Joker: Fantasy and Canon

Checking in with a late review of Joker (2019), which the wife and I saw on HBO last night.

Let me stipulate several things:

• Joaquin Phoenix was brilliant, inspired, incandescent, whatever superlatives you can find, in the title role.  He eminently deserved the Oscar he won for that.
• I know a middling amount of Batman canon, but am no expert.
• I thought the movie held together very well as movie, which means I disagree with, for example, the inanely critical review in the New York Times, as I often do.

I do have question about the ending, though.  And the fact that I have questions makes me think that maybe the movie would have been better ending before this ending.

Arthur Fleck, having actualized his impulses and become the Joker, is seen talking to his state-appointed shrink or social worker, but in a less dingy setting than at the beginning of the movie.  One explanation of this scene, which I'd like to think is correct, is that Fleck, after escaping the cops in what I was wish was the closing scene, is nonetheless apprehended at some time in the future, and is now in some kind of penitentiary serving a life sentence for his crimes (or is he maybe on death row?).

But there's an alternate explanation (which my wife wondered about, and now I'm thinking about it too).  We already saw, in the movie, that Fleck imagined making love and all the good things he did with his neighbor down the hall, Sophie.  This establishes that Fleck's fantasies played a major part in the narrative we see on the screen.  Is it possible that everything else we saw in the movie - Fleck's killing of De Niro's Murray Franklin (who, to me, is just as much Joe Franklin - believe it or not, I was once on his show, talking about my album, Twice Upon A Rhyme - as Murray is Johnny Carson), etc - were also just in Fleck's mind?   Or, at least more of the major sequences than just Sophie as girlfriend?

In at least one Batman movie, if memory serves, the Joker kills Bruce Wayne's parents.  In Joker, one of the myriad angry people with a clown face does the deed.   This suggests that Fleck did not make all of this up - another clown killing Bruce Wayne's parents is consistent with the historical Batman canon of his parents being killed.

In any case, I rate this movie as maybe a masterpiece, and, the more I think about it, the more I think that's right.

Thoughts about The Dark Knight Massacre

Some thoughts about the horrendous shootings in the Colorado movie theater showing The Dark Night 3 last night:

1. The single most effective way of preventing such tragedies in the future, or reducing their likelihood, is for President Obama and Congress to step up and restore the ban on assault (semi-automatic) weapons.  No law-abiding citizen should have need for them.  Their banning would not violate the Second Amendment - which, unlike the First Amendment, does not say "Congress shall make no law".  Rather, the Second Amendment says government should not "infringe" upon the rights of people to bear arms.  The banning of a weapon of mass killing would not infringe on the right of citizens to bear other kinds of guns. (Just a ban on sale of assault weapons to anyone under 30 years of age would help - it would have prevented the attack on Rep. Giffords last year, the murders at Virginia Tech, and what happened in Aurora.)

2. The notion that violence in the movies or in any medium triggers this kind of real-life violence is not supported by the facts:  Millions and millions of people have watched violent movies and television, and played violent video games - and, thank goodness, mass killings have happened just handfuls of times.  (See my debate with Jack Thompson a few years ago about violent video games for more.)

3. But motion picture theaters need to think of ways to make their premises more safe.  Movies - especially horror movies - have for decades sought to give the viewer tingles of fear by showing people on the screen menaced and killed by monsters and psyschos in the darkness.  With what happened in Aurora, Colorado making this a reality, the motion picture industry may need to rethink such movies, or at very least provide increased means of protection in theaters, such as metal detectors. Motion picture theaters have in effect been on the ropes since the rise of television in the 1950s.  The ease today of also viewing movies on tablets and smart phones is only putting more pressure on theaters.  Unlike schools, where attendance is required, movie-going is strictly optional.  The public needs to feel that exercising this option is safe.

4. The Batman franchise - in particular, The Dark Knight trilogy - will likely forever be associated with the tragedy of Aurora.  The Batman story, at its core, is about the darkness in the human soul (which Batman is able to overcome, or channel into doing good).  The spilling over of this darkness from fiction into our reality - where it of course already exists - is a signal moment in the history of movies, and even story-telling in general.   What impact this will have on Batman's place in our popular culture is hard to say - it will likely make the masked crusader both more and less intriguing - but we can be sure that Batman will never be seen the same.

   

The Dark Knight Transcends

I just got back from seeing The Dark Knight, and it is eons better than any previous Batman movie, or, for that matter, any Superman or other movie made of a comic book character. In fact, The Dark Knight is as far away from comic book tropes and exaggerations as The Grapes of Wrath is to a nursery rhyme.

Heath Ledger as The Joker was stunning and unforgettable - more like Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys than Jack Nicholson's Joker in a previous Batman movie, and Nicholson was pretty good. A fitting last bow for Ledger indeed, and all the more tragedy that he won't be with us for more.

But Ledger's was not the only brilliant performance. Gary Oldman is truly in a class of his own in acting, playing radically different characters in different movies with the same ease and also unforgettable perfection. This time Oldman was James Gordon - and Gordon and the audience never had it so good.

Aaron Eckhart as the "White Knight" Harvey Dent was powerful, Maggie Gyllenhaal as Batman's and Harvey's love was perfect, and you can never miss with Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman (whose Lucius Fox takes a stand against Orwell's Big Brother). Lost's Richard (Nestor Carbonell) plays the Mayor, and our real Senator Patrick Leahy even puts in a nice cameo.

Christian Bale as Batman/Bruce Wayne was fine - but I wouldn't put him ahead of George Clooney and Val Kilmer's performances of the role.

But the story was so powerful, the supporting acting so extraordinary, that Bale really shined, too. I'm rarely surprised in a movie - I did guess one minor bad guy sitting in the driver's seat - but the complex story of The Dark Knight was packed not only with punches but real twists and surprises.

Most of all, despite its advertised "darkness," the movie had hope and soul. When you see it, I think you'll agree that the real heroes were the people of Gotham, and in a soft-spoken, understated, but memorable and heart warming way. I don't know, is it too much to say they evinced a distinctly Democratic, humane capacity, resisting the baser impulses of a people under attack? Yes, they did. Gotham - that mixture of New York and Chicago, the quintessential American city - shown bright in The Dark Knight tonight.

---

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Dexter Meets Heroes

Bopping back to talk about Dexter, which is now up to Episode 5 on Showtime. As I mentioned in my preview review of the first four episodes, I think this season is even better than the first - more subtle, multi-dimensional, and dangerous - which is saying a lot, because the first season was outstanding.

Sunday's episode was entitled "The Dark Defender," and captures the new self-respect and even confidence that Dexter is finding in himself. On the one hand, the discovery of his victims in the bay, and Keith Carradine's masterful Federal agent leading the investigation, is posing far more of threat to Dexter than Doakes (who is not out of the picture yet, either) ever did. On the other hand, Dexter has Lila.

Unlike Rita, Lila empowers Dexter. Although she doesn't know the specifics of Dexter's addiction - a taste for cutting people up, fortunately bad people - she is powerfully in synch with what Dexter is going through. And she supports him. In Sunday's show, she talks Dexter out of butchering one of the guys who butchered his mother (Lila does this on the phone).

If Rita is Lois Lane to Dexter's Clark Kent, Lila is Batgirl to Dexter's Batman. (I know, the metaphor seems a little stretched, but it's a complex story). So far, Lila is Dexter's ally in all things ... and it looks like they are moving towards a passionate sexual relationship, as well. In contrast, Dexter last year tolerated to enjoyed sex with Rita, but was never really passionate about it.

As Heroes on NBC struggles this year to find a little more cohesion in a central story, Dexter on Showtime is instantly mesmerizing as a solitary dark hero in a sea of real and potential adversaries (including, possibly, his sister - though I think, in the end, she will be loyal to him) ... and one dark-haired beauty (played by Jaime Murray) who seems his steadfast soul mate.


4-minute podcast of this Dexter review

See also Dexter's Back: A Preview and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out Of This? and 9. The Plot Gets Even Tighter and Sharper and 10. Dex, Doakes, Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and Season 2 Finale: All's ... Well

---

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book