Oscar buzz starting as Joker debuts in Venice
Joaquin Phoenix’s new movie Joker received an eight-minute standing ovation after its première at the Venice Film Festival in Italy on Saturday.
The Walk the Line actor, co-star Zazie Beetz and director Todd Phillips attended the screening at the Sala Grande cinema, where the audience stood up and applauded as the film’s credits rolled.
Critics have praised Phillips’s take on the backstory of Batman’s nemesis, with Phoenix being tipped to land another Oscar nod for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck.
The movie — set to hit the Toronto International Film Festival next, with showings on Sept. 9, 10 and 13 — which is the first standalone film about the legendary comic book villain, follows the story of a failed standup comedian, Fleck, who turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City.
Nicknamed Happy by his mother, with whom he lives, Fleck is anything but. He has an uncontrollable, and at times misplaced, laughter that is often misunderstood and sees him taunted by bullies.
Alienated and fragile, he begins to morph into Joker, unwillingly inspiring others in a fractured and violent Gotham.
“The attraction to make this film and this character was that we were going to approach it in our own way. So for me, I didn’t refer to any past creations of the character,” Phoenix said.
“I did identify Arthur as a particular personality, but then I also wanted the freedom to create something that wasn’t identifiable. This is a fictional character and I didn’t want a psychiatrist to be able to identify the kind of person he was.”
With sombre lighting and music, a dark mood persists throughout the film, heavily differentiating it from typical DC or Marvel superhero movies. Phillips, known for the Hangover films and War Dogs, said he took inspiration from character study movies from the 1970s.
“We just thought it could be an exciting approach to this genre, I am not sure what it means to DC or Marvel, how they will change the way they do it,” he said.
“It was a hard movie for us to get made and to convince DC and the studio at first, but we kind of just kept pushing as we felt it could be really special.”
Asked if a lack of empathy was a key subject in the film, for which writing began in 2017, Phillips said: “It’s a big part of what the movie’s about.
“It’s about the lack of empathy that we are seeing in the world at the time we wrote it that probably still exists.”
Joker is scheduled to hit theatres in October.