There was surprise and maybe a few doubts yesterday when the jury at the 76th Venice Film Festival awarded to "Joker" by Todd Phillips and to historical thriller "An Officer and a Spy" by controversial Roman Polanski respectively the Golden Lion and the grand jury prize. Yet the signs, at least for Phillips' film were already there, as "Joker", though divisive, had mainly received positive reviews when it was screened on the Lido.
The movie is not your average superhero story: Joaquin Phoenix stars as Arthur Fleck, a lonesome and needy man who lives in Gotham City and seems to have only one friend, his mother. Fleck has a condition that sometimes makes him burst into maniacal laughter, works as a party entertainer dressed as a rather sad clown, but longs to be a stand-up comedian.
Things do not go as he wishes, though: people ignore him or laugh at him for the wrong reasons and, longing to be loved and seen, Fleck starts gravitating towards violence and turns into the Joker. Even Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), a talkshow host who laughed at Fleck, has to acknowledge him.
The story is supposed to be based on "The Killing Joke" by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland, yet the film is not a loyal adaptation of the 1988 graphic novel, but an attempt by Phillips to try and tell us where the Joker may have come from.
There are indeed other references behind the story such as Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" and "The King of Comedy" (for Phillips the old mantra "from emulation to innovation" seems to work as the material we have on screen is new, even though it betrays connections with some Scorsese tropes...).
Phoenix also provides us with his own version of the Joker: in the past we have seen Cesar Romero as a silly prankster in a bright violet suit in the camp Batman TV series and movie from the '60s and Jack Nicholson's playing clown-like Joker in Tim Burton's "Batman" (1989).
Then there was Heath Ledger's more tortured and credible version in Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" (2008) and Jared Leto's unconvincing and superficial Joker in David Ayer's "Suicide Squad" (2016).
Phoenix's Joker is a complex character moving in a dark world that doesn't have anything to do with special effects and super heroes in futuristic bodysuits.
Fleck is on a mission, a career as a comedian that turns into a slow and relentless descent into hell. Architecturally speaking the film proves interesting for the spaces and places surrounding Fleck / Joker, from the monumental Arkham Asylum to the neon-lit streets of Gotham City, from the corridors Fleck fills with his laughter to the steps on which he seems to delicately dance like a heartbroken mime artist or like a perverse devil, a moment that marks his transition into pure madness and anarchy.
This transition is visually clear also thanks to the costumes by Mark Bridges: the costume designer who proved he knows his fashion on the set of Paul Thomas Anderson's "Phantom Thread" (2017; the film won him an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Costume Design in 2018), came up with a boring and ordinary wardrobe for Fleck, mainly in neutral shades such as beige, and with a crimson suit matched with a jade green shirt and a saffron waistcoat for the Joker.
The decision of Lucrecia Martel's jury to give the top award to this story of a grinning and scary anti-hero, aligns with previous Golden Lion recipients Alfonso Cuarón's "Roma" and Guillermo del Toro "The Shape of Water" (films that proved also successful at the Academy Awards...). That said, in Venice "Joker" has been a debated film, that prompted some critics to wonder if this was a left or a right-wing movie or if it encouraged misogynistic incel (involuntary celibates) culture.
Yet the moment when people riot in the streets and the Joker comes to life on the TV screen, completing Fleck's transformation from pathetic loser to vengeful winner, you can hear in your mind Fleck repeating "Is it just me or is it getting crazier out there?" and you instantly make a connection with our times. Phillips mentions indeed in the film modern themes, such as cuts to health services, gun violence or being pushed to the limits by something that goes wrong in your life and that breaks and changes you, and that's when you realise Joker's revengeful fantasy is fuelled by the reality in which we live.
With this scary origin story of the DC Comics antihero, the cookie-cutter superhero machine is broken in favour of an experimental anti-hero movie dedicated to fans of character studies who may be tired of computer generated battles in impossibly cool bodysuits.
Talking about costumes, will Bridges' new wardrobe for the Joker inspire cosplayers? Absoutely, and maybe we may even see some very sad, scary or revengeful clowns on the fashion runways as well, possibly in tailored suits in contrasting colours like the one donned by the Joker.
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