Superhero Media: Joker

I don't know if I just happen to be stubborn, or if it's something held over from my degree in Film Studies, but I almost never fail to finish watching a film, even if it's utter dross like I'm Not There or it takes me a few goes like Jonah Hexx. If I'm watching a film, even if I'm not enjoying it, I tend to finish it, usually putting anything else off that I can until it's done. Following on from that, and apologies if this gets too personal, there are only two films I have stopped watching to have sex instead. Not that I don't enjoy sex or didn't want to have it with the person in question or anything, I just typically wait until the film is finished. One film I stopped watching in such a way was the dull Australian horror film Daybreakers, and the other was Joker. I've since watched Joker uninterrupted to give it the best chance I could, but I still just couldn't make myself care about it. And I feel kind of bad saying that, because a lot of people love this film and Joaquin Phoenix is amazing in the lead, but when you get down to it, Joker just really isn't about anything.

A lot happens in Joker, but I'm left baffled as to why any of it is happening, and much of it doesn't seem to mean anything. There are themes of a broken mental health system, but they're undercut by the setting of the film in the 1980s. Setting the film in the '80s seems to want to be about something, but Joker is shot and dressed like it's the 1970s because it wants to look like Taxi Driver and King of Comedy. The film strongly apes Taxi Driver, but there doesn't really seem to be a reason for that beyond borrowing some of the little gloss that Scorsese has left after the past decade of mediocrity and complaining. The soundtrack is bafflelingly tone-deaf, especially the inclusion of a Garry Glitter track, which, again, is from the wrong decade entirely. What, was "Psycho Killer" too obvious? Separating Joker from the Batman mythology is potentially interesting, but they wuss out on that too and Bruce FUCKING Wayne is in this film because we can't do anything in the DCU without reminding the audience that Batman exists. Hey, want to see the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne again? No? Too bad, because that's happening again.

I think I'd be less down on Joker if it had just been an uninteresting film that came and went and didn't occupy space in my brain. But because it has a solid lead performance, some quotable lines and the illusion of depth, I'll be bothered by people telling me that "actually, Joker is the greatest and most relevant superhero movie of all time" and I may roll my eyes so hard they actually eject from the sockets. Joker has nothing to say, but the words it uses, to belabor the metaphor, are flowery and sound educated, so people listen and start to believe. There, Joker is the film equivalent of Jordan Peterson, I solved it. No wonder internet Nazis love it so much. Do yourself a favour and watch King of Comedy instead, it's actually interesting. Want to watch a good film about a descent into madness, how about Eraserhead, Manhunter or The Lighthouse instead? Broaden your horizons, try something new, get away from Joker and the Joker in general, life is too short to keep going around on this monorail of diminishing returns, insisting that opinions you held when you were fourteen are still valid. It's not good, and I'm tired of pretending it is.