it's a poignant movie that wanted to say more than what says - but todd phillips is not the ideal man for this.

First: if you're not a teenager anymore and give 10 to the joker arguing that's better than any superhero movie..well that's almost a baseline. this should be better than most of superhero movies and i think it is. people need to check more stuff - but the joker can be a cool starting point to see some of "descent into madness" type of films. taxi driver is not very different from the joker, polanski's repulsion also has a bunch of stuff here or kubrick's the shining. there are a lot of madman or madwomen movies that can be recommended.

this story for me is about how society fails people: i'm not excusing the awful behaviour the joker has, i'm saying that when people need to run for their lives because of money they won't look sideways. when they just think everyone have the same life they do, they'll never try to understand who's different. i could talk about any minority, i could talk about refugees i could even talk about poor people: if they're not me i don't care. heck: economy is what matters right? if people were the most important thing they wouldn't cut psychiatric programs. assistencialism. education and healthcare. we wouldn't draw a line between "winners or losers". and at the same time that seems rooted in america's identity. the joker, while being a madman is also a product of america. when the line between rich and poor grows, you will have people that have nothing left to lose. even deniro's character (it seems as a sequel of rupert pupkin of the king of comedy - a great movie clearly an influence to this) wanted to take advantage of him for financial gains.

The movie has this type of talk: that gap is very expressed when people support one side instead of the other. and madmen finally get a home. a meaning and a purpose. because no one else care. just in the chaos they were able to strive instead of struggling. What i'm saying is: a society that wants to put competition above all will always have this type of problems. people complaining this is a violent movie or something like that are missing the point. or they don't want to understand that in times of crisis there are people who already lost. but "fringe groups" are missing the point too: this is about society as a hole portrayed on this character, not about themselves. they may feel like that, but a lot of them don't have the economical problems fleck has. nor are that much outsiders as they feel. this not to state the obvious: the joker is a bad guy.

The problem with all of this: the movie lacks pace. some scenes could be cut. the movie could have had less length. there's one scene where the script thinks the audience is stupid. at a certain point we're kinda seeing repetitive ideas we already saw. the movie could have been cut differently and we still had all the descent into madness while giving joker's backstory.

but that's not the main issue i have. the main issue is called the direction. it's just the same gimmicks all over again. same music in the scenes. close up and zoom shots done over and over and over again. it's always the camera getting closer to phoenix slowly with the same music or a very similar one. it seems as todd phillips only knows to move the camera in like 3 or 4 ways. it gets boring. in the hands of another guy this could have been marvellous. on his hands it gets too repetitive and i became exhausted to see always the same thing. he can thank joaquin phoenix honestly, otherwise this could have been just average.

obviously phoenix steals the show, he is the movie. period. the oscar definitely was deserved because without his portrait of the joker (humane, sadistic, kind and sad all at the same time) this wouldn't have also the grades it has. the rest of the narrative has a bunch of flaws the direction is not great but phoenix compensates everything giving it all. in terms of acting is a lesson. in the rest of the departments not much, but it wants to talk about the present and that's definitely a merit.

but the best thing here is that it will motivave a lot of moviegoers to check films beyond the mainstream. this movie can be an introduction to cinema for a lot of people. with this a lot of folks will start to see deeper movies that don't want only to entertain. i liked this movie but i don't think it deserves such higher regards. still i think people definitely should see it.