A worrying statement. But at least it is not Rod Liddle or James Delingpole striking a chord with me this time. Those moments are more than just worrying. They place a question mark on what remains of a moral compass and focused brain power in my declining years. And they do happen – less and less frequently these days as even I can detect the hypocrisy of right wing columnists displaying, with not a hint of irony, the same self-righteous, tunnel vision certainty of which they have been accusing their woke liberal opponents for years.
But this morning I wake up to a more acceptable embrace of the Spectator line. That of its film critic Deborah Ross who two weeks ago exhorted her readers to enjoy the softer, warmer tones of human foibles portrayed in the Chinese language film The Farewell in preference to the sharper, harsher edges of director Todd Phillips’ clever re-interpretation of the back story to the Joker of Gotham City. These seem to be the two most interesting and innovative films released over the past month of so.
Joker, which I watched last night, is the more ambitious project. It ranges further and wider into cultural references of the past half-century than my limited imagination could grasp. Yet even I could see the scale and brilliance of its visual imagery around both the delights and the dystopia (mostly the latter) of post-modern society. Every shot had been carefully composed to capture the mental torture specific to Joker himself (the struggling wannabe comedian Arthur Phleck played by Joaquim Phoenix) and the brutal social divisions of the digital age which had left him far behind in his mid-forties sharing a dingy apartment in a rundown, dangerous slum area with his declining mother.
Violence, or the threat of it, stalks the film from the first action scene in which Arthur, scrapping for a dime as billboard carrier for a nearby store promotion in his clown outfit, is viciously attacked for no reason by a group of vagrant youths. There is no attempt at nuance or subtlety in the offer shortly afterwards from a fellow struggling comedian of a handgun to protect himself. We know that writer and director Phillips will not ignore Chekhov’s famous advice for the stage. If you introduce a gun in Act One, it cannot fail to go off by the end of the play. From that moment, if it did not know it already, the audience is braced for a shuddering journey through Arthur’s inner agony, strutting comic turns and breakneck switches between tripping the light fantastic and paying back a cruel world with vengeful interest.
The journey of Billi, a 25-year-old fully Americanised child of the 1990s Chinese diaspora, from her New York apartment to the family home of her terminally ill grandmother Nai Nai, is altogether a more gentle, slowly paced affair. Across three generations of a tight but geographically spread family (from mainland China to Tokyo and New York), the film observes the foibles with which humans love, loath, tease and cajole each other to assuage their individual insecurities. Beyond the core theme which triggers the plot, little of substance appears to change through the 90 minutes. And yet almost everything about the family’s inner life changes. And reaches a more redemptive and less violent denouement than the pacier, more challenging Joker.
That core theme is a conceit of intriguing ingenuity if rather strained plausibility. Nai Nai the grandmother has just been diagnosed with an incurable cancer. Her peripatetic children in Tokyo, New York and mainland China (a dull inner province miles from Beijing, Shanghai or any sign of cosmopolitan life) decide to keep her ignorant of the diagnosis. Anticipating her imminent demise, they expedite the marriage of one grandson to his Japanese girlfriend as an excuse to gather all of the family members together back in China for a farewell without letting Nai Nai know the real reason.
This is not the cue for a stream of comedic misunderstandings. There are moments when the “good” lie comes under strain and we come close to playing out the pantomime game of “he’s behind you”. But these are minor touches against the deeper theme of how the insecurities of childhood return to haunt siblings, however far apart they spread geographically, and how no-one ever escapes from the prejudices of their background. Like Joker, this film builds up to a colourful and vibrant climax followed by a brief and quiet reflection on the morning after. That is where the similarity ends. The deepest dystopia drips from every frame in Joker up until the last moment, even as a brilliant white sunlight streams into the final long corridor shot. Loving reflection and a startling reveal bathe the last frame of The Farewell in an almost divine light to soothe the pain of family tension and sadness which has so far suffused the film.
So like Deborah Ross in the Spectator, for those seeking from a “serious” film a balance of sad observation with a light touch and reassuring humanity I would highly recommend The Farewell. But for those willing to endure a bleaker take on mental torture and social division in pursuit of weightier subject matter and a more ambitious canvas, then Joker may turn out to be the most memorable and haunting film of 2019.
View from the Clapham Omnibus 