The bird population may be severely diminished, but there is
hope: a Parrot has been spotted outside the box office of a famous Brooklyn
cinema. What this means for biodiversity I'm not sure, but it at least means a new view from the Lamppost.
What is Todd Phillips up to, anyway, in this latest epistle from the Batcave? I sat through about two thirds of the film thinking it was a genuine art house piece which was going to take me somewhere new. I ended up feeling like I had been treated to a remake of The Dark Knight, with references to the urban decay of the 1970's and a Fellini-esque ending thrown in to top off a really unworkable stew of moral, political and psychological themes.
The problem with this film is that it starts out by providing motivations for Arthur Fleck's anger that suggest a serious psychodrama, but the plan is realized amidst a confusing muck of thematic impulses that never really get sorted out. First we get the idea that Arthur is a just a bit off, then almost immediately we find that he has a medical condition that causes him to laugh inappropriately - presumably Pseudobulbar affect, or PBA, though the film never puts a name on it. This condition can have a range of emotional effects, but Phillips never makes it clear whether Arthur's bizarre behavior all stems from this or whether he is also subject to schizophrenia or some other condition. For example, he is also strongly delusional, but that is not obviously related to PBA. We learn that he is on medication, but we are never sure what the medication is for, since he seems to have more than one mental disorder. At some point he apparently loses access to his medication, but yet another loose knot is what direct effect this has on his later actions or mental condition, if any.
Into this already complex picture Phillips adds a history of severe child abuse. That makes probably three different psychological motivations for the murderous spree that ensues. Hey, let's also make him an orphan with a deranged adoptive mother who he still lives with - why stint on emotional issues? The method here seems to be to pile it on rather than carefully work out any single theme.
Well, we are not done. Arthur is also placed in New York City at its nadir, the street violence, racial animosity, riots, graffiti, declining social services and infrastructure decay of the 1970's. (In a piece of ahistoric but playful nonsense, the film opens with Arthur dressed in his clown suit, holding a sign advertising the closing of "Kenny's Music" - presumably a dual reference to Manny's Music on 48th Street and Kenny's Castaways, which closed in 2009 and 2012 respectively - but hey, we get the idea.) The urban decay forms a backdrop of general hostility, insensitivity and paranoia that stokes the flames of Arthur's already inflamed psychosis.
Believe it or not, Phillips is still not quite finished motivating Fleck's violence. Arthur is also trying to hold down a job as a clown, where labor issues and a co-worker who is a bit of a lummox add to his worries. Yes, he is going down, down, down...
But he's not quite at the bottom yet. You see, amidst all his tsuris, Arthur still wants to make something of himself. Although the film makes clear (sometimes in surprising ways) that Arthur is delusional, it is not clear that he is incapable of surmounting this to the point of being able to do standup. He even wants to appear as a guest on a t.v. talk show with host Murray Franklin, who seems to be modeled on Merv Griffin, the iconic talk show host of the 70's. And in a plot twist that is such a stretch I can't even count this as a spoiler, Murray gets hold of a clip of Arthur being foiled in an attempt at standup due to his laughing disease, and makes fun of him on the air. So add public humiliation to Arthur's worries. This is almost like a second film spliced onto at least one, if not two or three others, for the sake of adding another opportunity for Arthur to spill blood. It's also a cheap way of getting off, though I don't want to say anything that would spoil the unsurprising ending. But I'm jumping the gun a bit - let's go back.
The first two encounters that set Arthur off are both with black people - a group of violent youths who steal the "Going Out of Business" sign he is carrying in front of Kenny's and beat him up, and a woman on a bus who shows remarkable insensitivity. But Arthur is not going to seek revenge on these people, which would immediately put in question the moral assets he needs to attract our sympathies by pitting him against other down and out individuals. Instead, the appropriate opportunity presents itself when he is, rather dubiously, attacked on a subway by three Wall Street dudes who have turned from harrassing a woman to pummeling Arthur. He has been given a pistol by the aforementioned lummox at the agency he works for, and the one-percenters and sexist jerks get their bloody comeuppance in an act that could be called self-defense.
Well, it is self-defense, but it is also feels like a reference to the Bernard Goetz shootings of 1984. This is the first instance of how the film is not just psychologically murky but politically questionable. The stage for Fleck's killing spree is set with incidents perpetrated by minorities, but to make it acceptable at first Phillips engineers an unlikely subway assault by white guys in business suits. Of course, neither the actions of a Goetz nor the shooting to death of three white guys really is morally defensible, though some use of the gun might have been in that situation. But Phillips also needs this incident to incite a grander theme of epic violence by people who worship the clown as something like the leader of an Occupy Wall Street movement. So the film is now involved with yet another, almost contradictory, theme: what begins as a parable of urban decay (the outer representation of Arthur's psychological decay) turns into an Occupy story, only grafted onto scenes of violence reminiscent not of the Occupy encampment or marches but of New York during the blackout, of Chicago or Paris in 1968, of Watts and Newark and other scenes of resistance by the poor, minorities and students to the mess that their cities had become and the power structures that kept them that way. All of which is carried out by demonstrators in clown masks, which both hides their racial identity and tacks on an urban legend about violent clowns, a sort of visceral mockery of a movement that was subjected to violence by the police, not the other way around.
Cinema can be great entertainment even when its content is highly questionable. Joaquin Phoenix's performance as Arthur is so brilliant it shouts "Academy Award" and keeps you riveted even as the film's endless multiplication of strands leaves you wondering what meanings it is trying to put across. Comparison with Heath Ledger's Joker is inevitable, and if Ledger has anything on Phoenix it is just that he played this kind of character first. But in Christopher Nolan's film one thing the Joker clearly lacks is any justifying motivation; it is his embodiment of pure malevolence that marks his character. Phoenix's ability to enter the overly complex psyche of this mentally fragile Joker is remarkable, even if there is ultimately no way to reconcile all the disorders it encompasses. The cinematography is also terrific; Lawrence Sher depicts bleakness both indoors and out with a vividness that recalls not only Scorcese's 1970's films but Blade Runner, Repulsion and others that disturb visually as much as they do psychologically.
The moral shape of the film runs like this: we are initially somewhat sympathetic to Fleck in defending himself, and willing to at least understand as he takes revenge for his child abuse. Arthur, as the lingo of narrative fiction goes, now has "agency"; he is not going to simply disappear down the tubes of abuse, illness and depression. But at this point we are led to believe that Arthur has exorcised his demons and is on the way up - the expectation, for me, was that he would be healed but then have to face the consequences of the way he got there. Instead, we are treated to additional, quite gruesome, murders with a pretense of justification so thin that it is all but irrelevant. We are left in a kind of moral limbo, where Arthur's "recovery" turns into the lame idea - supported by extraordinarily lame speeches that are presumably supposed to have an effect on the audience - that whoever hurts you in any way whatsoever should be blown away.
This sorry outcome is then appended to a mythos of a city upended by clown-suited protesters who sanctify Arthur and his violent spree, so that not only Arthur but the Occupy-like critique of social inequality is compromised by the descent into random violence. That is a mythos that does not really resonate. The egalitarianism of the moment, from the Occupy movement to Black Lives Matter to the Democratic primary debates, is a potentially transformative development that needs to be taken seriously, and has nothing to do with violent clown myths. Ultimately, the joke is on us: the film sucks you in to Arthur's mission of righting every wrong done to him only to invite you to a clownishly violent form of opposition to social injustice. I have to pass on the invitation. Feel the Bern, if you are so inclined, but not the burn.
Well, we are not done. Arthur is also placed in New York City at its nadir, the street violence, racial animosity, riots, graffiti, declining social services and infrastructure decay of the 1970's. (In a piece of ahistoric but playful nonsense, the film opens with Arthur dressed in his clown suit, holding a sign advertising the closing of "Kenny's Music" - presumably a dual reference to Manny's Music on 48th Street and Kenny's Castaways, which closed in 2009 and 2012 respectively - but hey, we get the idea.) The urban decay forms a backdrop of general hostility, insensitivity and paranoia that stokes the flames of Arthur's already inflamed psychosis.
Believe it or not, Phillips is still not quite finished motivating Fleck's violence. Arthur is also trying to hold down a job as a clown, where labor issues and a co-worker who is a bit of a lummox add to his worries. Yes, he is going down, down, down...
But he's not quite at the bottom yet. You see, amidst all his tsuris, Arthur still wants to make something of himself. Although the film makes clear (sometimes in surprising ways) that Arthur is delusional, it is not clear that he is incapable of surmounting this to the point of being able to do standup. He even wants to appear as a guest on a t.v. talk show with host Murray Franklin, who seems to be modeled on Merv Griffin, the iconic talk show host of the 70's. And in a plot twist that is such a stretch I can't even count this as a spoiler, Murray gets hold of a clip of Arthur being foiled in an attempt at standup due to his laughing disease, and makes fun of him on the air. So add public humiliation to Arthur's worries. This is almost like a second film spliced onto at least one, if not two or three others, for the sake of adding another opportunity for Arthur to spill blood. It's also a cheap way of getting off, though I don't want to say anything that would spoil the unsurprising ending. But I'm jumping the gun a bit - let's go back.
The first two encounters that set Arthur off are both with black people - a group of violent youths who steal the "Going Out of Business" sign he is carrying in front of Kenny's and beat him up, and a woman on a bus who shows remarkable insensitivity. But Arthur is not going to seek revenge on these people, which would immediately put in question the moral assets he needs to attract our sympathies by pitting him against other down and out individuals. Instead, the appropriate opportunity presents itself when he is, rather dubiously, attacked on a subway by three Wall Street dudes who have turned from harrassing a woman to pummeling Arthur. He has been given a pistol by the aforementioned lummox at the agency he works for, and the one-percenters and sexist jerks get their bloody comeuppance in an act that could be called self-defense.
Well, it is self-defense, but it is also feels like a reference to the Bernard Goetz shootings of 1984. This is the first instance of how the film is not just psychologically murky but politically questionable. The stage for Fleck's killing spree is set with incidents perpetrated by minorities, but to make it acceptable at first Phillips engineers an unlikely subway assault by white guys in business suits. Of course, neither the actions of a Goetz nor the shooting to death of three white guys really is morally defensible, though some use of the gun might have been in that situation. But Phillips also needs this incident to incite a grander theme of epic violence by people who worship the clown as something like the leader of an Occupy Wall Street movement. So the film is now involved with yet another, almost contradictory, theme: what begins as a parable of urban decay (the outer representation of Arthur's psychological decay) turns into an Occupy story, only grafted onto scenes of violence reminiscent not of the Occupy encampment or marches but of New York during the blackout, of Chicago or Paris in 1968, of Watts and Newark and other scenes of resistance by the poor, minorities and students to the mess that their cities had become and the power structures that kept them that way. All of which is carried out by demonstrators in clown masks, which both hides their racial identity and tacks on an urban legend about violent clowns, a sort of visceral mockery of a movement that was subjected to violence by the police, not the other way around.
Cinema can be great entertainment even when its content is highly questionable. Joaquin Phoenix's performance as Arthur is so brilliant it shouts "Academy Award" and keeps you riveted even as the film's endless multiplication of strands leaves you wondering what meanings it is trying to put across. Comparison with Heath Ledger's Joker is inevitable, and if Ledger has anything on Phoenix it is just that he played this kind of character first. But in Christopher Nolan's film one thing the Joker clearly lacks is any justifying motivation; it is his embodiment of pure malevolence that marks his character. Phoenix's ability to enter the overly complex psyche of this mentally fragile Joker is remarkable, even if there is ultimately no way to reconcile all the disorders it encompasses. The cinematography is also terrific; Lawrence Sher depicts bleakness both indoors and out with a vividness that recalls not only Scorcese's 1970's films but Blade Runner, Repulsion and others that disturb visually as much as they do psychologically.
The moral shape of the film runs like this: we are initially somewhat sympathetic to Fleck in defending himself, and willing to at least understand as he takes revenge for his child abuse. Arthur, as the lingo of narrative fiction goes, now has "agency"; he is not going to simply disappear down the tubes of abuse, illness and depression. But at this point we are led to believe that Arthur has exorcised his demons and is on the way up - the expectation, for me, was that he would be healed but then have to face the consequences of the way he got there. Instead, we are treated to additional, quite gruesome, murders with a pretense of justification so thin that it is all but irrelevant. We are left in a kind of moral limbo, where Arthur's "recovery" turns into the lame idea - supported by extraordinarily lame speeches that are presumably supposed to have an effect on the audience - that whoever hurts you in any way whatsoever should be blown away.
This sorry outcome is then appended to a mythos of a city upended by clown-suited protesters who sanctify Arthur and his violent spree, so that not only Arthur but the Occupy-like critique of social inequality is compromised by the descent into random violence. That is a mythos that does not really resonate. The egalitarianism of the moment, from the Occupy movement to Black Lives Matter to the Democratic primary debates, is a potentially transformative development that needs to be taken seriously, and has nothing to do with violent clown myths. Ultimately, the joke is on us: the film sucks you in to Arthur's mission of righting every wrong done to him only to invite you to a clownishly violent form of opposition to social injustice. I have to pass on the invitation. Feel the Bern, if you are so inclined, but not the burn.
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