the film. Out of place in society and trying to find his place in it, either by imitating his idols or clinging to the possibility that Thomas Wayne is his father. All this to end up embracing moral corruption and that concept already handled in ‘The Dark Knight’ to refer to the Joker that there are those who simply want to see the world burn …
All this accompanied by the impeccable music of Hildur Guðnadóttir, probably the only thing from ‘Joker’ that can really compete with Phoenix’s work. The rest is very estimable but part of a somewhat limited concept without finishing developing it in a fully convincing way, but of course, there is an actor in a state of grace to more than compensate for any possible limitation and raise the film to a level much higher than what surely deserved. Without him, ‘Joker’ would probably be worth it, but it would be much less interesting and its impact less.
‘Joker’ was an impressive blockbuster, becoming the first R-rated film in the United States to break the mythical $ 1 billion barrier. Considering that his budget was “barely” 70 million, it is logical that the idea of a possible sequel reappears from time to time. However, nothing is confirmed yet.