On sharp needles of bright fire

Joker collects the cashier, setting fire to bonfires of scandals

As expected, the triumph of the Venetian festival became the leader of the Russian and American rental on the weekend. In the United States, according to Variety, Todd Phillips raised $ 93.5 million, and in Russia - more than 650 million rubles. It seems that the Joker returns our viewer to cinemas. Experts prophesies the film a record box office, although the picture of Phillips is perceived very ambiguously. The main character romantics violence, the audience fears.

In fact, a film, which is closed by an art festival, pretending to be a comic book, is just going out. But it seems that the Joker himself somehow slipped a barrel from the screen, exciting a whirlpool of passions. The families of those killed during the 24-year-old James Holmes Brillnye at the show of the Dark Knight: Renaissance of the Legend (this happened seven years ago at the Cinemark Aurora cinema in Aurora, Colorado) Warner Brothers, who expressed concern.

In their opinion, the picture of Phillips romanticizes the killer hero and can provoke a wave of violence.

By the way, in 2012, the media shouted that Holmes called himself a joker, but later the police refuted this.

Warner Brothers calls for the calm of excited citizens: film

• yes - encourages only the discussion of difficult issues, including the origins of violence,

• But no, the uncontrollable terror does not promote: "The creators of the picture and the studio had no goal of making a hero from the Joker."

The American army also included in the discussion, announcing that the military was ready to reflect possible sudden outbreaks of violence during the shows of the film.

The director is justified, admits that he himself is aware of the responsibility: he tried to treat the topic of violence in the picture as accurately as possible. And instead of finding fault with the Joker, he asks the indignant to pay attention to other, truly cruel films, freely and successfully walking in cinemas, like the third John Wick with hordes of killers and a lost sense of proportion.

But no matter how Phillips convinces the opponents that his hero - an invented character from the invented DC of the Universe, has existed for 80 years - does not go away that Joker Joaquin Phoenix atrededly burst into today's mindset. As if he touched open wounds gaping on the body and soul of society. Here you have a comic book. However, film comics are not the first to touch on pressing problems. It is worth recalling “V means Wendetta” or the drama “Logan”.

Todd Phillips decides to take the next step, he almost refuses computer graphics and other miracles.

In his socio-psychological thriller, practically an anti-comic, a fictional world seems to be a condensed cast of the real world. Even the laughter in his cinema is a pathological diagnosis.

This is the story of an intimidated outsider, a lifting comedian Arthur Flex (only the lazy no longer said that an outstanding role, for which the actor lost 20 kilograms, deserves Oscars). He cares about the elderly mother. He lives in a wretched house of a dirty dysfunctional district of Gotham. He dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian and getting on the television show of his idol Murray Franklin (Robert de Niro). And here is also a mental illness, it is worth nervous - an attack of wild uncontrolled laughter begins.

The Phillips who composed this story and its co -author Scott Silver decided to reveal the world the secret of the emergence and formation of the supervision of the DC universe - in the clown make -up and with a smile to the ears of the wandering "on sharp needles of bright fire."

Instead of fame, recognition, and at least sympathy for calling a call (Arthur, as he knows how, amuses children in the hospital, calls buyers) he is severely beaten from the agency to be thrown out into the street. Social services deprive him of drugs.

The crazy clown is suffocating in the dense environment of the indifferent evil world. There is no laughing.

Todd Phillips creates a special space. At the beginning of the film, Gotham painfully resembles New York of the 80s. And in the first tacts - a memorable detail - radio transmission on a popular radio station with a announcer named Stan L. Brooks (a parody of one of the oldest radio studios 1010 Wins and his dictor Stan Z. Berns).

But at some point, the border between the dense external world of Gotham City and the sore imagination of Arthur is erased. The action switches from the story of a loser who has become a sociopath killer, revenge on the offenders and a soulless billionaire, to something else. As if the authors of the film, not without sarcasm, illustrate the Frommov idea of ​​the formation of man by society.

And if society is ugly infected with anger, insensibility, chaos, then get his crooked mirror - Joker.

Joker laughing to hysteria, which society pushed to the edge, and a boiling crowd of declassified masses - two communicating vessels with an incendiary mixture. And who will say, on what streets a live mass of distraught clowns flows, inspired by the king of a useless comedy: according to the dark hairpins of Gotham or along the rivers of the subconscious of a broken and broken person?

Therefore, yes, the film of Todd Phillips, combining the features of a bestseller and a radical author’s cinema, will become a cult. Causing fear and awe, he beckons, full of anxious predictions. And in the gloomy, real, powerful soundtrack of the Icelandic composer Hildur Goodnadottir, the theme of the vaguable rock sounds, which flies between madness and laughter.

The Joker, who laughs is a fictional character born by the Batman No. 1 comic book in 1940. He did not poison the hit Ledger, did not shoot his spectators at the cinema, did not raise riots with clown masks in the streets.

But he is really afraid of him. Because, as Joker himself says, they finally admitted that it exists. Very close.

New York police increases safety measures in cinemas that show an explosive film, although it admits that no threats have been received. If only the Joker himself did not call to proclaim his branded “Gotham must be destroyed!”.