The Power of the Dog

Gloves Off

or

"Well, Well...I Wonder What Little Lady Made This?"
 

Jane Campion knows her Westerns. You can tell that with an opening shot of The Power of the Dog, tracking along the windows inside a house, the interior black, but the outside bright with sunlight, focusing on the outsider walking along parallel to the side of the house, but not a part of it, echoing John Ford and echoing The Searchers, but in her own way.

 

Like Ford, she will play with light and shadow in her western, even depending on it for a visual motif that will form a sub-text in the film, and she will pay particular attention to landscapes that separate people and must be conquered if anything resembling civilization is to take root in that wilderness. Ford's westerns were all about that and the land he photographed was itself a character in that/those stories, not merely a back-drop, not location-for-location's sake. 

 

But, that's what she takes from Ford and goes her own, entirely different way, leaving him and the dream of civilization in the dust. For Campion, the world-building of westerns is as much a myth as the westerns themselves. Civilization is about what people decide to agree on, and if the point of rugged individualists is to play by their rules, there won't be much agreement. Or very little civil.

The man in the window is Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), who, with his brother George (Jesse Plemons) is part of a well-to-do family with a cattle ranch in 1925 Montana. Both brothers—"Romulus and Remus" Phil calls them—are college educated with George knowing the law and Phil the classics of English literature. But, the two couldn't be more different, from each other and their educations. Phil is rough in speech and manner and does most of the work around the ranch, while George is sensitive and does the paper-work. Where Phil is coarse and brutal, George is quiet and empathetic.

They've been working the ranch for a long time, with George leavening the coarseness and conflicts the acerbic Phil causes in whatever he does. At the end of their cattle drive, the crew stops into an inn run by Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst) for drinks and chow. They're served by Rose's son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is slight, effeminate, and shy. Peter becomes an easy target for Phil's malice, making fun of everything the boy does, including using the artistic center-pieces that Peter has meticulously created to light his cigarette. Rose breaks down over this and George tries to apologize, since Phil wouldn't think of it, nor would he were it suggested to him.

But, this starts a series of events that drives a wedge between Phil and George, starting with the gentler brother marrying the Gordon woman—Phil considers her (as he says to her face) "a cheap schemer" only after the family money, and once she sells the inn and moves to the Burbank ranch-house, he begins a campaign of intimidation and hostility towards her that drives her to drink—a habit that she had previously disdained. George has paid for Peter to go away to college, but when he comes back, he finds his mother a wreck, and an open hostility against him from the cowboys working the ranch.

Campion breaks with Ford in the portrayal of women as revered stabilizers in the wilds of the West—Rose doesn't have the strength to take command and be the influence that Ford's women are in the isolation of the prairie—and Phil's cunning brute is too entrenched in his "man's world" view to allow any sort of control out of his grasp. The presence of a woman is just too intrusive to his staked-out territory.

But it's more complicated than that. And to say anything more would be to take away some complexities and motivations that might spoil the bumps and shocks that the movie has in store and could ruin its journey for audiences. Let's just say this: Campion has made a Western in locale (and borrowed some tropes from the genre), but she has other influences as well, taken from psychological thrillers and even thrown a shade of Hitchcock, making The Power of the Dog a definite hyphenate. It starts out as one thing—which may make some reconsider if they want to watch something that dark—and eventually changes into something else—something much darker.

But, one cannot parse just how beautiful The Power of the Dog is. Campion, working with cinematographer Ari Wegner, has created images of vistas and landscapes that at times take the breath away, sometimes mimicking iconic shots from previous Westerns, at times taking their cue (as in the shot above) from the paintings of Frederic Remington—as previous directors had done. Sometimes you just want to hold on an image before it inevitably movies on, wondering at how it managed to be lit by a single match, or how it captures the troubling disquiet of twilight.

It's a good watch, that will inspire questions and cast a refraction on past examples of the Western—whether the winning of the West wasn't as much a loss, and whether in bringing European culture to the frontier, we didn't drag along something horrible in the process, something that only seemed tame, in our taming of the frontier.

Joker

Why So Scorsese-ish??
or
"Never Rob Another Man's Rhubarb!" 

Well, the rifleman's stalking the sick and the lame,
Preacherman seeks the same, who'll get there first is uncertain
Nightsticks and water cannons, tear gas, padlocks,
Molotov cocktails and rocks behind every curtain,
False-hearted judges dying in the webs that they spin,
Only a matter of time 'til night comes steppin' in

"Jokerman"  Bob Dylan

The origin of the comic-book character, The Joker, has always been one of some controversy. In real life (what comic aficionado's call "Earth-Prime"), there has been some differing of opinions if it was Batman "conceptualist" Bob Kane, writer Bill Finger, or "ghost" artist Jerry Robinson who initially came up with the concept of a Moriarty-like villain to The Batman. The character had not one, but two stories in the first issue of Batman comics—he was supposed to be killed off in the first one, but editorial demands kept the character alive for future stories.

Inevitably, there had to be an origin story—in "The Man Behind the Red Hood!" (published in Detective Comics #168—February, 1951—and written by Finger), it is revealed that the Joker was a criminal who decide to rob the Monarch Playing Card Factory of $1 million (no, let's just go with it...) and during the attempt was stopped by Batman and, to avoid capture, jumped into a vat of toxic waste, which had an outlet to the Gotham River (this is pre-EPA). Returning home, he discovered that the sludge had turned his face white, his hair green and his lips red and, that snapping his psyche, he became the Joker ever after. In Alan Moore's graphic novel "The Killing Joke" he was a failed comedian who couldn't provide for his family and is co-erced to pose as "The Red Hood" and falls into the vat. His pregnant wife is killed in retribution and that's what drives him insane. Moore has a lovely line in the piece where the Joker says he doesn't remember some details: "If I'm going to have a past, I want it to be multiple choice!"*

In other media, The Joker has been different with every actor that's portrayed him, but the biggest jump came with Heath Ledger's portrayal in The Dark Knight, with the character as less of a criminal so much as a self-mutilating nihilistic sociopath (although you can't even depend on that description). Curiously. writer-director Christopher Nolan imagined that character without an origin story, but simply being a fully-formed agent of chaos—he even has him change his story about how he got his "Glasgow smile" a couple of times. This Joker is so unreliable, he even changes his tactics and despite a spoken hatred of "schemers" comes up with some elaborate crimes. Ledger's character can not be trusted in any way. Multiple choice.

So, despite that, we get a movie that tries to cement how "The Joker" came to be. I suppose it's a natural instinct ("inevitably"), especially if a character captures the public's imagination and you want to exploit it. It's probably born of the hit that Ledger made with his performance (even winning an Oscar for it), and it's an invitation to actors to go to extremes. With such a crazy character, how can anyone say you're wrong?   

Director-writer Todd Phillips (he of the "Hangover" movies) has an interesting choice. He sees The Joker born out of societal neglect, with a certain amount of psychological deficiency thrown in for good measure. We meet "The Man Who Would Be Joker" Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix, who is scary-good) as he's working his clown-job  spinning a sign for a store going out of business. He's accosted by street-kids who steal his sign and he gives chase, following them into an alley** where one of them smash the sign across his face and, once he's down, start kicking him, leaving him writhing and crying. Welcome to Gotham City, circa 1981 (judging by the music choices and a later theater marquee). There's a garbage strike and the city is looking shabbier than usual.

After that incident, Arthur is at a meeting with his counselor with the Department of Human and Health Services, who is doing the standard grilling about how things are going, can I see your journal, etc etc. Then, he gets a little truculent: "You don't listen, do you? You just ask the same questions every week. "How's you job?" "Are you having any negative thoughts?" All I have are negative thoughts." Arthur is not happy, although he tries to put on a happy face. He asks if he can have the dosage of his medication "upped" and is told, as if he didn't know, that he's on 7 medications already, but they don't seem to be doing any good. "I think I felt better locked up in the hospital." 

On the train home, he's sits sullenly in the back and notices that he's being stared at by a child. He smiles and starts to do some funny faces for the kid who giggles at the funny man. The child starts to giggle, which puts the kid's mom at alert. She turns around and tells Arthur to stop disturbing her child. The sequence is key. Arthur, out of nervousness, begins to laugh uncomfortably. He has a neurological-psychological condition that causes him to laugh-tourette's like—without any control. It's not a laugh that's contagious, inspiring other laughter. It sounds painful, and whether it's a natural condition or his attempt to suppress it, it has a similarity to gagging. It doesn't happen all the time, but it's not a laugh that inspires mirth.

For Arthur, laughter is something of a curse. But, then the whole world is something of a curse to Arthur. Living with his mother (Frances Conroy), who is clinging and supportive of her son), his joy is to slump home to her and they share watching Arthur's favorite show—a local talk show with host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Arthur watches, rapt, as he imagines being recognized by Franklin for his care for his Mother and his philosophy of making the world happy.

Arthur has a rich interior life, which will become apparent as you watch the movie. Phillips will take you down rabbit-holes that will mis-direct the audience into thinking they're reality. But. they are Arthur's reality, which is not reality at all, but a fantasy of his capability and his view of what his talents can actually achieve. 

It's a good little trick. We're seeing everything from Arthur's point-of-view, which is dependent on what he's being told, which is frequently a lie, a suspicion, or just plain crazy. He is frequently led to think one thing, suspect another, and then, forced into realizing a reality that had nothing to do with either. It begins to feel like he's living a lie, that he actually is a lie or even a delusion—to the point where he can't trust his fantasies and he can't trust his reality.

His world is a house of cards—all jokers—and it is tenuous at best, and fragile to the extreme. Arthur's hopes and dreams are built on flights of fancy and a certain amount of narcissism. He thinks he's giving the world joy, but he's basically seeking approval for his actions, some sort of acclaim. He wants his own love of himself to be reflected back to him.

That would be fine if he was in any film except Joker. For if there is a flaw in the film, it's that it steadfastly refuses to give a positive counter-point to the constant depiction of corruption, hatred, apathy, and nastiness that suffuses the film. In that, it betrays the comic-story that it is spun off from, and the film-inspirations from which it culls—and steals—its basic blue-print. 

Arthur puts a smile on young Bruce Wayne's face

At some point, everyone betrays Arthur, whether its his Mother, Murray Franklin, his neighbors and co-workers—everybody. And the movie goes so far as to add those attributes to one character who you'd think would be a bit more idealistic. That would be the character of Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen)—doctor, Gotham scion, and city-father (as well as the father of a young son, Bruce)—who has ambitions of becoming mayor, and who, rather than being a philanthropist, sees the poor and down-trodden as (wait for it) "clowns." A vigilante killing on a subway—committed by a clown-clad Arthur, Bernie Goetz-style—gets this response: "Gotham's lost its way. What kind of coward would do something that cold blooded? Someone who hides behind a mask." Oh, the bat-irony. Would this character inspire his son? Don't think so.

Arthur as hypocrite—ignoring someone in distress

The basic DNA of the story is not at all original—in fact, it is so unoriginal that everyone, even the most casual of movie-goer's, spots it. Joker takes a lot of its DNA from two of Martin Scorsese's most disturbing films—Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy (both starring Robert De Niro, of course)—Phoenix's Fleck is a combination of those film's protagonists, Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin, fringe-people who self-isolate as much as they are isolated, to avoid the conflicts with their world-view and who become dramatically unhinged without the benefit of perspective or inspiration. Both films share a jaded view of celebrity, as two seriously off-kilter and demented characters are ultimately—and mistakenly—seen by society at large as being heroes or celebrities. For Scorsese, with his Catholic roots, the films were imbued with a moralistic horror that we would come to this, and the very real perspective that this was wrong and something to be examined and rectified.

Joker has no such perspective. It has no such aspirations. It has no such ambiguity. It's a stacked deck—akin to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange—where the only reason we're drawn to its protagonist is that we're in his constant thrall, and everybody else in the film, antagonist or ally, is portrayed as loathsome and deserving of a beat-down. There is nothing that gets in the way of Arthur Fleck's demented vision, and, if there's nothing to make one feel extraordinary sympathy for the character, there is also nothing to suggest that he might be wrong, or punished for that matter, either. This Joker is just plain evil, and there are no consequences in sight. It's like watching a biography of Charlie Manson, but without the life imprisonment to let us sleep at night.

The fact of the matter is (and everybody associated with this movie should have realized it before they began this fool's errand), The Joker's a lousy character without The Batman to serve as contrast. In fact, without the latter, there really isn't need for the former. A villain makes a lousy hero.

Get thee to thy film-maker's editing room. Make him laugh at that.

Kyle Baker, Carmine Infantino and Alex Ross' Jokers

 Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right, Here I Am!

Ceasar Romero, Jack Nicholson, 

Heath Ledger, Jared Leto

Brian Bolland's definitive Joker

Marshall Roger's work on The Joker (Steve Engelhart does the words)

Yeah, Doesn't Seem So Funny NOW, Does It?

* Recently, it has been revealed in the comics that DC Creative Head Geoff Johns is doing a mini-series called "The Three Faces of The Joker" for its Black Label imprint. Not sure if it will explain anything in a way to make "continuitists" happy, so much as a way to explain away why the character is so different in different writers' hands. Then again, it might be just a way to drive comic-book sales.

** There will be another attack in an alley later in the film—in fact, there are enough parallel incidents with situations happening in two's that one might think it was the Harvey Dent story.