OSCARS AT CRAZIEST = 11 ‘JOKER’ NOMINATIONS

By Dominique Paul Noth

Joaquin Phoenix in 'Joker'

I have never confused the Oscars with precise artistic ranking of the year’s best films, though artistry and importance are certainly mixed into the perceptions.  For that reason alone, my heart sank with shame and embarrassment for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and our society when Joker led all films with 11 nominations.

It is the triumph of the worst instincts of  macabre over humanity.  Of the nihilistic alienation extremes of society over the actual tension. It is the dumb and dumber pretense that creating a dominating ugly world is more important to win accolades while the history of cinema stands as an effort to demonstrate how art and even graphic novels can range across categories, not indulge in one at the hideous dismissal of the other.

But Joker  has been great at the box office as a dark red fantasy and insider joke -- linking a DC Comics legend with a Gotham City gone mad in gangs, beatings and killings all accompanied by magnified manic laughter in a tour de force “anything goes” performance by Joaquin Phoenix. I have to believe that its box office has a lot do with the nomination fever and that its success is in how the Joker pretends to be launched from real life pain into flagrant madness, rather than launched from one comic book form to another. Anyone who thinks it is relative to the burst of young madmen shooting up our schools is deeply deluded.

But it is basically unfair to set Phoenix loose against the modulated moment by logical moment performances required of an Adam Driver in “Marriage Story”  or Jonathan Pryce in “The Two Popes” (same category) – a distinction already ignored by the Golden Globes that fell all over Phoenix.

Not that there isn’t  a certain crescendo built into his presence.  But it is clearly about the wide-open possibilities he brought to the part rather than what was there to begin with. It’s more about his willingness to injure himself.  He is given all the time in the world to indulge his victimization as a beaten, deranged and confused former mental patient and professional clown who becomes a subway killer and social icon, a  psychological explorer of his own family roots and the comic book Joker himself, dressed and sounding much like Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger. And does the movie really think dwarf jokes are funny?

The actor is allowed to indulge the view that standup comedy clubs and television  talk shows are just  the place to park social misfits. This Gotham City’s descent into hell  is essential to turning loose a maniacal Arthur who easily eludes legal consequence. 

The progression is much controlled by director Todd Phillips, something of a cinematic jokester himself, judging his history. He uses editing and long takes examining Phoenix manipulating his face into smiley-gloomy rigor mortis, dwelling on his emaciated body, on his gasping fits of laughter and spit-ups and almost balletic arms akimbo dancing and twirling, the elements supposed to uplift the performance into esthetic consequence. 

Each occasion – and there are dozens -- takes as much time as the actor needs (or I suspect improvised) with editing and mixing add-ons so we can never be sure what is in Arthur-later-Joker’s head and what has actually occurred.  We get pretty strong clues that there is no loving girl friend in his life though she flits in and out, but does he really kill his mother and then his best friend? 

The film relishes all possibilities, with subtle clues that often relate to how people react to him more than what actually happens onscreen, which is bloody.  Even at the end, when the lunatic is walking down a hospital corridor leaving bloody footprints or chased by a guard in and out of sunlight, we are not quite sure if the Joker and his bloodbath are really over. Not in this surreal Gotham City that looks like Manhattan demented, overrun with garbage, rats and killers in clown masks.

There are also homages or borrowings throughout from everything from Charles Chaplin and Fred Astaire to co-star Robert De Niro’s own filmic past in “Taxi Driver” and “King of Comedy,” this time with De Niro playing a variation on TV host Johnny Carson, to which he brings naught but anticipated victimhood.  

The mood  is much dependent on a score by Icelandic composer Hildur Gudnadóttir, who here is channeling  Hitchcock’s Bernard Herrmann to reverberating impact.  Though Frank Sinatra also figures into the crazy man’s psycho.

There is no question the film is an appropriate cinematic nominee in such areas as sound mixing, makeup and music. My problems stem from such categories as best picture, director, actor, adapted screenplay, cinematography and costume design where the other candidates had to work within limits rather than being hired to wallow past the limits of realism and construction.  If it wins any of the bigger awards, the Joker is on us.

Other recent film reviews with Oscar nominations added:

JoJo Rabbit 
Oscar nominated as best picture, supporting actress (Scarlet Johansson), adapted screenplay, production design, film editing and costume design.

Little Women 
Oscar nominated as best picture, best actress (Saoirse Ronan), best supporting actress (Florence Pugh), adapted screenplay, costume design, music.

1917 
Oscar nominated as best picture, director, original screenplay, production design, sound mixing, sound editing, cinematography. music.

Dark Waters, The Report and Just Mercy.  (The last treated as a 2020 release.)

The Two Popes
Oscar nominated as best actor, supporting actor, adapted screenplay.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets.  A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.