I’ll start with the season’s most
controversial and polarizing film.
Winner of the “golden lion” at the
Venice film festival, it’s helmed by Todd Phillips (best known for “The
Hangover” trilogy) and features a no holds barred performance by a skeletal Joaquin
Phoenix in the role of Arthur Fleck, a bitter unhappy middle-aged loner who
lives with his ailing mother Penny (Frances Conroy) in a grungy apartment. The
scene is a rat-infested New York/Gotham City circa 1981 during a garbage strike. Among Arthur’s afflictions is an uncontrolled
maniacal cackle that is more grimacing cry of pain than laughing fit. The mother used to work for the wealthy Wayne
family which leads to a backstory connection to the comic legend of Batman (aka
Bruce Wayne) with the Joker as nemesis. Channeling allusions to Martin Scorsese’s
Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, Arthur, who aspires to be a standup comedian,
is also obsessed with a late night TV talk-show host Murray Franklin (played by
Robert De Niro no less).
Working as a
clown Arthur gets badly beaten in an early scene after which a coworker gives
him a gun. That leads to an incident that gets Arthur fired. You just know that he is set to snap, with
the first murderous consequences on a subway train. Adversity and humiliations set
the stage for more lethal incidents to come.
Arthur’s social services are cut. His failed attempt at standup comedy
gets held up to ridicule. As Arthur’s derangement deepens he transforms into
the character of “joker”. He becomes a vigilante
antihero—the avenging instrument against a corrupt and uncaring society. As protestors don clown masks there’s an
attempt to portray this as a revolt against the 1%. But Arthur’s personal “joker” nihilism
eschews any politics even as he revels in incendiary scenes of mob violence.
His fraught relations with black women bring another disturbing undertow to
this fable of extreme alienation.
In sum, this is
such a dark, dire, and depressing picture it may leave you with a mental
hangover. It’s not a movie I can say I
like but there’s no denying it makes a powerful impression on the strength of
an acting achievement that’s no laughing matter. A-
Before You Know It (US
2019)
Set in a much less threatening New York
City, this debut feature by actor-director Hannah Pearl Utt revolves
around two sisters Rachel and Jackie
Gurner trying to hold on to their home and Greenwich Village theatre after the
untimely passing of their father Mel (played by theatre legend Mandy Patinkin).
Only then do they discover that the mother they long thought was dead is very
much alive and a co-owner of the theatre. Sherrelle (a delightful Judith Light,
also in the wacky eighth episode of Netflix’s “The Politician”) turns out to be
a flamboyant soap opera diva who invites them into her world. The sisters are a
study in contrasts. The flighty Jackie (Jen Tullock), who has a precocious
12-year old daughter, wears skimpy revealing outfits. Sensible Rachel (Utt) goes about in shapeless
dark attire, except for one occasion when given an extreme makeover by Sherrelle.
Gentle comedy gets teased out through the sometimes awkward interactions among
three generations of women as the sisters try to preserve their father’s legacy
and find a way for the show to go on. B+
This fascinating documentary directed by
Adam Bolt is a deep dive into the promise and perils of genetic engineering
that have emerged out of the discovery of a revolutionary gene editing
technology known as CRISPR which stands for “clustered regularly interspaced
short palindromic repeats”. Bolt uses
archival footage, interviews, and science-based sequences with graphic
illustrations to show how years of research on gene therapy and microbiological
resistance have produced breakthroughs in altering genetic code using a protein
called “cas9” and RNA molecules. The
possibilities for making changes to the human genome raise profound ethical
questions. The positive side would see using CRISPR to eliminate genetic
disorders that cause serious life-threatening conditions. For example, one of the subjects is a young
boy with sickle cell anemia. And we see Asian researchers working on genetically
modified pigs that could supply organs for human transplants. But could
“editing” human embryos also lead to a “brave new world” eugenics of “designer
babies”, to in effect “playing God” by altering human evolution. Reference is made to the controversial work
of geneticist George Church on the prospects for reverse engineering human
ageing or bringing back extinct species like the woolly mammoth. Is this welcome progress or a slippery slope in
the direction of dystopian science fiction? As biological science continues to
extend the frontiers of genetic manipulation, societies will have to come to
terms with issues that challenge our very understanding of being human. A
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