By Joker should win Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars because it would “signal Hollywood’s acceptance of, and reconciliation with, the genre that has basically saved it over the last couple of decades.”
Andrew Pulver of The Guardian argues Joker’s case for Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars by suggesting its recognition would signal Hollywood’s acceptance that the superhero film has been the basis of its business model in recent years.
“Every year it seems the heavy guns get wheeled out to protest that the films which make everyone in Hollywood rich – and for which audiences appear to have inexhaustible affection – are slighted by the Academy and that they are owed recognition,” writes Pulver.
Joker has a chance of turning its nomination into a win because “the character himself is the most Oscar-friendly aspect of cinema’s various superhero universes,” he argues.
“It can’t be a coincidence that the only previous occasion a superhero movie has troubled the winners enclosure for one of the headline categories was in 2009, when The Dark Knight’s Heath Ledger won best supporting actor – for playing the Joker.”
Joker has been praised by some, criticised by others, and generally earned an equal amount of love and hate from audiences divided by a dark and brooding interpretation of an infamous comic book villain.
Rex Reed of The Observer called it “dark, terrifying, disgusting, brilliant and unforgettable”. Mark Kermode was similarly impressed but his The Guardian colleague Peter Bradshaw said it was “the most disappointing film of the year”.
Pulver disagrees with his Guardian colleague Bradshaw, saying that the charge the film borrows from early Scorsese is unfair. “Lots of films rip off others, borrow ideas and motifs. It’s what they do with them that counts,” he says.
“For my money, [Joaquin] Phoenix and director Todd Phillips really succeed in creating the disquieting, grimy mood they aim for; if they hadn’t the film wouldn’t have been half as popular.”
Quickly becoming one of 2019’s most notorious movies, Joker’s presence in cinemas has sparked previously unheard of numbers buying tickets for an R-rated movie. It’s true, there’s no such thing as “bad publicity”.
Certainly, its earnings can be, in part, attributed to the controversy it has inspired and even courted. Part of the criticism has centred around it being some kind of calling card for the shadowy incel movement (described as an online male cult comprising angry, young men).
Tess Owen wrote in Vice: “People who’d seen the trailer worried that it portrayed a would-be mass shooter in a sympathetic light — and could inspire future attacks.”
Another criticism has been aimed at its depiction of mental illness. Annabel Driscoll and Mina Husain say that while great strides have been made in regards to discussion and treatment of depression and anxiety, there is still a lot of misinformation about more severe cases of psychotic illnesses that Joker perpetuates.
Conversely, Rutger Bruining praises Joker for its focus on an more character-based story. It “may well have opened the floodgates for films which look to take the audience on a journey through intimate and complex personal stories, and invite them to see the world through the eyes of a main character who is every bit as emotional and insecure as real human beings.”
For Pulver, Joker is representative of the times. “Liberalism is on the retreat, and Joker is unabashed in trying to excavate its wobbling foundations. I don’t buy the idea that it’s not a political statement: films that go in for shallow sloganeering are never this acute. If it wins on Sunday, it’s what we’ll deserve.”
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