Why don’t film critics address the meaning of the movies they watch Dear Listener? We say enough with the horse race and the box office numbers. To that end, on this episode, Jett and Gareth get into what the new Joker film actually seems to be saying about human nature and the brokenness within it. Along the way Terrance Malick’s The Thin Red Line is referenced, Sidney Lumet’s magnificent The Verdict is invoked, a TikTok creator is recommended, science fiction classic Forbidden Planet is manifested and we realize we must all “first accept, then luxuriate”. Enjoy.
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You know, so much of the time, we're just lost. I say, please, God, tell us what is right, tell us what is true. Oh, my goodness, folks.It's the show I didn't think I would do. As I said in past episodes, I had a feeling of ennui, of ennui about this movie. I did not want to see Joker Part 2.
Double ennui.
Dear friend, Professor Dr.
Gareth Higgins said it is a masterpiece or near masterpiece. So we had to talk about it. I cannot wait for this discussion.
I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins. The conversation never ends, and that's absolutely true. Jett was reluctant to see this film, even more so than I was.
But I saw it out of loyalty to cinema. Yes. Because I had had such a strong negative reaction to the first Joker.
And I was surprised. I was surprised. And we're going to get into it.
We're going to get into it. Dear listener, you know, you know the premise of Joker. Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is in Arkham State Hospital for the, for the, is it just Arkham State Hospital?
It's basically the hospital for the criminally insane out of Toby Hooper's life force.
Yes.
With a touch of Silence of the Lambs, a soup song of Silence of the Lambs. He's in their waiting trial for The Murder City. The first Joker film including one on national television in his attempt at getting noticed.
That's where the film begins in terms of its live action.
We're going to talk about that. The film does open with the cartoon.
It does. Prior to that, an extraordinary cartoon by Sylvan Chalmé, who made Belleville Rendezvous or The Triplets of Belleville, one of the great films of the century, which establishes right up front, this film is about taming the shadow or not.
I believe we have a clip.
We do have a clip. In this clip, there's a clip from Joker Part 2. Let's listen in.
You should see it out there.
They're all going crazy for you.
Um, maybe I should read a law book or something.
Until I never went to high school.
I said no touching.
You can do anything you want.
That was Joker, Falle Du. It's a film, Gareth, dear listeners, that answers that immortal cinematic question. What if you remade Frost Nixon with Steve Coogan and Joaquin Phoenix as Nixon?
How about that? Wait, wait, I got another one. What if you remade an American in Paris, but the Gene Kelly character was even more insufferable?
I know you loved this film, Gareth, take it away.
Important movie.
3:35
Sequel Re-evaluation
So, you know, what bothered me about the first Joker, it's important to get that out of the way, is it seemed to me like it was almost endorsing, if not the terrible things that Arthur Fleck slash Joker does, but at least the response to those
terrible things that, you know, because he's killing the rude, because he's killing celebrities, and because he's acting from a place of isolation, fear, loss and abandonment, that, well, you know, let's get one over on the man, right? And the film
bothered me intensely. Um, so I was, I was reluctant to see Folly Ado. And I gotta say, I've had an experience with this film over the last, I guess, 12 days since I saw it the first time, that I think is unique.
You might be able to remind me of, of, of another example of where this happened, but I'm not sure I've seen a film that has made me reconsider and reevaluate.
I'm not sure I've seen a sequel that's made me reconsider and reevaluate the original film as strongly as this film has done in positive terms. I've seen sequels or follow ups that have made me feel more negative toward the original.
Pulp fiction made me think that I had overrated Tarantino when I was so taken with Reservoir Dogs. This film, Joker Portfolio, does the reverse. I do think it is.
This word masterpiece, let's use it as a synonym for great.
You texted me possibly in haste, because you're so excited after seeing this film.
I mean, I was thrilled. I've seen this film three times. No, once in French.
Once in French.
Which really heightened, with no subtitles, which really heightens the physicality and the vibe of the performances.
Okay, I have to ask you something.
You've seen it three times, once in French. Do you speak French?
Un petit peu.
Okay, not very much.
That is true. No, it was an accident. I didn't realize it was going to be in French.
But you saw it in France.
More fool me, I was in France.
You would kind of expect.
In a French cinema.
Yes, they don't. The French, they often do screen films in their original language.
They do and well.
I did not think to check on this occasion. At any rate, I do think this is a truly great film. If by great, we mean what happens when technical craft and aesthetic reaching for the stars, marries itself to a humane concern or the common good.
This film is compassionate from start to finish and makes me reread backwards the original film. I now see Joker Part 1 as just that, the first half of a two-part film.
Whether Todd Phillips and scott Silver, the co-writers of the screenplay, intended this from the start, or their story for the second film was a reaction to the way. The first film was received uncritically, and I mean uncritical of Joker's actions.
I don't know. I'm not sure that it matters. In fact, I think you could make a case that it's a stronger film if they were informed by the reaction to the first film.
At any rate, I found this to be a tremendously moving film that actually takes the guy's problems seriously.
It respects him enough to say, you are, I think at one point, the psychiatrist played by Ken Leung, says that Arthur is subject to a handful of very common psychiatric or mental conditions to do with long-term deep sadness.
But he effectively says, there's lots of people who experience deep sadness and they don't go and do these things. And this is not a justification for what you have done.
He's immediately responded to by Catherine Keener's lawyer saying, well, did you ask him about the abuse he suffered as a child? And the answer is basically no. And so the film is not trying to, it certainly doesn't scapegoat Arthur.
What it does is it induces empathy. There's a whole lot more I want to say about this film.
But the thing I want to say to start with, and just leave it at this point is that, whereas my first experience of the first film in the absence of this one was just anger and a sense of being alienated by the film itself, this one induced empathy
from start to finish for basically every character in the film, especially for Arthur. And it culminates, I don't know how much- Gary Puddles.
We got to talk about the Gary Puddles bit.
I want to talk about Lee Gill. It's the greatest scene of the year. It's the greatest performance of the year.
Fantastic.
I'm wondering about how much we should spoiler or not the film.
I mean, the film is effectively one of the biggest flops in history. I'm one of the most negatively responded to by critics as well as audiences. So we will spoil it and say this film ends on a note of nothing less than Shakespearean tragedy.
And frankly, the method by which this tragedy happens.
What kind of tragedy isn't Shakespearean? Because that guy had, he covered a lot of stuff.
Well, there were Greek tragedies before then.
I know, but I'm talking about in the modern age anyway.
So frankly, the film it reminded me most of was Roland Polanski's Macbeth, which ends with a kind of a junior knight riding off away from the court to bring news of Macbeth's killing to the rest of the kingdom.
And you hear almost imperceptibly as he's riding off to spread this news, you hear the three weird sisters, often known as the witches, calling to him again and you get the sense of the cycle has begun. The cycle has begun one more time.
So this film ends with a tragedy for Arthur and a tragedy for the world. I think it's just brilliant. I haven't even begun to talk about how it looks, how the performances are.
Never mind Lady Gaga. We'll get to all of this, I hope. I'm really grateful this film exists.
I'm glad to be talking with you about it, Jett. I'd love to hear what you think about Joker fully ado. Did you see it in French?
If only.
Also, let's not forget the ending of Carlito's Way, almost kind of a Shakespearean tragedy. This film influences on its sleeve. Well, you talk about Joker and people's reaction to it, perhaps contributing to your reaction to it.
First Joker reminded me so much of Breaking Bad in that, I have friends of mine who love the Walter White character from Breaking Bad. I don't know if you've seen that show, Gareth, or for folks that have it, I've seen this show.
There's a protagonist who does terrible things over the course of time in response to a variety of adverse situations. By the end of the show, you're not supposed to root for this person. He's a terrible person.
And yet, the people I know, people I count as friends, even though we disagree about cinema and entertainment content, entertainment products, they're rooting for him and they hate the character Walter White. This is his wife Skylar.
I'm like, no, no, you're not supposed to hate her. This Walter White is a terrible person. And so they're cheering for this Arthur Fleck character in The First Joker.
I can appreciate that it's such a turnoff. You know, it's really been interesting. I don't watch trailers.
I try to stay away from all the movie news, but I did get the feeling that nobody was going to see this. I saw this in a massive theater. I was the only one there.
And this reminded me so much of the great movie. I think you think it's a great film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward, Robert Ford. I remember watching the United States, and there was nobody in the theater, it was bombing.
And I thought this film is astonishing. Why this film, like if this came out in 1975, would be nominated for best picture. And then I happened to be flying to London the next day after I saw it.
I get off the tube, go get out of Heathrow, I'm on get off the underground, and there's posters all in the underground station saying, five stars, and all the British critics calling it a masterpiece. And that's how I feel about this picture.
If you had told me after seeing this, if I had heard nothing before, if you had told me the audiences were going crazy for this movie, their critics were giving it the five stars and saying a masterpiece, I would have said, yes, of course, it's a
modern American classic. And that's not the situation we're in.
12:49
Marketing Challenges
Now, the film is flawed, but it's a heck of a motion picture. Dear listeners, is the movie too long? Yes, it should have been a tight 90 minutes.
Gareth loved that there's an opening animated cartoon. You know what? Cut that out.
We don't need the cartoon. No, here's what you do. Here's what you do to save this film.
It's very easy to give advice in hindsight because the film is tanked. People are angry that it's a musical they weren't expecting. It reminds me of a dear friend of mine.
She and her mom were killing some time one day. They went to see Chicago. Catherine Zeta-Jones, they didn't know it was a musical.
They did not have a good time. They were hoping for a Catherine Zeta-Jones, maybe it was a rom-com, or maybe she's a super spy. We're not expecting a musical.
Here's what they should have done. Again, easy to give advice in retrospect. Take that musical, which is not, take that anime cartoon, which is not necessary, because it's the whole thing about me and my shadow.
That's already explicit in the movie. We don't need it spelled out. In fact, it diminishes to spell it out so much.
You take that anime cartoon, it's Warner Brothers, right? You put that cartoon in front of other Warner Brothers movies in the six months leading up to the release of this.
And the end credits, just like they did with the, you know, Frame Roger Rabbit, but after the fact, the end credits of the cartoon, you say, coming, you give the release date, Joker, and you change the title, Joker colon The Musical, so that
everybody, they're blown away by this amazing cartoon, and you call it Joker The Musical, you prime the audience, you prime the critics, boom, Baffo Box Office, I'm telling you, this film is great, cut it down 90 minutes, too many musical numbers, at
a certain point, I'm alone in the theater, so I'm allowed to talk back to the screen, normally I wouldn't. You know, as soon as, let's say, oh I don't know, Arthur Fleck is, you know, on his bunk bed, or he's in the bathroom on the toilet, and
someone hands him a microphone, I was like, oh God, here we go, he's gonna do a John Denver song. So, too many musical numbers, cut out 30 minutes of this movie, because it runs over two, over two hours. You know, he's not Gene Kelly over here, okay?
Cut it down to a tight 90, lose the cartoon, tell everybody it's a musical up front, get people excited about it, you got a box office smash. Film was great. Joker, Cole and the musical go see it.
We're gonna agree to disagree about whether it's too long and whether or not you should drop the cartoon.
15:14
Arthurʼs Repudiation
Do you wish, can I ask you one quick question?
Arthur Fleck does his closing argument. Do you wish, and I thought they might do this, I really, when I saw there was an establishing shot of the courtroom and I went, oh wow, I literally thought his closing argument.
Sometimes we're just so lost.
So much of the time we're just lost. I thought he was gonna do Paul Newman from The Verdict. Yeah, he hasn't seen The Verdict.
Instead he does the Southern Lawyer Act. So well, you all know. Oh, it's so great.
No, it is great.
And he can't keep the accent up when his feelings break through.
When his feelings break through because he's being confronted. I don't think I've ever seen this in a courtroom drama. There's a moment where Larry Gild playing Gary Puddles, who's in the first film, he's a workmate of Arthur's.
Arthur's the only person who doesn't make fun of him. He has other workmates who make make fun of him out of prejudice. He's a little person and he's the butt of their jokes.
Then he witnesses this horrendous murder, which Arthur can't understand why Gary is so bothered by the murder, because Arthur tells Gary, don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. This twisted logic. I've known people like this.
I haven't known people who've gone that far, but let's say in terms of the analogy.
There's still time.
People, and maybe I've been this person, maybe we can all be this person who have, I guess, what you call the Janus face, where people who are capable of being kind to one person, and at the very same moment, in the very same room are cruel to
somebody else. I actually heard Eric Roberts, the great Eric Roberts, being interviewed the other day, and saying that his father was kind to everybody except him.
Oh, goodness.
Okay. I've encountered people like that. Arthur can't understand, in a sense, that why is Gary bothered by this?
He gets confronted in one of these culminating moments in the courtroom. It's a scene that maybe it has a precedent in movies. I can't recall seeing it.
Can you recall seeing a scene where a witness on a stand in a courtroom, hours in fear when the person crosses examining them comes close to them? Hours in fear. There's a moment where Gary kind of recoils because Arthur leans in.
And there are things that happened that day and that night, which are, I mean, there are horrendous things that happened to Arthur that night.
And there are important things, honorable things that he is confronted by that afternoon that makes his conversion, as it were, or his repentance, utterly plausible. And this is what I think is bothering people about the movie.
What's bothering people about the movie is that someone that they project, an anti-hero who they projected their kind of, or we, I don't want to say they, we projected our desires onto, is rejecting those desires by repudiating the choices that he
made in the first film. It's a little bit like if Hannibal Lecter, after Silence of the Lambs, if they'd made a sequel instead of making, what was the sequel to Silence of the Lambs? Hannibal was the sequel, Red Dragon was the prequel, I guess.
If in the sequel to Hannibal Lecter, he rejected his life of cannibalism and refined cruelty and acknowledged, hey, I was wrong all along. I shouldn't have done those terrible things. I was just looking for attention because I'm deeply lonely.
Here's the problem though I had with this in the film.
The repudiation is great. He says there is no Joker and he is conscious of the incredible harm that he caused. He killed six people.
Lee Gill's performance is Gary Puddles. I mean, you completely believe that this would transform, this would open the gates of consciousness and tear down the walls that have been built up for years, preventing empathy, right?
You have to love yourself, do you, to love others? But something becomes encumbered, you become encumbered with your own bitterness and your own hurt has built up the walls around this character.
But here's the thing, this scene, tell me about this, Gareth, give me your take, because the repudiation, I'm not the Joker, there's no Joker. I did terrible things.
Doesn't happen, it could have happened in the afternoon, they could have had the Gary Puddle scene, it takes place in the morning, and then he has it, then we have a scene where you just, all you have to do is do a close-up on his face.
Don't need to have any words of dialogue. It's a great scene in Casablanca, right? The turning point of the film, you got Humphrey Bogart.
He doesn't want to join the war. He doesn't put his neck out for anyone, for no one, as he says. And then there's a turning point in the film, and he lets the French folks in his cafe play the French national anthem.
And they ask him, can we play it?
And he nods his head.
In French, no less.
In French. And he nods his head. And that head nodding is brilliant and so decisive.
And of course, in reality, they didn't even have the script. The director just said, Michael Curtiz, hey, Bogie, just stand over there and just nod your head. Boom, we'll cut that.
Great. My point is, you didn't even have that dialogue. You could do the Gary Puddles.
And then we see during the lunch break, sitting alone, he's smoking, there's the Joker. But not the Joker. There's Arthur Fleck realizing.
But that's how it happens. In the film, there's that. And then he's brutally assaulted.
And it's implied that he's raped by Brendan Gleason and other prison guards. And then after that, brutalizing, then he says that there's no Joker.
Now, is it so it's it's there's a lot of ways to read that is that the the effect of being brutalized realize that he is brutalized others. It was not necessary. And I felt that was a real misstep, which is why it's in talking to you.
Now, the films are coming downgraded. It's going down. It's not these just thoughts, dear listeners.
You know, we do the show freeform. It's going down now. It's going down.
It's diminishing.
You haven't seen it three times. You haven't seen it in French. You only finished watching it an hour ago.
So it's all very fresh. It's all very fresh.
Getting diminished now.
It seems I hear you on this.
Why was it necessary to have the Brendan Gleason scene? Every film should be, every scene in a film should be necessary.
Yes. I think, well, I think partly what's happening here is this is a film that's trying to say something about the world in which we live, where people are brutalized, where authoritarian systems do brutalize people in such ways.
Something that you didn't mention was, I mean, there was a lot of activity that goes on in that last day of the trial.
Yes.
One thing you didn't mention is, his young friend in the asylum also gets murdered by one of the guards just after they throw Arthur back into his cell, and he's lying there having been violated in this way, and he hears his young friend die.
You could say this is over the top, it's melodramatic.
Well, it's musical, so you're allowed to do that.
Or you could also say that in real life, regret doesn't often happen in the moment. It makes sense to me. I've had many.
You and I have had conflicts.
This is a stylized musical, in this way you should cut out the scenes, take it away, strip it down. Here's the narrative. There's this two six musical scenes.
Tighten it up.
Not if you're trying to make The Godfather, part two of comic book movies, which is what this is. Fair enough. Or the one flew over the cuckoo's nest of comic book movies, which is also what this is.
I have often apologized after a beat or two, no pun intended. It's taken me years, in some cases, to realize my mistake or my error. Or maybe later that day, I'll say, fair enough, I think I stepped over the line there or whatever.
That whole section feels totally credible to me. That the next day is, what do they call it? The summing up, the final speech.
Sometimes we're all just lost.
Knock, knock, who's there?
Arthur Fleck, Arthur Fleck, who, what a beautiful piece of writing, speaking directly to the audience. And so, yeah, I hear you. And I find it totally incredible.
Not to mention the fact that, you know, I've heard other critics mention this too. There's an implicit relationship with the murder of George Floyd and the murder of this other young character in The Asylum.
This film is about, I mean, that's the thing. Like, not simply that relationship with the real world. And the film is freaking people out because it's speaking subliminally to the world that we're living in right now.
And it's saying there's something here we need to confront.
25:19
Audience Resistance
I don't know if people are engaging with it at this level.
You talked about why people are not responding to it. No, but I mean even at a non-contest level. I think that, again, going back to the experience of my friend and her mom when they went to see Chicago, this is not the film that they wanted.
And as soon as Lady Gaga starts singing, people, I would imagine, probably groaned. Maybe not the first time, but the second time, they realize, and then the third time, they're probably like, oh, no, what is this? There's a great line in the film.
They're watching a musical, a classic Hollywood musical from the, I believe, it looks like early 50s, and the character on screen says, he's sick of these artificial barriers between musical and drama. Yes. And, you know, that's spot on.
Absolutely right. And this goes back to the audiences of Megalopolis laughing at it. They think it's amateurish or there's so many ideas.
And it feels like at least mainstream cinemagores who are not well-versed in what movies can be. I don't know. Am I just crapping on listeners?
I'm so sorry to your listeners. I know you were listening right now. Love the movies.
And you will dig this great re-motion picture. But it feels like people are really having a problem with things that are different. On these big-budget blockbusters, not on the small films.
People like, you know, I think they loved Pearl probably, and they loved X, and people are seeing Terrifier 3, and there's lots of small-budget pictures. But on these big-budget pictures, I think they've been conditioned.
People have been conditioned by the Marvel movies to expect something. You know, you want your Big Mac. Why am I getting this, why am I getting this, this artful, artful piece of sushi when I just want my Big Mac?
Does that make any sense?
Well, yeah, I think there's something about how we've all been trained to think or not think and trained to receive. What's there? I remember the first time I went to see The Thin Red Line, Terrance Malick's film, I saw it.
So good.
I saw it, I saw it by myself.
Like you saw Folia this morning, I saw it by myself in a mountain. And then I went back, I think, the following night to a late show. And that film ends very quietly.
There's been a lot of horror and torment. And then there's this kind of lull. And the lull kind of becomes meditative, contemplative images, trees and almost completely still water.
And then there's a fade to black. And then a little fade up when the end credits begin. Some gorgeous music.
It's very rare these days for a film to end with a fade. It's very rare for that fade to be accompanied by silences for a few seconds before the music begins.
But I think part of the reason is it is understood audiences want to get out of the theatre as soon as they possibly can. They want the lights to be switched on as soon as the light, as soon as that can possibly happen.
So this beautiful meditative experience, I'm totally caught up in the movie. And I hear the guy behind me turn to the person that he's with and say, hey, that was the biggest load of shite I've ever seen in my life, right? Those were the exact words.
I don't know who he was.
He's someone that does not appreciate the filmography of Terrance Malick.
That is certainly true. I think you could put money on it that a more accurate statement would be, I don't know what that was. And I don't know how to watch what I just saw.
And that may seem condescending, so let me, it probably does seem condescending. So let me own something. I don't know how to talk about music, right?
I love music, but I don't understand music. I've tried to, you know, so I've never, I don't know how to read music in both senses of the term. And I would, and I would never try to write about music in the way that I try to talk about cinema.
We need to create on ramps for people. So that they can experience this thing that could be deeply life enhancing as this film is. So tell me, tell me what you were going to say about.
Right.
But this is why I'm saying the ad campaign should have, should have been dramatic with that cartoon. If the cartoon wasn't finished yet, do something else.
Do a musical number and say Joker, Colnip musical to prime people because that's the era we're in. Now with these big budget movies is you can't surprise them.
If you surprise people with the larger budget pictures, they're going to have real problems. I'm reminded of the great 50s Leslie Nielsen picture Forbidden Planet. Fantastic film, dear listener.
If you haven't seen Forbidden Planet, see it for so many different reasons. Science fiction epic of clearly a forerunner influence for Star Trek and all that. It does not have a conventional score.
When the credits come up at the beginning, you see the word electronic tonalities by, and the music is going throughout the whole movie.
It's going, you know, like you're in France, you're in France, you stumbled into a jazz club underground, and you're terribly hungover, and you don't know what time it is.
My point is, imagine what those sounds sound like in French.
I was going to try to do some terrible 1950s or make Casablanca like French accent. I'm not going to.
My point is, if you are not accepting of those beep-de-boops, those electronic tonalities that start, if you're not ready, if you can't accept that, if you're not there for that, if you can't dig that man, then you're going to have a bad time during
Forbidden Planet. And the same thing with Joker Part 2, or Joker Cole in the musicals, I call it. If you cannot luxuriate, accept, first accept, then luxuriate. That is my new catchphrase for this week.
First accept, then luxuriate. If you cannot accept, then luxuriate. In the musicality of this film, you'll have a bad time.
Do you have a good espresso machine in your house?
Oh yeah, can't you tell?
High as a kite right now.
Tomorrow morning, when you're making an espresso or an Americano for your beloved, or whoever else might be there in your house, I urge you to hand it to them and say, first accept, and then luxuriate.
My new mantra.
31:56
Lady Gagaʼs Impact
Let's talk about Lady Gaga.
Okay.
But I thought you just said you can't talk about music. You want to talk about her acting? I thought we were wrapping up on the show.
I'm not an expert on cinema either, but I-
You've written a bunch of books about it.
I know that I don't know.
Well, shockingly enough, in about 75 minutes time, my next one's getting launched, and maybe it'll do as well as Joker did. I'd be delighted if my next book does as well as Folly Ado has done. That's fine.
Shouldn't we promote it on the show?
We should do that.
A voice crying in the wilderness. A voice crying in the wilderness.
Promote it on the show. Next show, we'll promote your book.
Will you read it and talk to me about it? Sure. That would be a delight.
Yeah, I don't understand music, but I like to read people who do.
I'm not an expert.
The reason I said I'm not an expert on cinema either is, that's a ridiculous thing for anybody to suggest. Except a very, very small number of people. What I am is a lover of movies.
I've seen a lot of them. I care a lot about them. I've been taught some things about how to see, and how to interpret, but that implies that there's one correct interpretation, which there usually isn't at any rate.
Let me long story short, Lady Gaga is a fantastic actor. I love seeing her in this. I loved her in House of Gucci, and I loved her in A Star Is Born.
I felt I was watching at some level, Barbra Streisand in her early performances. I can't wait to see Lady Gaga in a good old slapstick, rip-roaring comedy. Who she represents in this film is the audience, actually.
At least the audience who liked Arthur's actions, who sort of sneakingly enjoyed him. And she's brilliant. And it sort of becomes a tautology after a while to say brilliant in regard to this film, because I just think everything about it.
Everything about it is brilliant.
After talking with you.
Everything about it is brilliant.
After talking with you.
Go back and watch it again. Go back and watch it again. Go back and watch it again.
Dear listener, it is worth...
No makita pa.
Just remember, dear listener, before going in...
Boop, boop, boop, boop. Just remember about the boop-da-boops, and you will have a great cinema experience. Again, there's some musical numbers you can duck out a couple times if you need to use the bathroom or you got to get yourself some M&Ms.
No, you can't.
I mean, you can. Nobody's gonna stop you. There'll be nobody there to stop you.
Nobody was there.
What would you recommend as a companion piece or instead of Joker colon the musical?
Instead of watching Joker colon the musical, once I would watch it twice. If you're not going to watch it at all, come back to me in a moment. You tell me your recommendations and I'll-
Well, you know, we think about the obsessions that people have, the fandom that people have, they're putting themselves into this Joker character.
He himself becomes this character. I'd recommend big fans starring Patton Oswalt about an obsessed sports fan. I don't know if you've seen it, Gareth.
I have seen it.
Great movie.
It's tight, great ending. Doesn't cost $200 million like Joker, Colen, the musical does. By the way, that money's on screen.
The film does look great, but I'd recommend big fan. What about you?
Well, the films that, you know, it's antecedent sir, Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, and Two Degree One, The Cooker's Nest. But I really don't want to recommend an alternative. I think this film is so good.
I'm so glad it exists. I feel genuine, I don't know, I'm going to say sadness that it has flopped.
And I think genuine concern that a work of this kind that's trying to say the things that it's saying, which is about taking, that it's possible, it is entirely possible to respect and honor the suffering of lonely people and of deep sadness in our
world. Without using that as an excuse to act out against other people. That's an extraordinarily important thing to say. I think if you look at me, we haven't talked about it, and we don't want to get sidetracked into it.
But if you look at the way, the politics of grievance, which is not a new thing, it just happens to be a very loud thing at the moment. And I grew up in a society where that was what was driving things a lot of the time.
This film manages to have compassion for the suffering and to hold boundaries and say, look, whatever you're suffering, whatever the validity of your suffering is, acting out and causing suffering to other people is not a legitimate response to that
suffering. And the rest of us need to come up with an answer for you. So I feel genuine sadness and genuine concern.
It would be one thing if the audience response and the critical response was actually taking on those questions and making an argument that the film doesn't handle them well.
But the negative audience response and the negative critical response that I've seen doesn't even mention these things.
It doesn't address it. No, it doesn't. And that's one of the themes we've been talking about movies for, what, 20 years, is that the critical response is not addressing the meaning of these motion pictures.
Now again, the film is diminishing the more that you talk about it in the sense that now I'm thinking, well, there was no... What was the action other than saying that there's no Joker? Should he have said to...
Is it Bill Smitrovich? Who's the character actor? He's in everything, right?
He's like the general in the Penn State, the judge. Should he have then said, I'm changing my, kind of change my play so that he pleads guilty?
Well, no, he does actually say, I am so sorry I hurt those people. He does say, I'm so sorry I hurt those people.
Fair enough.
And I just don't think that he's in a play. People often have revelatory moments that take a long time to psychologically.
This is a movie though. This is a musical. So you don't have to be realistic.
It's about heightening. It's by taking things into relief, shaping them into an entertainment that allows us to develop and grow and experience life with new eyes.
Is that what it is?
Yeah. One last thing. Is there anything you want to address?
I looked online. I just finished watching it. I see people being upset about what they call a twist, which I didn't think was a twist because I just assumed it, of what happened at the end where it turns out that he's not actually the Joker.
Or that there's an endless recurrence of Jokers.
Right.
The implication is that he is the Joker that we know because we see him cut his mouth like Heath Ledger.
That's what I meant by it's an echo of the ending of Polanski's Macbeth, which actually adds an extra ending to Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's Macbeth doesn't end with a junior knight riding off into the distance and being seduced by the three weird sisters. But that film actually, I think the ending of Polanski's Macbeth is better than the ending of The Plush.
I don't think Shakespeare was precious.
Diminished Macbeth.
Precious about his work at this by this point, even when he was rewriting while during the play, like, oh, that's not working. The audience, you know, the audience isn't going for that one.
Hold on.
Give me, just give me, give me about 30 seconds. I got to put this dress on me here and I'm just going to rewrite this.
I was just looking there for what I would suggest, not as an alternative, but as a companion piece.
And perhaps as a, you watched this before you watched Joker, colon, the musical, and that would be, there's, there's a, there's a, there's a guy on Tiktok called, I want to, I want to get his name, Jason The Chow, C-H-A-O, so Jason The Chow.
And go look at his little video called, Spoiler Fool Deep Dive of Joker 2. This guy, this guy is, this, I like this guy.
Okay.
First time TikTok has ever been recommended on-
First time I've ever watched a full video on TikTok.
Well, there's a reason for that. I think people are realizing now that with TikTok, the product is not the actual videos. The actual reason you go on TikTok is to skip the videos.
That's the actual thing that gives the dopamine hit. That's what TikTok is about. It's about the fact that I can skip videos, not watch them.
Well, it's been an interesting show, Gareth. Even though Joker Cole in the musical has diminished in my eyes, I still think for the listeners-
It'll bump back up when you see it again.
I still think for the listeners, it's worth watching. Folks, if you want to support the show, don't forget you can go to patreon.com/thefilmtalk and get our bonus and archive episodes.
You can subscribe through the Apple Podcast app, or else on Facebook at facebook.com/thefilmtalk. I've enjoyed talking. I've enjoyed being myself.
I'm Jett Loe. Sometimes we're just lost.
We're just lost. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to talk about this magnificent film with you, Jett. I've been Gareth Higgins.
You know who I've been.
We'll keep talking.
Next time.