{"id":7878,"date":"2019-10-30T19:20:39","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T19:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asinovolablog.it\/?p=7878"},"modified":"2019-10-31T12:48:31","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T12:48:31","slug":"joker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asinovolablog.it\/en\/joker\/","title":{"rendered":"Joker by Todd Phillips | The poor laugh too"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_link_target=”_self” column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]C<\/span><\/strong>riticized and idolized, Joker<\/em> is the most successful comic book movie of all times.<\/p>\n

Here follow our two reviews, a most-inspired one by Sofia Brugali, and a “laughter” digression by Virginia Carolfi.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” top_padding=”20″ bottom_padding=”20″ overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_link_target=”_self” column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][image_with_animation image_url=”7886″ alignment=”center” animation=”Fade In” img_link_large=”yes” border_radius=”none” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_link_target=”_self” column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][divider line_type=”No Line” custom_height=”20″][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”padding-1-percent” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_link_target=”_self” column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]\n

JOKER \u2013 as seen by Sofia Brugali<\/em><\/span><\/h5>\n

After Joker<\/em> by Todd Phillips won the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival, it has become very popular and has been highly covered by the media, therefore getting plenty of good and bad reviews. Its cinematographic quality is mostly not in question, but the critics are divided by its feature of social commentary, which is expressed by violence, as it often happens.
\nScared by such a rough portray of brute force, which the director depicts in an uncritical and crystal clear way, a lot of people cryed scandal. They imagined a lone wolves\u2019 army, ready to justify their deeds by comparing their story with Arthur Fleck\u2019s one. It is pretty much like wertherism for modern men, who prefers the sudden celebrity of a mass shooting to the intimacy of suicide, by which a person remains anonimous.
\nHowever, as the very same filmmaker says, Joker<\/em> \u201cis not a call to action, if anything it\u2019s a call to self-reflection to society\u201d. Phillips\u2019s work isn\u2019t a praise to violence, or the rehabilitation of a supervillain, but it\u2019s a demystification process. Batman\u2019s nemesis is finally free from the burden of his heroic counterpart, he is no longer relegated to the role of the co-star. He can finally shows what he really is: just an anonimous human being among an indifferent society. The duality of good and devil is teared apart, a feeling of empathy with the character argues with spectators\u2019 morality. All of this can happen thanks to Joaquin Phoenix, whose interpretation is of heartwrenching honesty.
\nArthur Fleck\u2019s parabola, together with the mentioned critics, made me think of another character, the main character of a well-known short story: I\u2019m talking about Michael Kohlhaas, by the brilliant Heinrich von Kleist. Written in the beginning of XIX century, it is the story of a horse-dealer who seek revenge after being repeteadly oppressed by a local nobleman and after he couldn\u2019t get justice by legal means. One central theme is then the relation between the individual and the collective, between justice and resistence. It is a political matter, which in Joker become an existencial trait, when the right to resist coincide with the right to exist.
\nBy comparing this two works and their lead characters, we can have a better understanding of the movie. Kohlhaas is the role model of the good citizen, he is married and his neighbours think very high of him. It is therefore an understatement to think of Fleck\u2019s actions as the fury of a mentally-ill loner.
\nThe two figures are linked by logic, not madness. When they can\u2019t find a solution to injustice, they fight back first with rage and then with violence: it is a horrible, but rational escalation.
\nFleck is an \u201cexpelled\u201d as much as Kohlhaas, that means \u201cto whom the protection of the laws is denied\u201d: it is their personal sense of justice that makes them \u201crobbers and murderers\u201d.
\nNone of the two men is a revolutionary, but their action, as every human action, gives birth to unexpected results and they become the symbol of collective struggle. They are the fuse in Fates\u2019 hands, which sets fire to a society which was already on the edge of a blaze. And what is surprising is that the firewood is in both cases the same: inequality and hipocrisy connect our century to Kleist\u2019s times.
\nNow as it was then, those who just notice violence are unable to see that Joker<\/em> is first of all a story of suffering. I hardly held back tears while watching Phoenix\u2019s pale body, while he was painfully laughing and writhing in pain as Arthur Fleck. And after watching the movie, on my way back home, I wanted to hugh, and not shoot, all the passersby.
\nBut isn\u2019t it true, that we tend to project a part of ourselves into works of art?[\/vc_column_text][divider line_type=”No Line” custom_height=”20″][vc_column_text]\n

JOKER \u2013 as seen by Virginia Carolfi<\/em><\/span><\/h5>\n

Adding anything to the thousands of reviews that rained down upon this film is hard, especially if they are as inspired as the one by Sofia Brugali, which is preceding me. All press is good press<\/em> and the enormous media coverage which invested Joker<\/em> ever since its presentation at the Venice Film Festival certainly did no harm to it. Arthur Fleck’s story has been shredded to pieces, analyzed, digested and spit back again, demonstrating how “the sleep of welfare generates monsters<\/em>“, just to paraphrase Goya. However, there is one aspect that more than others struck me in this film, which is rich (even too much) in thought-provoking ideas and j\u2019accuse.
\nLaughing is a social act. When two persons laugh about something, whether about a joke, a story, a film, immediately create a bond, as if they unconsciously said each other \u201cwe found common ground\u201d. This is why humour is characterized by elements such as country and culture of origin, social background, etc… In the words of Goffredo Fofi, Woody Allen owes his success to the fact that he presented a new comedy for his time, making the fancy boys of those days laugh, and perhaps making even those of today laugh. For that reason, I consider one of the most significant scenes of Joker<\/em> the one in which he takes part in a cabaret show, but ends up laughing out of turn. A short but freezing sequence which makes you want to scream, to make him stop, and finally to hug him. Arthur, who wants to make others laugh more than anything, is actually an outcast of laughter: his isolation dwells in the total distance separating him from what makes others laugh. His jokes, in his opinion hilarious, cannot even be considered as such. People, headed by an unparalleled Robert De Niro, laugh at<\/em> him and not with<\/em> him. Arthur’s laughter itself is abnormal, just as the condition that, for a wicked twist of fate, forces him to laugh at the least opportune moments, unleashing the anger of those who feel fooled by him. Because that is what we fear, isn’t it? To be marginalized too, to be mocked, that a no one like Fleck gets away with laughing at us.<\/p>\n

Yet, it seems that Phillips is trying to tell us something more. Joker<\/em> is undoubtedly a drama film but has some comedy traits. Gag slapsticks in dramatic moments (first and foremost the scene in which Fleck slams his face into the hospital glass door), black-and-white comedy film clips, Ginger Roberts and Fred Astaire dancing. The opening and closing credits do not lie, the reference is to the great Hollywood cinema, but why? Nostalgia, contrast, criticism of appearances. Certainly, the director, just like good old Arthur Fleck, seems to regret a time when laughing was much easier than now. And maybe he seems to tell us never to take anything too seriously, in the end, this is just about a DC character.[\/vc_column_text][divider line_type=”No Line” custom_height=”20″][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_link_target=”_self” column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]riticized and idolized, Joker is the most successful…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[258,257,256],"yoast_head":"\nJoker by Todd Phillips | Concorto Film Festival reviews<\/title>\n<meta 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