In part, Magnus is an origin story, with director Benjamin Ree taking advantage of the wealth of home-video material from Carlsen's childhood, showing the pawn-pushing prodigy during his formative years - as early as four years old, when he spent six straight hours putting together a complicated Lego train.
But for now this insightful, intimate documentary will more than suffice. Which means there must be a modern Amadeus to be made from his life-story (though Viswanathan Anand, who Carlsen faced for the World Chess Championship title, might have something to say about being given the Salieri role). If this one seems depressingly reflective of our own reality, well, it’s brought to you by the guy who’s been yukking it up about male bad behavior for years in movies like “Old School” and “The Hangover.” I like to imagine that Phillips embedded this one with a wry message: Toxic masculinity is, actually, no joke at all.Magnus Carlsen, as we are told quite a few times during the film that bears his name, is the Mozart of chess. The director had, I think, a solid defense in referencing the 1988 graphic novel “ Batman: The Killing Joke,” at my screening, in which the Joker says, “I prefer my past to be multiple choice.” He’s a slippery chameleon with a host of backstories. No doubt some will balk at their favorite comics character being dragged down into such gloom and doom.
When he dispatches some Wall Streeters who taunt him on the subway - in shades of reverse Bernhard Goetz - he spawns a clown-faced “Kill the rich” movement that hints at his future potential as a charismatic supervillain. “Joker” starts grim and gets grimmer, as Arthur embraces his inner demons and finds they resonate with the huddled masses of Gotham. The terrifying ways actors prepared to play the Joker To relegate his giggling to a neurological injury sort of defangs the concept. I’m hardly the biggest DC fangirl, but it strikes me that the whole point of the Joker is that he gets bubbly joy out of the most horrible things in the world. Phoenix’s tic of a laugh is, indeed, disturbing, though it always seems vaguely forced. It’s never quite clear why Arthur’s so emaciated, but the way he contorts his spindly frame, and occasionally stretches it out into a joyful, Kabuki-esque dance, is mesmerizing. Who better than crazy-eyed Joaquin Phoenix? The actor’s physicality here is something to behold.
#In the deep movie 2016 review crack
We all have our favorites - Heath Ledger’s mine, though I’ll never forget my first, Cesar Romero - but there’s no reason someone else can’t take a crack at it.
It’s a different take on the DC comics character, and why not? The Joker’s an anarchic villain for the ages, still wide open for interpretation even after countless portrayals. If the casting of Robert De Niro as a late-night talk show host wasn’t enough to tip you off, the mood and look of “Joker” is deeply rooted in (not to say derivative of) the gritty New York dramas of the ’70s and ’80s, particularly “Taxi Driver,” “Death Wish” and “The King of Comedy” - the latter of which starred De Niro as a creepy stalker obsessed with a popular entertainer. This oddball, vulnerable soul gets beaten up - literally by goons, figuratively by the healthcare system - and then beaten up again. It’s a seriously dark urban drama about a charmless schlub (Phoenix) saddled with a brain injury that gives him an inadvertent cackle, caring for his ailing mom (Frances Conroy) and working a lousy gig as a rent-a-clown while nursing dreams of being a stand-up comic. Let’s be clear, this is no comic-book romp. The rest of “Joker” is, in essence, a compelling character study - one whose appeal may be limited to Batman completists, of whom there are certainly quite a few. (Just ask John Rambo, back at the box office a couple weeks ago.) It’s horrifying, it’s artful - and it’s hardly alone in its cinematic zest for violence. Its final act is, indeed, bracingly over the top, as Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck sheds his sad-sack chrysalis and emerges into full-blown Joker mode. In this, Todd Phillips’ origin story seems to have succeeded, given the amount of lip service paid to worries that “Joker” will weaponize volatile viewers. The aim of the Joker has always been to sow chaos and panic in the citizens of Gotham City.
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