“My life isn’t a tragedy: it’s a comedy.”
I started thinking about this line a bit more recently after my friend Evan said we’re not supposed to take Joker seriously. I brushed him off, telling him that Todd Phillips took the film painfully seriously in interviews. I stood my ground externally, but internally, a seed of doubt was planted. Was Evan right? Is Joker not the pretentious drama I thought it was? Was it really a comedy in disguise? That could work, as there are elements that almost seem like jabs at other films like it that take themselves seriously (not clarifying Arthur’s mental illness(es), his mother being so mentally ill that it’s over the top, etc.). Is Joker secretly a parody of the film we all shunned or praised it to be?
There’s one big problem with this theory: Todd Phillips. I don’t know if the man is smart enough to pull this off. I mean, he did direct The Hangover trilogy after all, and the rest of his filmography doesn’t fare much better. Does this seem like the type of director that can pull off such an intricate and subtle prank? Not really, no. Even when you look at interviews he seems extremely proud of the Serious Drama he put into theaters. It all lines up; edgy bad comedy director’s first foray into drama is also edgy and bad. But then again, this is his latest film. Could he have evolved as a filmmaker? Is his commitment to the bit that good? Could he have grown more brain cells in the time between that Jonah Hill movie he made and writing Joker? I don’t know.
I’ll be honest with you guys, I was going to test out this hypothesis; I was going to re-watch Joker with the mindset that it was a subtle dark comedy. However, I’ve had this sitting in my drafts for months and couldn’t bring myself to re-watch the movie, eventually forgetting about this little experiment. So, like, I guess the world will never know.
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