VENICE, Sept 8, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – “Joker”, a daring take on the comic book
villain starring Joaquin Phoenix, won the Golden Lion for best film at the
Venice film festival Saturday with Roman Polanski controversially taking
second prize.
It is the first superhero film ever to get this kind of arthouse kudos,
and could now be on its way to Oscar glory.
The last two Venice winners — “Roma” and “The Shape of Water” — have
gone on to lift the best picture Academy Award.
US director Todd Phillips — best known up to now for the slapstick comedy
“Very Bad Trip” — paid tribute to Phoenix’s intense performance, saying he
was “the fiercest, bravest and most open-minded lion that I know”.
“Thank you for trusting me with your insane talents,” he said.
The movie, which The Guardian had described as “one of the boldest
Hollywood productions for some time”, has already sparked a heated debate.
And there were audible gasps when French-Polish director Polanski — a
pariah in Hollywood after his rape conviction — was handed the Grand Prix
second prize for his Dreyfus Affair drama, “An Officer and a Spy”.
– ‘Irresponsible propaganda?’ –
Within hours of the “Joker” premiere, some warned that Phoenix’s full-
throttle portrait of a needy, embittered clown who lives with his mother
could empower incels (or involuntary celibates) — the angry, misogynist
young men who have been blamed for so much far-right and white supremacist
violence.
Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson worried that it was “exhilarating in the most
prurient of ways, a snuff film about the death of order, about the rot of a
governing ethos”.
He feared that it “may be irresponsible propaganda for the very men it
pathologises”.
But most critics disagreed, with Variety’s Owen Gleiberman saying Phoenix
has remade Batman’s arch-enemy as a “Method psycho, a troublemaker so intense
in his cuckoo hostility that even as you’re gawking at his violence, you
still feel his pain”.
Other reviews were equally ecstatic, and a sequel with Robert Pattinson
playing the Joker’s nemesis Batman is said to be in the offing.
Phoenix reportedly lost more than 23 kilos (52 pounds) to play the part.
Phillips defended his film saying the jury “understood what we were trying
to say, and I hope that translates”.
– Polanski wins second prize –
But almost as many headlines are likely to be made by Polanski’s win.
Having spent most of his life as a fugitive from American justice, he was
accused of drawing “obscene” parallels between himself and the persecuted
French Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus, who was the victim of anti-
semitism and a miscarriage of justice around the turn of the 20th century.
Polanski, 86, has been shunned by the big studios for decades after he was
convicted of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.
His inclusion in the main Venice competition, which included only two
female directors, sparked fury from feminists.
The French-Polish auteur and Holocaust survivor did not show up at the
festival, leaving his wife, French actress Emmanuelle Seigner — who also
appears in the film — to pick up his prize to muted applause and a few
isolated boos.
She later told reporters that her husband was “very happy” with his win,
saying the “film was very important to him”. The head of the Venice jury,
Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel, had boycotted a gala dinner for
Polanski, only to be forced to clarify that she was not prejudiced against
his film.
– Jagger blasts Trump, Johnson –
In a year fraught with controversy over sexual politics, festival director
Alberto Barbera was also accused of being “tone deaf” for his inclusion of a
Black Lives Matter drama by the American Nate Parker, who was embroiled in a
rape trail while at university, as well as the director’s cut of Gasper Noe’s
2002 rape shocker “Irreversible”.
Politics also dominated the awards ceremony with the best actor and
actress winners — Italy’s Luca Marinelli (“Martin Eden”) and France’s Ariane
Ascaride (“Gloria Mundi”) dedicating their awards to the migrants who “rest
forever at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea”.
Both films contained references to people fleeing poverty and persecution.
Donald Sutherland, the star of the festival’s closing film, “The Burnt
Orange Heresy”, had earlier appealed to reporters to support the migrants’
cause.
His co-star, Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger, made a rare foray into
politics to attack US President Donald Trump for his rudeness, lies and
tearing up environmental controls in the US.
He also bewailed “the polarisation and incivility in public life” in his
native Britain, pointing the finger at its rookie prime minister, Boris
Johnson.