Seeing the discourse surrounding this makes it apparent how many of those who watch and study film are so eager to disregard a film based on aesthetic/formal elements that they personally don't like (rather than having any legitimate criticisms to make in regards to the form/content itself) and fail to take a film seriously on it's own terms. Like this tweet here:

twitter.com/charles_kinbote/status/1185221139011985408?s=19

This is a very minor one but it bothered me, the underlying pomposity behind it. It isn't bad. For one, if you were to take it on the grounds that it's an awkward sound transition there are literally dozens of classic films from the 40's and 50's and through the 60's where the soundtracks will end in a weirdly abrupt manner in certain scenes or have odd transitions (The Searchers and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls are just two examples). However, this is not seen as an issue for some reason. Having watched this in the theater and been able to hear it clearly, the musical shift is signalled in part by Joaquin's physical movements, the beat to the song peters out as he stomps, and then the original score picks up. It doesn't come from out of nowhere. Furthermore, the shift accentuates what is actually going on in the scene; the film constantly plays with the intersection between subjectivity and the reality Arthur inhabits. The fade out with his physical movement and then the jump into the soundtrack, at least how I experienced it upon first viewing, was a sort of whiplash wherein the underlying tragedy behind what's happening is brought to the fore. Out of context, yes, it seems odd but it's tied to the forward momentum of the narrative. It's not badly edited, it's not badly shot, there's nothing totally visibly wrong with what's on the screen so why make it out to be like "this sucks." It's childish and the kind of nitpicky bullshit that losers like YMS built their careers on, and I've seen this kind of "criticism" all over Twitter and LB.

It's also indicative of how leftists who study and watch film can focus so much on the formal aspects of a piece and totally ignore the underlying politics. How can you watch this and not come away shocked by the audaciousness of its class politics and how the film's narrative is structured as a critique of capitalist structures? It is fundamentally a movement from chaos to understanding said chaos and finding the means to overcome it. Walking in the dark in regards to why one suffers under capitalism to recognition of the myopic and malevolent forces that enable that suffering and taking the steps to destroy them. That this also ties in to the work's rabid antagonism towards the Batman mythos and what it represents is also very notable.

Talking to my friend nnmore, he thought of it as a kind of rorshach test that aligned to anybody's political reading but it really strikes me as working in too specific a meter to work in that form. Some elements struck and puzzled me in a manner that I would have to wait until I have rewatched this a few times to break down as to whether they really work or not but watching it I was never really struck by anything feeling unwarranted or as if something was the "wrong" choice. It doesn't feel vague or like something akin to Aronofsky's Mother! where it totally is a work that can mean anything and thus means nothing. Its relation to our historical moment feels vital and its formal and performative ties to silent cinema suggest a work that has more going on than its surface implies.

Really within the first 20 minutes I thought "wow, and this was directed by the dude who made the Hangover movies!