Joker (2019)
Directed by Todd Phillips
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.
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What critics say influenced Joker
Phillips’ Joker is brazen in its open homage to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King Of Comedy but it also has certain moments which echo visual cues from William Friedkin’s 1970s masterworks, The French Connection and The Exorcist .
There are also two extended subway sequences: one in which Arthur uses his gun for the first time, and another in which, pursued by police, he ducks in and out of the carriages, as if in homage to “The French Connection” (1971).
Even the first violent scene in the subway harkens back memory of The French Connection.
It might still be called Gotham, but the reference isn't even thinly veiled: This is early '70s New York during a garbage strike, as depressing, foul and pitiless as anything from Midnight Cowboy or The French Connection.
Set in the late-1970s/early-80s hinterland, Phillips pays obvious tribute to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy , as well as including notes from The French Connection and Serpico .
Example: the opening in which Fleck chases thugs down the city blocks in full clown costume recalls Popeye Doyle giving chase in a Santa outfit in The French Connection .
Phillips wears his inspirations more proudly than Quentin Tarantino, but where Tarantino finds reverence in his source material and, more importantly, understands the tone of those inspirations, Phillips perverts and twists the meaning of all his homages, from Taxi Driver to Network .
In a climax channelling Network (1976), Fleck says ‘you decide what is right and wrong like what is funny or not’.
It is saturated with homages to Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and King of Comedy (1982), as well as other films of that era like A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Network (1976).
Phillips’ greatest trick is making Joker look like a gritty character study from the 1970s, inspired by the films of Martin Scorsese ( Taxi Driver ), William Friedkin ( The French Connection ) and Sidney Lumet ( Network , Serpico ) but it’s nothing more than a poor imitation.
There are sly nods to key 1970s texts such as Sidney Lumet’s Network , alongside movie theatre marquees advertising such early-80s releases as Blow Out and Zorro, the Gay Blade .
There are also nods to Sidney Lumet’s Network , twisting that film’s anarchic glee to the tyranny of mob violence, shifting allegiances in fascinating ways.
A pivotal moment where Arthur crashes a posh screening of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times is Phillips’s less-than-subtle reminder that it has always been the clowns in this world who reflect society’s reality back to us.
And if everybody who knows any bit of “Batman” lore knows where this is going, if the violence crosses the “repellent” line into gratuitous, if the Chaplin references (“Modern Times,” and his song “Smile”) and Sinatra notes do little to dress up an ugly age referencing an earlier ugly age, that’s all of a piece.
(These observations would be more daring if Phillips et al. didn’t wallpaper the film with their obvious influences — casting Robert De Niro as a late-night host in a King of Comedy homage and setting one scene at a theater screening of Modern Times — but what can you do?) Phoenix leans into the anarchic madness of Arthur at every turn, and it’s an affecting, disturbing lead turn, zagging into every lurch of the film’s tone with remarkable grace.
After a man in clown-face kills three yuppies on the subway, protesters take to the streets wearing clown masks and demonstrate outside a fancy benefit screening of “Modern Times” (providing an excuse for a scene in which Arthur/Joker laughs uproariously at Charlie Chaplin’s famous roller-skating scene).
Furthermore, another cringing scene sees Fleck sneak into a theatre as a bellboy while the wealthy and powerful, including Wayne, watch Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) and presumably eat caviar.
There’s a scene in “Joker” when a theater full of tuxedoed socialites gather for a charity screening of Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times.”
These plot points aren’t a total bust, yet the parallels between “Joker” and, say, another Warner Bros. classic “A Clockwork Orange” are immediate with supporting players, including Glenn Flesler, Brian Tyree Henry (and the always great Bill Camp), elevating their respective scenes, but Phillips borrows all his tone and look from other, better movies that you’d assume he could create a better origin tale than “man goes mad because of mental illness and child abuse.”
It is saturated with homages to Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and King of Comedy (1982), as well as other films of that era like A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Network (1976).
Phoenix’s light-on-the-toes, vaudeville-dance-like movements are reminiscent of Alex in “A Clockwork Orange.”
Stanley Kubrick even pulled A Clockwork Orange from British distribution after a series of copycat crimes.
Regardless of my mixed feelings, I think it’s the best film about the psychological effect of violence as pop art since Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange .
In the canon of onscreen violence wrought by chillingly malevolent men, two scenes loom large: Malcolm McDowell’s macabre rendition of “Singing in the Rain” in A Clockwork Orange, and Christian Bale’s axe-swinging jive to Huey Lewis and the News in American Psycho.
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In many respects, Joker hearkens all the way back to the 1928 silent The Man Who Laughs , which inspired the comics character in the first place.
Nevertheless, just as the original Joker character was visually inspired by Paul Leni’s 1928 film, The Man Who Laughs, the new Joker draws its dark inspiration from all Batman-themed films and comics that precede it, especially Alan Moore’s 1988 graphic novel, The Killing Joke, which imagined the Joker's origins as a comedian.
Debuting in Batman’s first adventure in 1940—his appearance is said to have been based on Conrad Veidt in 1928’s The Man Who Laughs —the character helped to popularize the “sinister clown” archetype that ultimately led to Pennywise.
It’s not hard to deduce what classic films Phillips and long-time cinematographer Lawrence Sher borrowed for inspiration: The urban alienation of Taxi Driver and The King Of Comedy are clear thematic and visual touchstones.
Joker does indeed borrow elements from Martin Scorsese pictures (specifically, The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, sometimes paying homage to the cinematography of both alongside sharing a similar setting) including a prominent collaborator in Robert De Niro, except it never feels like thievery considering a major component of the narrative sees Arthur Fleck investigating his own upbringing.
Though thematic and aesthetic parallels can be drawn to producer Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, Joker is also inspired by the films of Sydney Lumet and Stanley Kubrick as well as the works of Ken Kesey and even Kurt Vonnegut.
He’s going for a gritty Martin Scorsese vibe — The King of Comedy specifically (most of the plot is borrowed from it), with a splash of Taxi Driver .
Todd Phillips’ direction is slick and effective, with numerous visual references and homages to the early works of Scorcese, in particular Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982), the latter of which is further reinforced by the casting of Robert De Niro as talk show host Murray Franklin.
The 70s/80s setting is an homage to Phillips’ favorite gritty crime dramas such as Taxi Driver , The King of Comedy, which style/tone he heavily borrowed.
Joker is like James McTeigue’s V For Vendetta (2005), only with an unstable manchild rather than a literate revolutionary as the inspiration for civil unrest.
There are also elements lifted from “Death Wish,” “Network,” “V for Vendetta,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “The Shining” and “The Purge.”
Joker doesn’t understand its representation of violence because it doesn’t know what to do with its politics, opting instead for a confused aestheticization of anarchy à la V for Vendetta, all incendiary chants and masked malcontents thronging the streets.
When wealthy Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) calls Gotham’s impoverished masses “clowns”, his words echo around endless TV screens, providing a V for Vendetta -style mask to rioting protesters carrying “Kill the Rich” placards.
Envision a misguided remix of Taxi Driver (1976), V for Vendetta (comic), and Batman (1989).
There shouldn’t be a need to take on this maniacal character yet again, but Phillips’ film is exceedingly unique in its interpretation and cements its place alongside movies like 2006’s “V For Vendetta” and 2017’s “Logan” as auteur comic book cinema.
It’s not hard to deduce what classic films Phillips and long-time cinematographer Lawrence Sher borrowed for inspiration: The urban alienation of Taxi Driver and The King Of Comedy are clear thematic and visual touchstones.
If any deference is paid, it’s to Martin Scorsese, whose Taxi Driver inspires the gritty look of Gotham City circa 1981 (deep bows to the brute-force camerawork of Lawrence Sher) and whose lead character in that film, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), lives in the same bloody torment as our clown-face antihero.
Joker does indeed borrow elements from Martin Scorsese pictures (specifically, The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, sometimes paying homage to the cinematography of both alongside sharing a similar setting) including a prominent collaborator in Robert De Niro, except it never feels like thievery considering a major component of the narrative sees Arthur Fleck investigating his own upbringing.
Though thematic and aesthetic parallels can be drawn to producer Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, Joker is also inspired by the films of Sydney Lumet and Stanley Kubrick as well as the works of Ken Kesey and even Kurt Vonnegut.
He’s going for a gritty Martin Scorsese vibe — The King of Comedy specifically (most of the plot is borrowed from it), with a splash of Taxi Driver .
Todd Phillips’ direction is slick and effective, with numerous visual references and homages to the early works of Scorcese, in particular Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982), the latter of which is further reinforced by the casting of Robert De Niro as talk show host Murray Franklin.
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Phillips’ greatest trick is making Joker look like a gritty character study from the 1970s, inspired by the films of Martin Scorsese ( Taxi Driver ), William Friedkin ( The French Connection ) and Sidney Lumet ( Network , Serpico ) but it’s nothing more than a poor imitation.
The films he’s referring to are “Serpico,” “Taxi Driver,” and “Network.”
Set in the late-1970s/early-80s hinterland, Phillips pays obvious tribute to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy , as well as including notes from The French Connection and Serpico .
But while Phillips goes out of his way to channel the visual aesthetics of works like Dog Day Afternoon , Network , Taxi Driver , After Hours and The King of Comedy , his ends up being only a surface level dissection of these types of characters and this sort milieu.
With his open nod the New Hollywood films of the 1970s, particularly the Scorsese classics Taxi Driver and King of Comedy (but also One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Dog Day Afternoon ) writer/director Todd Phillips has offered a powerful depiction of one man’s mental breakdown in the context of a society tearing itself apart.
Instead, Joker draws on the grubby “New York Shitty” cinematic canon of the late 1960s through mid-70s – with a particular debt owed to Death Wish (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), and Taxi Driver (1976).
Gotham City as envisaged here is modelled on the New York of 1970s films like Dog Day Afternoon and Taxi Driver – over-populated, crime-ridden and grimy in a manner that has since become a shorthand for cinematic integrity.
Set in the fictional Gotham City in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, Joker is a slick, heady pastiche of The King of Comedy , Network , Dog Day Afternoon , and 80 years of DC Comics stories distilled into a supremely stylish and affecting package.