Viewing entries tagged
Frances Conroy
In The Power of the Dog, New Zealand director Jane Campion has crafted a searing examination of masculinity and the societal expectations that come along with that word, all set against a stunning western landscape. When, in voiceover narration, a character asks in the opening seconds of the film, “For what kind of man would I be if I did not help my mother? If I did not save her,” he’s asking the central question of the film. What kind of men does our society produce, and why?
“I’m the bad guy?” That’s the question Michael Douglas’s character, William Foster, asks in the final minutes of the movie Falling Down. Despite the fact that the movie, up until that point, solidly aligns itself with Foster’s point of view and his sick sense of vigilante justice, this one line of dialog suggests that Falling Down is a more self-aware movie than director Todd Phillips’s Joker. There’s never any question that Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, who transforms himself over the course of this origin story into Batman’s greatest nemesis, is our champion.
And the movie seems to have no idea how disturbing that is.
The bleak, nihilistic Joker, which, by its final frames, leans into its fascism in a way that even the heavily reactionary Falling Down doesn’t, says a lot more about Phillips’s worldview than the character he is exploring.
