Why Mainstream Critics Turned Against Joker
Dishonest criticisms of politics disguise an industry deep objection to honest film-making
Kit Knightly
The Oscars are happening as we speak, and I’m a little embarassed to say I want Joker to win. Not because it’s an all-time great movie, it’s not. It is slightly derivative in some ways, has a couple of plot points that didn’t quite ring true to me, and its arthouse aspirations together with its comic book origins lead it to almost fall between two stools.
It is, however, still a very good movie. Maybe even brilliant. Certainly one of the best movies in the (incredibly shlock-heavy) comic book genre, and definitely one of the best movies of the year. It has a spark of honesty at its core.
So why do people hate it?
Obviously not everybody hates it, it’s nominated for 11 Oscars after all. And made over a billion dollars at the box office. And has an 88% “audience rating” on Rotten Tomatoes (not that that really means anything).
But a certain sub-section of the world not only doesn’t like Joker, but actively hates it.
Take a look at the other Rotten Tomatoes score, the critics’ score: 68%.
That’s absurdly low. That’s lower than Frozen 2. Lower than the barely coherent Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and even – amazingly – lower than the insultingly terrible Ghostbusters reboot from 2016.
How does that happen?
I have an idea, but before I go on I will say that, while there aren’t major spoilers in this article, you will undoubtedly find it more interesting if you’ve seen the film, and will definitely enjoy the film more if someone like me hasn’t spent 3000 words deconstructing it for you. Just as friendly advice, if you haven’t seen the film, go and watch it and then come back.
*
The Film
Joker – for those of you who don’t know – is an origin story for Batman’s arch-nemesis. At first hearing, that sounds shallow and stupid, but the film is anything but; focusing on tragedy, social commentary and black comedy rather than traditional comic book action.
Essentially, they used a comic book setting to try and make a very serious piece of cinema. As director Todd Phillips put it in one interview:
We’re gonna sneak a real movie in under the guise of [a comic book movie]”
Adding in another:
We’re gonna take $55 million from Warner Bros. and do whatever the hell we want.”
That spirit of auteur-cinema-in-comic-book-clothes shines through in the film, owing a lot more to the likes of Taxi Driver, King of Comedy and Dog Day Afternoon than it does to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Joaquin Phoenix stars as Arthur Fleck, a man who struggles with several psychological conditions, including an involuntary maniacal laugh in times of intense stress. He works as a clown and dreams of being a comedian. He lives at home with his elderly mother. He doesn’t have any friends. He doesn’t have any romantic interests. He doesn’t have any prospects.
He is alone, truly alone not movie alone. Because that’s the thing about most Hollywood movies, they are never real. Not completely. To make a generalisation, it’s an American thing. Unhappiness makes Americans uncomfortable. And their mainstream culture compulsively shies away from honesty in many areas of the standard human experience.
Loneliness is right at the top of that list.
“Lonely” people in Hollywood movies are teenagers whining to their nerdy friends about wanting a girlfriend. They are divorcees and widows being convinced to “get back out there” by a coterie of interchangeable wine-sipping BFFs who always seem to be played by the same two actresses. They are “losers” who have “no one”, except their college roommate, their inevitable love interest and their conspicuously wealthy parents whose only flaw is ever either being “distant” (fathers) or “interfering” (mothers).
Arthur Fleck isn’t movie lonely. He is reality lonely. The world, as a whole, is totally apathetic to his existence.
And what a world it is.
Gotham City is a broken place. Grimy, dishevelled and poor. Uncollected trash piles high on the sidewalks. The working-class neighbourhood where Arthur lives is dingy and crumbling. It might be set in an unspecified late-seventies/early-eighties window, but the city is easily recognisable as modern. The dilapidated echo of a once-great civilisation in inevitable decline.
The depression is palpable, the world feels broken and exposed and raw. The people are tense, wary and alert. Strangers are callous and cruel. Pressure, waiting for a release.
Is it me, or is it getting crazier out there?
Arthur asks his work-a-day, state-supplied social worker. She doesn’t answer, she isn’t listening. She’s buried in a caseload she can’t handle and budget that doesn’t exist.
Later in the film, the department’s funding is cut completely, robbing Arthur of both his only point of human contact and the medication on which he relies.
That’s just the first domino to fall. He loses his job. His attempts at stand-up are a disaster which ends with him being ridiculed on national television by his idol. He loses everything. Up to, and including, his frail grip on reality.
I won’t bother detailing all the plot points. If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably seen it.
The explosions of violence which punctuate Arthur’s decline slowly transform him. He goes from being desperate to vengeful to simply an agent of chaos. His maniacal laugh goes from being forced out of him in times of stress, to one of genuine amusement.
I used to think my life was a tragedy, but now I realise it’s a comedy.
He says, in one key scene. Understanding his role, finally. Society is a sick joke, and his life the disturbing punchline.
His crimes stir up the simmering tension of the city to finally boil over, making him the de-facto leader of an impromptu protest movement. A development Arthur, naturally, finds hilarious.
As the city is torn down around him, Arthur becomes the true reflection of the world that made him. Totally emotionally detached, unpredictably violent and patently absurd.
In that sense, Joker is a variation of the Frankenstein trope, the modern Prometheus. Modern society is cast as the doctor, who, through acts of supreme hubris, ends up creating a monster that destroys him.
As I said already, it’s a very good film. Subtle, interesting and thoughtful. Hollywood doesn’t do that much anymore.
*
The Critics
…and yet the critics didn’t like it.
Or at least the majority didn’t. And not just didn’t like, but actively detested it. Even before the movie came out there was criticism that Joker would “embolden incels” and “legitimise violence”. Police were put on alert just in case there were mass shootings. (The mother of one of the 2012 Aurura shooting victims wrote an open letter to WB about it).
Now, in the age of contrived media, you might suspect that this was nothing but a subtle viral marketing campaign, and maybe it was. But the bad press didn’t abate after the release. If anything it intensified.
Richard Brody of The Wall Street Journal said it didn’t talk about race enough, and that it paled in comparison to the “bold assertive political vision” of Black Panther.
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called it shallow, derivative and juvenile. Salon said it would embolden the alt-right. US Weekly called it cold, cynical and preachy.
Vanity Fair said it was dangerous. The Collider said it was boring. Vulture managed to claim it was both.
Vox contrived to run a 4000-word article, a conversation between four of their authors, which concluded that Joker wasn’t threatening or deep, it was just boring and we should all stop talking about it.
If you read all these reviews (and the literal dozens of others) you will be left in no doubt you should hate this movie, but you won’t be exactly sure why.
Perhaps tellingly, this compulsive rejection of the movie seems to be isolated only to US publications.
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, after which it received an 8-minute standing ovation and won the Golden Lion – the grand prize of the festival.
The next day, TIME published a review that not only didn’t mention these facts, but spit acid at every aspect of the film (including Phoenix’s performance).
So why did American critics hate it so much?
Maybe this would be a good place to really examine the state of “film criticism” in America. In short, it’s dreadful. Worse than dreadful. A mockery of itself. And, like everything else, film criticism has become a portal for a specific political agenda.
This agenda is about shutting down debate and vilifying the “other”. Journalists throw around labels, telling us who is acceptable and who is not. Everything is about expressing adherence to the state-prescribed set of “morally upright” opinions, whilst portraying those who dissent as mentally inferior, morbidly selfish and irredeemably evil. This is true of journalism, “comedy” talk shows, computer games…and film critics.
Nothing can be apolitical anymore, but at the same time, the permissible “politics” are shallow as soup-spoons.
This era of surface-level “politicization” is, in turn, seized on by corporations in order to boost profits. Movies are no longer required to be good, they now have only to be worthy. And the great thing about worthiness is it’s so much easier (and cheaper) than quality. Writing a good script is hard, writing a bad script that hits the right social messages is easy.
Virtue signalling has segued neatly into virtue marketing. We don’t choose to see movies now, we have a duty to see them, because of sexism or racism or Donald Trump.
This has turned film criticism into a dead art form, the profession of woke yes-men and hackish populists, massively biased toward the big studios (and especially Disney), and behaviorally conditioned to like what they’re supposed to like.
Make a film with a female lead and they will praise its feminist message no matter its atrocious script. Make a cliche-ridden colonialist film set in “space Africa”, they will say you have a “bold political vision”, and unironically call it one of the greatest films of all time.
The modern film “critic” lives in a world of easy binaries. Left and right. Republican and Democrat. Black and White. Good and Evil. Tick boxes, either/ors and sign on the dotted line. Simple questions with one-word answers.
When presented with a film that escapes easy classification they become troubled. They deplore it, but they lack the depth of self-knowledge, or basic critical thinking skills, to ever understand why.
…and that brings us back to Joker, and the uneven application of pre-approved “criticisms” that never really made any sense.
Some reporters claimed the film was “too white” (one even suggesting the main character was racist, based on absolutely nothing). But that’s totally spurious. If anything the film is entirely post-racial. Race really never enters the conversation.
If you really want to get into the “racial politics” of it, well: The main character, a violent psychotic, is white. As are his “antagonists”. Whereas three women of colour appear: A psychiatrist, a social worker, and a working single mother. They are never shown to be anything but decent people.
The racial issue is a total non-starter.
Other reporters tell us we shouldn’t like it because the main character is a violent criminal and we’re invited to take his side. An accusation that could be levelled at Scarface, The Godfather, American Psycho, Dexter, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Lolita, Goodfellas. Pretty much every Tarantino or Scorcese film. Oh, and of course Batman.
The idea an audience can witness a protagonist’s actions without agreeing with them or supporting them is as old the medium itself.
If anything Joker is less “apologetic” about its violence than the above examples. Joker‘s violence is the last desperate act of an ill mind denied its medicine, whereas the vast majority of those previous examples – mostly considered great works – are psychopaths who kill to their selfish ends.
So the idea Joker encourages or endorses violence falls flat, as well.
If anything, based on this spurious virtue-signally, politico-centric method of “movie criticism”, this is a movie that checks all the right boxes.
After all, the billionaire is an entitled white man, preaching the glory of capitalism on television. The loner is a recovering mental patient, a victim of violent childhood abuse, with no access to healthcare. Violent criminals are portrayed as victims of society. The abusive trouble-makers are blond stockbrokers in suits and ties.
Those are all traditionally quite liberal positions. Enlightened, empathetic and open-minded. On the surface, this is a film that the Liberal media should love, right?
And yet they don’t. Why? Because Joker dares to break out of the narrow confines of acceptable debate.
Where movies are supposed to talk about the politics of gender, race or sexuality…this movie talks about the politics of class.
Where movies are supposed to discuss violence in terms of good and evil, this movie talks about the deeper causes of violence; poverty, neglect and social degradation.
Where films now focus on individual interpersonal conflicts, Joker talks about the systemic bullying of vulnerable people to breaking point.
Where movies teach us to despise the unacceptable other, this movie asks us to understand a man whose actions we deplore.
Where movies try to placate us, this movie riles us up.
In short, what don’t they like about it? Honesty.
Nobody thinks what it’s like to be the other guy. You think men like Thomas Wayne ever think what it’s like to be someone like me?! To be somebody but themselves?! They don’t. They think we’ll all just sit there and take it like good little boys! That we won’t werewolf and go wild!
Arthur Fleck, Joker
Joker does something that has been beyond the bounds of acceptable Hollywood film-making for 20 years (if not more) – it holds a mirror up to the real problems of society. It challenges the American meme that absolutely everyone is just a day away from realising their wildest dreams. It admits that some people truly are alone, with no prospect of help or happiness. Ever.
The poor of this film are not Steinbeck’s “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”, they are just poor. And will be for the rest of their lives. This film dares to tell a secret truth – that for a lot of people, life is a struggle. Not a “there aren’t enough black Oscar nominees” struggle, or a “this man whistled at me on my way home struggle”, or a “some guy on twitter got my pronouns wrong” struggle. An actual struggle. To survive.
The violence of this film is not the vicarious, sanitized catharsis of a hero, nor the malign recourse of the soulless monster, a series of disconnected incidents linked by nothing but the inhumanity of the perpetrators. No, here, violence is a slow build to a sudden shock. Not a disease but a symptom. A boil bursting out societal puss. Understandable maybe, but not justifiable. Exactly the sort of subtle position which today’s media are inoculated against.
The politics of this film are neither left or nor right. Puppets in coloured ties don’t debate non-issues here, the world isn’t blue or red. It is flat grey. Austerity measures kill off social programs which help those with mental illnesses get medication, therapy and employment.
Thomas Wayne, a billionaire politician, goes on TV to berate, belittle and insult the victims of poverty as “not trying hard enough”, they never say which party he represents. They recognise it does not matter.
An out of touch media class – personified by Robert De Niro’s late-night chatshow host – punches down, mocking the victims of society’s decline and protected, by his media bubble, from ever having to see the way the world truly is.
In that sense, it’s a truly realistic comic book film. Joker‘s world could nearly be our own. All it takes is a little push.
Look at the months of protests in France. Look at the soaring poverty and food-bank use here in the UK. Look at the homeless tent cities sprouting like fields of crops around Los Angeles and San Francisco.
It IS getting crazier out there. But that’s a message the media are no longer capable of comprehending.
*
Like I said earlier, Joker is not an all-time great movie. But it is a great movie for our time. It tells a lot of hard truths, and explores ideas that are being bullied out of vogue by the increasingly authoritarian “liberal” class.
The Oscars are probably fixed, and definitely shallow and stupid, but the very fact Joker is nominated suggests a possible split between the actual industry, and the journalists paid to thought-police it. Maybe that’s an encouraging sign. Maybe a lot of the artists are more aware of the state of their industry, and country, than their studio bosses would ever let us see.
As a cynic I know I should know better….but I still really want Joker to win tonight, just as a strike for real values over fake ones.
Plus, the media response would be hilarious.
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This is more than a review its a lecture in film study. Thoroughly enjoyed the read.
He is alone because he is a LUNATIC. Most real people who live in the real world who feel alone are not alone because they are lunatics but because society has moved towards individualism, among other things. So I wouldn’t say that he is “truly alone”, as a matter of fact he is indeed just “movie alone”. So in that sense; no this movie is not “real”.
The character of the Joker in this movie is not relatable to a normal person. A normal person may feel alone, but not because he has a whole host of mental illnesses.
The message of this movie is not anti-establishment. The message of this movie is that people who fight the system are dangerous lunatics who go on murder sprees.
Criticism of this movie that revolves around “inciting violence” serves to validate that message, it makes it seem as if that is a real thing to be worried about. They probably believe it too.
Sure, but why does the protagonist have to be a lunatic? Why does “resistance” have to take the form of a literal bloodbath, result in an orgy of violence? Guess what happens if you take that route in the real world: more repression from the system you are trying to change. More excuses for the establishment of the police state.
So you have made yourself the arbitrator of whats “normal”. Society has done the same. Narrowing the boundaries and pushing out the abnormals to fend for themselves.
I was not saying it’s a good thing that “the abnormals” should fend for themselves.
I was making an argument about whether or not the protagonist was “truly alone” (as per the article) or “movie alone”. This is relevant in the context of how the average person relates to the movie.
(I used the term “lunatic” -which fair enough is derogatory- and the term “mental illness”. I never made judgements on what’s normal, strictly speaking. But if we use common sense it’s clear the protagonist is indeed not normal. If you really want to debate whether or not the protagonist is normal feel free, but I’ll pass.)
I see a psychopathic or ‘Luciferian’ hate in our mind’s ability to jump immediately into attacking what is wrong with another rather than sharing in or with anything right.
So do you escape the accusation that you assign to another?
Of course you make ‘normal’ by your choices and acts what is within the range of YOUR accepted values and results. But no one else has to conform or agree or comply.
Society has ‘done’. Has it?
No. People have aligned in socially communicated ‘values’ or ‘meanings’ whether they are aware of that as choice or have defaulted to give responsibility for choice to ‘conditions’, ‘trends’ or ‘whatever’.
That others take this power and weaponise or marketise it for their own agenda is an expression of their current sense of self and world.
Propagandised narratives reframe ‘norms and acceptability’ to abnormalise and invalidate threats. rivals or discards to their agenda. I make conscious choices within the awareness that this is so and so in that way ‘society’ or its engineers, do not push me out – so much as represent a system of thinking I choose not to share in and to be vigilant against.
Many will leap to say I am privileged and that there are many who have no hope or resource.
I can only live and give from the life I am, and that has included experiencing isolation, exclusion, rejection, both psychic and social.
What or who chooses NOT to invest identity there – and becomes open to uncovering another way to see and be?
The way our thinking mind frames reality is assigning responsibility to ‘separate’ persons and acts, and negating responsibility for acceptance of thought – from which the personal sense arises as the filters of personal and social identity that may express of suppress its reaction but has no responsibility for the framing of its own choice.
Society as a masking reality is a co-creation of conflict-avoidance and displacement.
As a system of conflict management, it operates as a defence against intimacy – which is associated with deep pain and loss (conflict).
We co-create our perceived reality – or we give that power, freedom and responsibility – and indeed privilege – away at the first sign of triggered or conditioned inducement to react – because it’s habit has been normalised as ‘survival’.
Self-inclusion is of a different order than an exclusive or excluded sense of self. And from the forced inclusion that does violence in the name of help or fairness – as if forcing a horse to the water will make them drink a fairer world rather than teach coercion in more insidious forms.
“Narrowing the boundaries and pushing out the abnormals to fend for themselves.”
Limitation, division and exclusion is the basis of an unnatural ‘fend for yourself’ mindset that is socially engineered rather than unfolding experience through the freedom of an honoured and honouring will.
True willingness to participate in any relationship, deserves honouring, when it embodies honour by coming in with a willingness to listen and respond in shared value.
But regardless whether others recognise us, it is we who need hold our truth in honour and not others that ‘should’ include us. Listening is the art of relating with what is – not what we think should be or expect as our right.
If you find no welcome at the current timing, shake the dust from your sandals and leave with a blessing.
“Listening” isn’t something that’s seemingly encouraged anymore. What we instead are left with is a noisy rabble that believe their inane and incessant babbling are a “right” we are not even allowed to question or talk about. Now THAT really is crazy.
I take your point, but there are all sorts of things that are ‘encouraged’ that I don’t even look at or consider.
We are afraid of what we might hear.
Filling our ears (mind) with our own noise is thus an effective block – especially if set up as a polarised ‘opposition’.
Corruption is in the first instance, investing self-illusion at cost of truth. The perversions that follow are progeny or derivative – and not powers in their own right.
There are broader agreements of collective self-illusion that frame us in conflict as defence AGAINST truth. In this sense even a ‘real’ enemy serves a false flag – because we can self-righteously deny truth in the frame of war.
But back into easier range perhaps – you and anyone else – ARE free to question …and listen for answer or the threads of unfolding answer, both within your own consciousness and with others as you are moved. Yes there are consequences to any accepted thought and action, but if you permit me to use the term, the wages of sin IS death, not shall be or will be. This has a spiritual meaning. Insofar as spirit aligns purpose, it is to listen and align in purpose.
When reality is threatened – we have the opportunity to recognise it cannot Be Real – but is an invested ‘reality’, narrative identity or worldview.
‘The old road is rapidly fading’. This evokes fear-blinding desperation to sustain that which is no longer supportable, against fear of the unknown – onto which we each and together project our worst fears. Fears that are unthinkable and so denied awareness – ie they cant even be thought or talked about. Set in Opposition to such unconscious but active fear is its equal and opposite reaction – of self-survival at any cost – and that includes all ‘necessary evils’ which then seek and find frameworks of moral justification.
Defences are always serving a purpose – even if that purpose is insanely conflicted.
We are surely in the realm now of recognising that it is our defences that are destroying us. Fear works a self-fulfilling prophecy when allowed to hide in well intentioned agenda.
Does the ‘honesty’ of revealing the hateful -as perhaps in ‘Joker’ or even 1984, in and of itself encourage healing, or does it condition us to accept and expect under the dream of now seeming to ‘understand’ a mind that nonetheless traps us?
Context is everything. If you are actively aligned in your purpose you will see all that serve you whatever you watch – including perhaps that you are free to leave the cinema. If we look for purpose outside ourself, we let conditions dictate who we are and what we seek and find. This is of course wide open to manipulative intent. Learning to think for ourselves means learning to listen to our own thinking process – rather than running on inherited and acquired assumptions, assertions or insinuations by which to seem to care while not really listening at all.
Didnt expect a treatise in response to my simple comment. What we have in America, so as to clarify where the debate is, are people who cannot brook opposition or even reasoned “debate” about whatever serious topic is in play at the moment. This sort of infantile mindset has so poisoned the well of discourse that sensible people have given up any attempt at reasoning with these unreasoning lunatics. They’re left with their own thoughts in their own heads betwixt their ears…. and the totalitarian mob isn’t even “happy” with that.
It wasn’t all a personal response to you – but to the theme of a narrative dictate – which is the denial of debate or thought!
Communication breakdown.
Polarise reaction to perceived evil – working all sides of every conflict.
I would guess at what the totalitarian mob is or isn’t happy with. They seem to NEED conflict to open such polarities as a sort of energy source.
Anyway – who listens that believes they already know, and that they are right – and focussing on what is wrong with whatever they meet that doesn’t support their narrative identity, reinforces their belief.
You ‘saw’ a treatise – but I encourage you to stop and listen – rather than give your mind away to habit reaction.
Perhaps your simple statement meant something else than what you said. I took it to my heart an received its meaning as much much more than using weaponised grievance to break down society.
The well of discourse… want a drink mate?
When will it be out on video? I might renew my membership of the local video library when it comes out… (£2 per night as I recall, although it might have gone up a bit since then)
I dont even know why I read this piece, about an movie, but at least the review was an good read, yeah, and then if this will kick my butt into the direction of an theater is something else, all tho I find Joaqim P, to be an sympathic actor, I maybe just hope that I am alive long enough to watch it come on the Tube.
But, the reason for not been that entusiatic is more due to an general decline in what comes out of the Imperial banana republic than anything else, when I am so fed up, I even stopped halfway to Jon Wicks insane crap movie, its like crime serials on the Tube, I dont watch AmeriTard serials, apart from some few good ones whom where infact copys of european serials like the really good one, and I mean it, the Border, an copy of the danish The Bridge, since everybody else makes them much better, incl Iceland, etc, to Sweds, Brits are the yard stick they have to be up against, since I am uh…. crasy enough to even like The Beligan man called Poirot, you now, Agata C.
But, if anything, I may go an watch the S. Korean movie Parasit, where I have seen few Koreans and they where really good, and some spectaual good, and so on , and then we had the debate about texting, yeah, if there is One thing I really hate, thats dubbing, witch I cant stand, childrens cartoons, ok but thats it, I rather prefere the native language than hearing an voice over.
And since we are in days of gross ignorance and utter stupidity, humped with total nonsense and guarded by complete morons, and China is hammered, I will recomend one movie witch I have seen, one of the few for years, and to me, whom likes the old time, eh…. big cinematic movies where they can paint landscape and people, I will recomend this one to you all, and yess, its texted, oh… horror.
The movie is: Xuan Zangs A Chines monks jurney to india
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulDzLjz0wdw
peace
I doubt if I will watch Joker. Is its timing is part of the engineering of (deconstruction and remaking) of the mind?
Selling reality is the business of Hollywood. Buyer beware!
I agree with you on dubbing voiceovers. I watched the Russian film ‘Attraction’ recently, and immediately turned off the americanisation of the emotional subtext (dubbing) and took the subtitles to the cultural integrity of its original. It also has a similar ‘joker’ theme running within it but not just as a psychic attack on the viewer – and with contextual resonance to the whole of which it played a part.
Reflections…
That we are being deliberately conditioned by Media – including movies – ought to be self-evident. Where you look to for who you are is up to you.
Ultimately the viewer provides the context in which the movie or the communication occurs.
And so there is no definitive judgement of another’s experience (of anything) because we do not live in their shoes – and even our imagined empathy is our own casting of our own mind.
To be consciously discerning is like choosing not to poison, undermine or disturb ourself. But in the context of a consciously felt and valued connection, we may look on the horror of our own mind in a context that recognises and accepts the whole – and is therefore redemptive or healing.
The mind that wishes to make its own fantasy Real, is the sense of Reality as lacking – and the attempt to add to or escape it, projects such lacks onto the mind and world of such a-tempt.
Shame and rejection, humiliation of denial and deprivation are all experienced real, and become the archetypal framework of our dramatis personae or casting out of conflict to body, others and world. Like a sort of invisible matrix to a virtualised representation accepted as Real – or independent of its underlying subjective framing mind.
The mind-control industry is for those who want the mind to seem independently real, while remaining unconscious of responsibility to the whole – or Reality.
Yes we can say this is also freedom to experience along the lines of our chosen thought, but it is freedom to experience the descent to hell as IF it is at the hand of others or external conditions and NOTHING to do with our own thought in core belief or self-definition.
The attempt to escape or excommunicate our own thought is to become THAT ALONE.
David Hawkins spoke on hell in a recent viewing
Link is to just that part.
https://youtu.be/b7k1dxdv10g?t=898
In truth, thought CANNOT leave the mind that Created it. But in illusion, ‘truth’ can become anything you think you want and become identified in, limited to and framed by… until the mind is renewed. (This is different from the manual attempt to deconstruct and remake the mind in our own image). Renewal is a completely fresh take in place of persisting a mis-take.
And we know it as spontaneous, or already given, along with the innate capacity to recognise and appreciate and extend the appreciation as love or self-extension.
You are never alone as the extension of love or self to the whole or any Part of the Whole – but in withholding presence is misery – no matter the painted mask of a smile or even of a grotesque and hysterical parody of laughter as pain made currency of self-extension in hate as its controller and director. A ‘psychopathic god’ or self-source, is the context for separating from what separates, so as to uncover the true as the basis of a true joining – or self-extending richness of reflection and exchange.
(It’s life, Jim, but not as fear-induced mind made it).
I tried to watch the 3rd Wick movie while jetting over the Pacific. I quit well before the ending because it was non-stop killing from beginning to end. The first film laid a foundation where the second already went over the top and this was simply too much even for me. It had become a pantomime of violence… choreographed like a Bolshoi of bullets. And that pretty much drove a vampiric stake through its story line… to the point I couldn’t give a damn any longer and couldn’t care less what was going on.
People should stop obsessing about The Oscars and focus on what an incredibly dysfunctional place Hollywood is. Child abuse is commonplace, links to organised crime endemic and if anyone for one moment thinks Oscars are some dispassionate evaluation of film merit, they need to go back to primary school to pick up some street smarts.
Seriously: do you want your children seeing Hollywood as some kind of role model??
If so, ask yourself some serious questions about what your own values are…..
At least Roman Polanski, so beloved of the Metoo Brigade, has picked up a few more gongs.
Thank you Kit, I thoroughly enjoyed your review. Dare I say that the days of empire’s Ministry of Cultural Propaganda are numbered, just like the empire itself.
They should have given a few more Oscars to their White Helmet chums.
Best Supporting Actor goes to the White Helmet Plastic Dummy.
I remember loving Avatar when i first saw it; and three fact that right wing Amerikastani reviewers hated it, which seemed to validate it. But then i thought again and came to a totally different conclusion.
Avatar, ostensibly critical of a mercenary capitalist conglomerate, was made for profit by….a capitalist conglomerate. The hero is a white man gone native who’s better at being a native than the natives are. Even the god of the natives listens to him. What kind of message does this film really send? In comparison, the far superior District 9 never gets talked about.
Never ever trust Hollywood.
I hardly go to the movies anymore, and just like with the presstitutes, I boycott any schmalzy, jingoistic, saccharine saturated, flag waving vacuous crud emanating from Hollywood.
But this film is obviously very different, and this review from Kit has definately piqued my interest.
I’ve been told by an acquaintance that Parasite is utterly brilliant and a must see (his words) and, yeah, have read some very glowing reviews for it.
Er, I didn’t even know the Academy Awards were on last night until I read this. And no, I’m not living under a rock!
Thank you for this review, without which I’d have missed a good film. It’s not the sort of thing we normally watch. What you wrote is spot-on. Phoenix is brilliant; “White Room” by Cream was the icing on the cake.
Hate to disagree with the wonderful Kit, but “Joker” was one of the worst movies we almost saw all off, before walking out.
How many times did JP need to cackle hideously into the camera before we figured out he was crazy?
I thought the movie was boring, dull and lifeless, but that’s just me, an American who has never watched ANY of the gratuitous Oscar pulp flowing out of the BoobTube.
“How many times did JP need to cackle hideously into the camera before we figured out he was crazy?”
That’s it? THAT’S your reason for disliking it?
And no, you misunderstood even that. For long stretches of the film, Fleck isn’t quite crazy. But the more out-of-control his laughter becomes as the story progresses, the closer he gets to the ‘point-of-no-return’.
Never mind films, anyone see BBC1 news tonight? A Muslim idiot and his sister obviously scammed by MI5 to make fantasy comments in order to convict themselves. Now they are convicted terrorists…..how about making a film about that Hollywood.
Umm – two words: American Sniper. Did anyone worry that THAT movie would embolden survivalist wingnuts? Did anyone worry that THAT movie would “legitimise violence”? (Since when did Hollywood NOT “legitimise violence”?)
Indeed. The US is a country whose entire history legitimizes violence, from day one to 2020.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/16/uncle-sam-was-born-lethal/
I thought it was an excellent movie. So much better than usual cinema crap. I haven’t seen Parasite but I’m hoping that will be good too.
Thanks for the review – it was excellent. Most movies are so crap now – dominated by the need to be politically correct and yet they are shit.
Joker as you pointed out was great for all the reasons you mentioned. I knew it wouldn’t though – I’ve noticed the dislike the media have thrown against it. They nominated it cause they had to cause it was so popular, but they won;t let it win and they hate having to mention it. They will say that it was well acted but that’s it – they won’t acknowledge anything else. Maybe the bad things that individuals do are really the fault of a damaged and dysfunctional society.
Common Sense.
(“Richard Brody of The Wall Street Journal said it didn’t talk about race enough, and that it paled in comparison to the “bold assertive political vision” of Black Panther.”) – LOL at that bit of nonsense.
Ah yes, the “Black Panther” movie, where by the multiple reviews I’ve read the CIA are the “good guys,” the Black nationalists are the “bad guys,” and the hero supports monarchy instead of Black liberation. Now there is a genuine – Wall Street Journal approved – “bold assertive political vision” for you!
Rupert liked it.
some many even called harvey weinstein god most consented to his rape and sexual and power abuse.
this savage ashkanazim a rebirthed khazar pirate
non semite
anti semite
he nuttin special
he hollywood normal
books and docs written and made about a place that 6 or 8 polish russians yiddishers made a home called hollywood land
a place of endless blow jobs murder rape torture kidnap theft and every other caananite inspired ashkanazim copied babylonian crime one can think of.
casting calls
summoning of demons
forging of memes
casting of spells
programming
mind scrambling talmoodick
degradation
a lynchian living hell of abuse leading many to suicide or suicided
mk ultra play ground
obey
keep quiet keep the secret
victorias secret that is
a town based on demonic inversion lies
a star
stars
from the start a trans sexual ghetto hidden in plain site
the director of some like it hot shot films in german camps after the war that are today used as actuality and raw proofs of something or other.that germany will have to pay compensation to israel until 2070.
no talk of the open air german citizen rhineland camps of 1945-47 Eisenhower’s Death Camps.
no sir
rape is rape is it not
then again can you rape an animal
some folks say the goy are not human
will joker lift the spirit or degrade
mr todd phillips is another cohen ashkanazi hiding behind benign name like
coppolla,marty,deniro wes anderson and the pt anderson
the book in the polanski rosemary movie had the title all of them witches
yes indeed
kabballa spell craft salesman
I haven’t seen the film, but your review of the corporate media’s reception of it is excellent, neatly exposing the lie of their claims to be left.
Not seen it but didn’t stop me from enjoying Kit’s withering analysis.
I will say this – I started to smell a rat when anti-Joker reviews began to emerge that all seemed to follow a format informed by identity politics rather than what the film makers were actually trying to say (and few thing are more antithetical to art than identity politics).
In the other words a certain kind of modus operandi was evident, one that consisted of reviewers telling audiences why they shouldn’t enjoy this particular film, rather than allowing viewers to reach their own conclusions.
Admittely there have been some notable exceptions
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/10/joker-far-right-warning-austerity
This equally interesting analysis reminds us that “Rosa Luxemburg once famously framed the choice for our future as that of socialism or barbarism. Joker is a portrait of a society that has chosen barbarism. No one wants to see violence erupt in such a situation, but we shouldn’t be surprised when it does.”
Perhaps this is the conclusion that divides critics – those who are prepared to deal with reality, and those who aren’t?
A beefy piece of criticism Kit Knightly.
I haven’t seen it myself (but am going to finally visit a cinema soon for the first time in years because of your writing). I did talk to an aquaintence a day after he had seen it – he was haunted by it, that alerted me at the time that it was something special.
I liked Joachims speech. I like the reviewers getting their knickers in a twist.
Best of all I like that even the lying fantasy war peddlars were not able to award themselves another propaganda Oscar for the White Helmet Jihadist false flag chemical attackers in Syria as they are routed by the hour and ignored by our media.
Kudos Phoenix and Kit for underlining the class war at the bottom of the controversy.
At least neither of those rubbish jihadi soapie films “For Sama” and “The Cave” didn’t win in their category, whatever that was supposed to be, Best Fake News Disinformation Propaganda Garbage or Best Waste of Western Taxpayers’ Money on a Video.
Seriously though there is not much to be said for Hollywood or the state of film-making in the US when over the past ten years only one American-born director seems to have won the Best Director Oscar and the bulk of the rest have gone to three Mexican-born directors, and so many directors working in Hollywood now are also foreign; or that the vast majority of young actors working in Hollywood these days seem to come from the UK, Canada and Australia, and that most young black actors who are professionally trained actors (as opposed to those coming from the commercial music industry) seem to be British or Nigerian.
I couldn’t care less who “wins” The “Oscars.”
Smug, arrogant, self satisfied, self obsessed. self regarding, grossly overpaid vacuous nonentities with their heads stuck so far up their own arseholes you’d need a crowbar to get them out.
Parading their precious consciences in an orgy of vomit inducing virtue signalling and mutual backscratching.
When I was in America, people used to constantly ask if you’d seen this or that film. I never had.
Unlike Kit, I’m probably too much of a dull witted cretin to appreciate the subtleties of these epic masterpieces.
They are about as important as the Porn Industry Oscars.
Who got the gong for this year’s Best Goat Sex, or the Special Award for Donkeys And Dwarves 23.
The main film news this morning is deemed by the Beeb’s censors – sorry, news-writers – to be that finally a non-English-language film – from Korea (yes, SOUTH Korea, don’t worry!) – did rather well. Nothing much about Joker.
PS: Thanks for this quality piece, Kit. Full of useful clarifications on the wider subject, even if you don’t intend to see the film, as I don’t.
BTW, past tense of spit is spat; or are you practicing your USAmerican-Illiterate version of English. (I notice that even educated older USAmericans are now having difficulty with ‘phenomenon’ – singular – and ‘phenomena’ – plural. Greek, you see; off the schedule altogether). Shouldn’t complain about the barbarisation of a great language, I suppose. As long as any language is in live use in a population, it goes on evolving, inevitably. No stopping that by old-nerd bellyaching… 🙂
“practicing” should be: practising.
Maybe if you go with current USAmerican-Illiterate English. In the mid-20th Century British Literate English that I imbibed in youth, it’s practicing. 🙂
No, no, no, Steve Hayes is correct … “practice” is both the verb and the noun in American English but only the noun in most British Commonwealth nations. We Antipodeans follow the practice of our slave-masters in the UK.
Not what my grammars say.
Correct, jen, as per Fowler. See my response to Rhisiart above.
Fowler’s ‘Modern English Usage’ (1926) says ‘practice’ is the noun, ‘practise’ is the verb. Fowler (2015) says the same, but adds: in American English ‘practice’ is the dominant spelling of both noun and verb but ‘practise’ is also used by some writers for both parts of speech.
Whatever. (Now there’s a USAmerican neologism that I like!) In the arbitrary business of abstract symbols, the ‘correct’ usage in any ever-evolving live language is whatever the current consensus says it is. But I shall be sticking with ‘practicing’ in any case. Old dog says bugger new tricks…
This diversion from the main matter of this post is now over, AFAIC. ‘Byeeeee! 🙂
At least 1917 didn’t win.
Extreme wealth was a dominant theme in film and TV drama in 2019, from the multi-award winning TV show Succession (a thinly veiled depiction of the Murdoch family) to the-poor-as-literal-prey schlock like Ready Or Not, The Hustle and the canceled film The Hunt. After the demise of the Occupy movement, public response to plutocracy is firmly back in its form deemed acceptable by the establishment: the consumption of escapist fiction.
The stellar hype of Parasite (first foreign language film ever to win Best Picture at the Oscars) is a prime example of a particularly fairy tale like depiction of Rich Family vs Poor Family, that despite its entertaining qualities, seems preoccupied to not address the issue of inequality in any poignant way. The film ends, SPOILER ALERT, with the kid of the poor family resolving the problem of his family in true hackneyed fashion, by living out a South Korean version of the American Dream. No wonder The Academy loved it.
That’s my thoughts too after reading the log line over at IMDb. Another Hollywood or in this case Koreawood Cinderella story like say Pretty Woman or Trading Places or similar movie schlock to keep the “masses” yearning for fame and fortune or at least fortune. In other words what one would expect from a claque of self righteous neoliberal elitists going back to Horace Greeley in America at least probably earlier with the Prince and the Pauper.
Original themes is something totally lacking in Hollywood these days. I was disappointed by Once Upon a Time in Hollywood which I thought was going to be a revelation of the dark side of Hollywood and its connections to Manson. Instead it turned into a period piece that mainly used Charlie and his “Family” as a foil.
Maybe Tarantino was trying to invoke satire but just didn’t make it.
Indeed. Another case of an anti-establishment message that’s not really anti-establishment.
Also noteworthy that the movie ends in an orgy of violence.
I’m looking forward to these hilarious headlines what I’m not looking forward to is the hundreds of millions of people who will agree with stupid headlines
Joker won Oscars so I guess that is good news, or at least news…
I liked the review, but I am not going to watch the film. Too much violence in it and I don’t like the idea of the main character being a Frankenstein. Chomsky called ISIS Frankenstein back in the days that ‘we’ bombed the hell out of Syria. That seemed justified, at least to Chomsky. That we had to bomb ISIS (we never really bombed ISIS) was terrible, but given that they were not human, it wasn’t ‘that’ bad. ‘We’ couldn’t led that disaster continue without doing something against it, could we, even if ‘we’ were responsible for creating ISIS (never mind that ISIS was a mercenary army, combined with special effects to make them more ugly in order to justify bombing countries to the Stone Age, as happened in Syria with, of course, Chomsky’s approval)
And what applies to ISIS applies to Joker. The film aims that the audience understands that poverty and loneliness creates monsters. And although ‘we’ might be responsible for creating such monsters, we should do something against it, like killing Joker.
I know that blowback exists, but I also know that it is very rare, and that most people who live in the gutter just die there without ever becoming violent or crazy. I would like to see a movie about that, but I don’t think they will screen that in our age. The closest they ever got in making such a movie was ‘Trading places’ which I though was very good, even though it was ‘just’ a comedy.
What are they then?
Something close to aliens for which you do not have to lose your goodnight sleep if you hear on the news that they were bombed or killed.
That was the idea: dehumanizing your potential victims works like a charm before you go out on a killing
Sorry I misunderstood. Another case of Poe’s Law.
Ah, but ‘Joker’ portrays precisely that. The clear majority of the downtrodden and dispossessed in Gotham do not become violent through life in the gutter. (I mean, if they had done, the entire city would have been obliterated about halfway through, rather than just become a war-zone right at the end.)
Look at Arthur Fleck’s love interest next door for instance. She is in much the same trap Arthur is in, but she doesn’t start a public uprising, or buy a semi-automatic and start mowing down school-kids. Far from it, she seems a fairly level-headed woman, grimly but determinedly making the best of her lot. The reason Arthur turns violent is because he has a severe instability at his core, an instability that is inevitably played upon by a kind of ‘perfect storm’ of circumstances i.e. poverty, total isolation even when he’s in a crowded room, an insane mother pulling him into her fantasy world etc. (And consider that Arthur is middle-aged by the time he collapses into insanity. It takes a lot even to push him right over the edge, and had his medication not been discontinued, even he might have been able to stay sane.)
Arthur’s neighbours don’t have this severe instability, nor is their predicament necessarily made as extreme by caring for a mad relative, so they don’t turn violent. They are not the focus of the film, but as I say, they are still there in great numbers. If not, how come Gotham didn’t sink into the sea about fifteen years before the time the movie is set?
And I have to say, a film about downtrodden people who just keep on keeping on until they collapse doesn’t sound terribly interesting or illuminating. If the big plot twist is that Ms Jane Public’s rusty kettle develops a hole in it and she can’t afford a replacement… well, I shan’t exactly be on the proverbial seat-edge waiting to find out that she dies of thirst in the gutter. I’m more interested in exploring *why* so many people are in the gutter, *how* society keeps them from escaping it, and *what* are the extreme effects that it can have on those who are emotionally vulnerable. Which brings us back to Arthur Fleck. Emotionally vulnerable people do exist, and examining how some of them may be triggered into violence by the pressures of just fighting to survive day-after-day, without any prospect of things ever changing for the better, is a hugely important step in preventing such violence from happening.
Ultimately, whether the privileged rich like it or not, it is in their own interests to let everyone have a fair share, because when masses are downtrodden, some of them will lash out, and their anger will be such that they may not even care whether they are lashing out at the real oppressor, or whether their actions will help to end their misery. They can also easily be exploited by extreme political groups.
Excellent analysis around a great film.
Disillusionment is rife. A huge issue that goes under-reported by the media, due to the collapse/corporatization of the fourth estate, social exclusion and the meritocracy myth.
The attacks on Joker demonstrate how ID politics are levered to divide and rule, obscuring issues of class and financial inequality that are, in fact, society’s primary problem.
Unfettered capitalism.
Economic and political systems that write off / demonize anyone non-productive while refusing to ensure equality / opportunity for all.
Violence, either inward (suicide) or outward (crime).
Did The Joker win? I have no interest in the Oscars. Remember that they gave al Qaeda’s “White Helmet” playactors an Oscar? Not getting an Oscar is, like not being given the Nobel “Peace” Prize, a mark of honour.
Nope Parasite won. I mean how appropriate?
I thought it was an empty rip-off of Taxi Driver and King Of Comedy(which I hated). It’s weird how people are able to read so much into movies I don’t like. I talked to some person online who was raving about that Mad Max movie a couple years ago. She made it sound profound. Then I watched it and thought it was shit:D I’m almost suspicious of the rave reviews for Parasite, which I haven’t seen. I’m beginning to expect the highly praised films to be disappointing
I loved King Of Comedy. It said everything that could be said about the pathological shallowness of celebrity culture. Sadly Scorsese has declined since his early days. Casino is practically unwatchable.
I’m not a big fan of Scorsese movies, but I like his cinematographers.
Scorsese showed a lot of promise in his earlier movies. I liked the sense of space his films generated i.e. the feeling of objectivity (which was such a relief after somebody like Spielberg who always seemed to be breathing down your neck, telling you how to react to this and that).
“Taxi Driver” is still a controversial film in that it is open to different interpretations. It can e.g. be taken as a Right Wing glorification of a vigilante or an ironic comment on the same. It certainly has a ferociously powerful dreamlike atmosphere.
“King of Comedy” for me was a brilliant dissection of celebrity culture with a telling split between what we gather about the DeNiro character’s traumatic past (beaten by his father, ostracised at school) and the tacky cheap way he presents it for audience consumption. (And that in itself is a mordant comment on showbiz media).
But every early Scorsese movie is worth watching – even a bizarre nightmare/comedy throwaway like “Afterhours”.
More recently he seems to alternate between cartoon glorification of hoodlums and pious movies about religious figures. This is the ideal fodder for the MSM to wax on the “split in human nature” or whatever. I admit that I had to switch off “Silence” after we got to the bit about Japanese peasants complaining about the “tragedy” of having to furtively sneak off to grovel before religious icons in caves. I expect Martin may be canonized soon.
I agree totally about Mad Max Road Warrior and to me it’s interesting that that is basically the mirror image of the critical reaction to Joker; it “starred” women and had a (very thin) feminist subtext, therefore it’s the greatest thing ever and everyone must praise it. It was one long car chase and while the stunt work and special effects were incredible I though the film as a whole was utter shite. I thought Joker was good verging on very good (I’d go like 8.4 on a 10.0 scale) but the obvious media crusade against it made me want to like it more 🙂
Parasite however is a masterpiece and I recommend it massively. “Mother” and “Memories of a Murder” by the same director are also superb.
Thanks, RaskolnikovX:)
Memories of a Murder-most excellent. Reminded me of those Kurosawa cop flicks like High and Low.
I saw Parasite yesterday–it was good, the flood scene was filmed great, but it didn’t live up to its praise. Amusing, predictable, and the director and his crew have quite a bit of talent. Good, not great, in my view;)
Welp bad news Kit. Parasite won “best picture”. Hey but that’s no surprise. Some of the best films don’t even get nominated like Wind River for example. At least Joker did.
The Oscars like the Nobel “Peace”and Pulitzer Prize have lost any relevance. Sometimes they screw up and award a deserving pic like LA Confidential ….oh wait… that’s right Terms of En-nausea -ment won. Never mind.
Anyhoo. Doesn’t matter like Wind River, Joker’s an excellent film. I recommend watching it and not bother waiting until the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science pull they’re collective head out of their ass.
I say F_ck em if they can’t take a joke or a Joker for that matter 🙂
In my opinion Parasite was very good, but somewhat blemished by its final, violent, scenes. But I hate screen violence, so I may have missed the point of it all.
I don’t mind screen violence as long as it’s part of the plot or story line and isn’t too gratuitous.
This has probably something to do with it:
Harvey Weinstein’s Name Will Be Stripped from a Film About Sexual Abuse
Seems like Harvey Weinstein is being “disappeared” from history.
Shows the hypocritical, vapid, vacant, shallowness of the industry where they give an Academy Award to the child molester and rapist Roman Polanski while dissing an excellent socially conscience flick because Weinstein’s name is associated with it.
The #metoo crowd aside from grabbing a hashtag that exposes their self obsession are for the most part a bunch of sanctimonious (place “c’ word here in plural) as if none of them crawled under the producer’s desk or did some horizontal time on the casting couch to get on some A list flick. Merle Streep practically acted as a madam for up and coming with emphasis on the coming actresses.
Personally I think it may have been Wind River of some other controversial movie that exposed the nightmarish side of the American Dream such as the fact that they don’t even keep stats of the number of American Indian woman who are raped and murdered.
I might be able to shine a small light on this courtesey of a completely unrelated subject. Some years ago our son after graduating college signed up for teacher training. He has always had some interest in and shown some aptitude for this profession so it seemed a natural choice. To teach, though, you need a credential and the credentialling courses turned out to be a bit of minefield — in order to be ‘one of us’ you had to absorb and attest to belief in the modern system of intersectionality and all the other social baggage that goes with it (all to teach math….). This kind of corecive gatekeeping is unlikely to be confined to just one type of job and goes a long way to explaining why sometimes the guardians of our culture — the journalists, critics and what-have-you — seem totally at odds with the culture as we experience it.
Thanks for this excellent analysis.
oh dear, you fell for it, kit. because the director says “We’re gonna sneak a real movie in under the guise of [a comic book movie]… We’re gonna take $55 million from Warner Bros. and do whatever the hell we want”, you think it’s profound and subversive. do you really think Warners are that stupid? it’s a major Hollywood studio film, and it’s a spin-off of a comic book franchise. and it does hold up deprivation as some kind of rational explanation for extreme violence. as such it is merely the inverse of American Psycho, an equally unnecessary film. there are, despite what you say, endless films which portray deprivation. but many of them render the possibility of a humane response, even a film like Taxi Driver. Joker does not.
Strewth Kit, never before have I wanted more to see a film because of a review which otherwise I would not want to see. m\\
Joker is psychogenic fugue genre and as such it was well done, I agree. Giving plaudits to actors that play sociopaths & psychopaths is not socially acceptable today given the cult following that mass murderers attain from their misdeeds.
The soundtrack was absolutely terrible in spite of the fact that it is somewhat of an art film. Some of the scenes were great shots of New York City panorama so it is a good flick for streetscapes & lighting.
I’d give the movie a 6 out of 10 though. Nothing to write home about IMHO.
MOU
>The soundtrack was absolutely terrible<
To your ears, not to mine. Hildur Guðnadóttir's original score is perfect imho, but then I am a big fan of her work, notably her collaborations with the late Jóhann Jóhannsson and drone metallers Sunn O))) on last year's 'Life Metal’ and ‘Pyroclasts‘.
The latest Hollywood pro war flick is out now.
‘Midway’ waves the Stars and Stripes and there’s wall to wall heroes. American of course.
The trailer is enough to make one gag.
try here instead:
Incredibly enough Amazon in 2017 made a film called “The Wall” set in Iraq with only two on screen actors (and one voice actor) which was an extremely scathing commentary on the Iraq invasion. Also avoided the usually compulsory “good guys” (Amerikastani occupation troops) “win in the end” narrative. Not surprisingly almost nobody has watched it or even heard of it.
It’s a remake of the same flick done in ’76. Some trivia for anyone who cares. Pearl Harbor was released several months before the “new Pearl Harbor” even though November and December are the best months for new releases and also would have been more appropriate since the attack was on December 7th.
This one has nothing to do with movies but the attacks occurred exactly 60 years to day that they began construction of the Pentagon.
Good book National Security Cinema:
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive-documents-expose-direct-us-military-intelligence-influence-on-1-800-movies-and-tv-shows-36433107c307
Best war movie ever Dr. Stranglove. Favorite line “No fighting in the war room!” 🙂
Of course who can forget George C Scott as General Bucky Turgison discussing a possible Nuclear Holocaust:
https://youtu.be/vuP6KbIsNK4
Or Slim Pickens as Major Kong riding the bomb like a he’s riding a bucking bronc:
https://youtu.be/3edi2Wkr5YI
No surprise that the Air Force refused to cooperate with Stanley Kubrick in making the film.
Gee I wonder why?
Kubrick was an exceptional filmmaker.
‘Full Metal Jacket’ is another fine work of art.
Big fan of Kubrick “Full Metal Jacket” is truly a classic. You know he hired former Marine Corp drill sergeant R. Lee Ermey to play one in the film ?
If anyone dared make Dr Strangelove today he’d be arrested as a Russian spy Kremlin bot Putin apologist in ten seconds flat.
Only if their persecutors understood that it was supposed to be satire — with some of the bloodthirsty lunatics that we have amongst our “leadership” in D.C., it could almost be a documentary today…
Not seen this film but I think this puts mainstream reviewers under the spotlight.
One thing I do remember about the Batman films in the early 2000s is the Gotham scenes stand out for the level of the crazyness, the mindless gratification of the villains and the utter lawlessness.
Perhaps thats what comes across more in this and thus is uncomfortable when compared with American and western society today.
This is really good and well done for putting these thoughts together so well.
Sergio Leon was exploring that area long before Hollywood picked it up with the able direction of Clint Eastwood in Outlaw Josie Wales probably his best movies much better than the Unforgiven which won an Academy Award.
By the way Leon went on to direct probably the best gangster movie ever made which was Once Upon a Time in America which took up the influence of the Jewish Mafia which was only alluded to in The Godfather II.
Probably the reason why it was eschewed by the Academy was that it actually told the truth about Organized Crime in America which of course was “antisemitic”. The truth is that Meyer Lansky had more control over the Syndicate than say Lucky Luciano.
They surely are – the CIA & co have too much of a stake in their content and popularity.
All those the violence in Hollywood’s movies is meant to entice viewers subconsciously into sociopathic cold killers, ripe for the US armed forced to be deployed abroad. Same for modern online video war games.
I don’t believe in the psychobabble that violence in the cinema or on TV influence actual violence. America has been a violent nation right from the beginning of its fake “discovery” with the extermination of the Pequots by the Puritans in the late 17th century. All books with few exceptions then later movies and TV again with few exceptions did was justify their blood thirsty colonialist arrogance and savagery. They were only a reflection of the actual savages belief in themselves being “civilized” like a fun house mirror distorts.
The Joker depicts almost everything that’s UGLY about America (and all the other nations that have been ‘Coca Colonised’ via Hollywood and American Neo Liberalism).
Pity they didn’t take a swipe at the MIC.
Actually the MIC is implied in the lack of social services and the “general welfare” since most of it went to “defense” which is actually aggression.
Good point Gall.
Imagine if the psychopaths who run the MIC redirected their energy towards building infrastructure for Americans.
Superb, insightful and subversive. Bravo. Kit
A good review of the Joker, for what it’s worth. Certainly better than all I’ve read in the MSM to date.
But where you really get to transform those base metals is in your hypotheses as to why the MSM reviewers hate it. And that’s where the gold is. Bravo.