It’s never “just a movie.” No matter the pedigree, quality, or budget, filmmakers use their medium not just to tell stories and entertain but to engage viewers in some kind of sociopolitical-economic commentary, regardless if it’s Steven Spielberg or Jane Campion or Roger Corman or Ed Wood behind the camera. And when some director deflects with “it’s just a movie,” they’re at best being disingenuous.
Or, in the case of Todd Phillips, cowardly.
The broteur behind The Hangover trilogy and Old School really went for something with his latest film, Joker, a mash note to the 1970s and ‘80s Martin Scorsese filmography masquerading as a dour origin story of Batman’s greatest foe. And for weeks between its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September–where it inconceivably won the Golden Lion top prize–and its theatrical debut in October, the culture reacted with pearl-clutching, fear-mongering takes about the film creating an incel folk hero that would inspire mass murders at opening-night screenings. Joker would leave the nation’s multiplexes awash in carnage and manifestos authored by society’s most unstable (involuntary) loners!
By now Joker’s plot is well traveled: Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a mentally-ill rent-a-clown/aspiring stand-up comedian scrapes by, living in a rundown apartment with his invalid mother, in 1981 Gotham City. Like early-’80s New York, this Gotham is on the edge of collapse and madness–represented by Arthur, naturally, who loses his tenuous grip on his sanity when he’s fired from his gig, goes full Bernie Goetz (while in clown makeup) on three finance bros,and discovers sweet, sweet release in murder. Arthur’s killings become a flash point and perverse inspiration for a simmering class war, and he eventually gives in fully to his violent side to become some version of Batman’s long-time nemesis.
During its pre-release window Phillips and his star were peppered with questions about violence in movies and their responsibility to the film going public. Both ducked all inquiries with some version of: “Hey, it’s just a movie.” Phillips was loathe to ascribe any meaning to anything—except to say they wanted to tell a gritty story that shook up expectations of comic book movies, man.
Doesn’t get Scorsese
Except it’s a fundamentally vapid film, spending more time pointing huge neon arrows to its Scorsese riffs than demonstrating any kind of understanding of why those Scorsese movies worked, and continue to resonate, in the first place. (In the worst kind of stunt casting, a woefully miscast Robert De Niro, who starred as the imbalanced wannabe comedian stalker-fan of a Johnny Carson-like talk show host in The King of Comedy, shows up in Joker as a Carson-like figure.) All Phillips seems to care about is evoking Travis Bickke’s instability and grime and Rupert Pupkin’s disconnection from reality. That talk of incel folk heroes and IRL violence fall flat because Arthur inspires no feeling or empathy in any direction. An excellent Phoenix, channeling a version of his character from Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, is wasted on a character that goes nowhere, emotionally or otherwise.
And yet, despite Phillips’s insistence, Joker has a lot on its mind, especially when it comes to class. After Arthur murders those Wall Street types, who happen to work for Thomas Wayne,the beaten-down poor begin wearing clown masks (evoking V for Vendetta) in solidarity. Wayne,running for mayor, belittles the poor who don’t appreciate rich Gothamites’ largesse as clowns,inspiring Occupy-style protests, which become full-on rioting after Arthur kills De Niro’s character on live TV. (This, in turn, leads to Wayne and his wife, looking for all the world like Steve Mnunchin’s worse half, being assassinated in front of young Bruce.)
Joker is clearly not “just a movie,” and despite its myriad problems it does leave you feeling conflicted: Is Joker inept or merely misguided?
Clarity comes from an unexpected place: Parasite, director Bong Joon-ho’s bonkers reckoning with class in contemporary South Korea, which unanimously won the Palme d’Or top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
The impeccable film–quality and precision dripping from every frame–is a study in contrasts.The Kims, barely existing in the slums of a South Korean city, slowly ingratiate themselves as servants of the Parks, an uber-wealthy new-money family: poor son, Ki-woo (Woo-sik Choi), teaches the rich daughter (Ji-so Jung) English; poor daughter, Ki-jeong (So-dam Park), teaches the rich son (Hyun-jun Jung) art; poor father,Ki-taek (Kang-ho Song),drives the rich tech-executive father (Sun-kyun Lee); poor mother,Chung-sook (Hye-jin Jang), is housekeeper for the rich, aloof stay-at-home mom (Yeo-jeong Jo). We laugh as the Kims hoodwink one Park after another. We cringe as the Kims cook up a fake TB diagnosis to overthrow the Parks’ longtime housekeeper. And we’re emotionally caught between the Kim’s drive to chip a bit of 1% excess off for themselves and sympathizing with the Parks, who seem to have the best of intentions.
Bong is no stranger to class war. His 2013 film Snowpierecer imagines a dystopian future where survivors of an environmental disaster are packed into a never-stopping train and create a new kind of off-the-rails society of haves and have nots. Parasite, by comparison, is tame. It still veers in some seriously unexpected directions, though, which must be experienced cold for maximum effect. But unlike Joker, Bong’s film is wholly unpredictable–and quite up front about its point of view. It’s a pointed, essential cry against the unconscionable income gap swallowing up cities and nations, as well as the systems that prioritize the health and comfort of a wealthy few at the expense of the safety and basic human decency of everyone else. And it’s brave in all the ways Phillips’s film is not.
Parasite is a direct confrontation with the now and the issues impacting people today, from the obscene extremes born out of runaway hyper capitalism to the pointed critique of technology.The Kims rely on, and are in ways addicted to, their devices while the Parks’ lifestyle, paid for with tech money, is relatively tech-free. Joker, on the other hand, is set 40 years ago–perhaps as a way to inoculate itself against claims of political sloganeering–and couches whatever arguments it does make in blunt (and bluntly terrible) dialogue. “They don’t give a shit about people like us,” Athur’s African American social worker tells him as they both become victims of Gotham’s austerity cuts. Well, yeah, of course they don’t. Anyone who has struggled with making rent or tracking down a missed unemployment check knows that. [pullquote]Phillips presents this as some kind of revelatory insight into the way the world works, while Bong treats it as it is: the callous, uncaring system is a source of white-noise existential dread woven into the fabric of the lives of too many people chewed up, spit out, and left behind by the not-so-invisible hand of the not-so-impartial markets.[/pullquote]
For all his posturing, Phillips didn’t make a film that shakes up comic book movies. That’s an accomplishment that belongs to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther. Rather, he made cinematic click bait, aggregating and reconstituting other people’s better content with a sensational title slapped on to get us to consume it. (And consume we have! As of October 23, it has taken in more than $747 million worldwide, a staggering sum fora film that cost $55 million and was almost never made.)
The most important American film of 2019
Bong’s film, on the other hand, is unquestionably original. Its confidence, navigation of wicked tonal shifts, and subtlety–Parasite’s class conflict ultimately turns on Mr. Kim overhearing an offhand, almost neutral observation made by the Park patriarch that his driver smells like an old radish or boiled clothes–belong to a tradition that puts the director alongside Preston Sturges (The Lady Eve),Carol Reed (The Fallen Idol), Wes Anderson (Rushmore), and, yes, Scorsese (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore). And while it’s Korean, it might be the most important American film of 2019: a take-no-prisoners howl against the human and environmental toll of hyper capitalism and class sorting. It’s the kind of urgent work that will resonate well after this moment has passed because it is absolutely, unrepentantly of this moment.
Joker might laugh all the way to the bank, but Parasite is the lasting accomplishment. It’s the kind of film future Todd Phillipses will chase for decades in their work because it’s agit-cinema at its best–and it’s never “just a movie.”
