Quentin Tarantino has reflected on his experience watching Todd Phillips’ polarising Joker for the first time.
The auteur recently sat down with fellow director Edgar Wright as part of a special three-hour podcast for Empire. Whilst Tarantino was unmoved by the film as a whole, he sung the praises of one scene in particular.
Quentin Tarantino was particularly impressed by the climactic scene when Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker sits down for an interview on the Robert De Niro-portrayed Murray Franklin’s talk show. In which Fleck delivers a seething speech indicting a society that disregards the mentally ill before shooting Franklin in the head live on television.
“The subversion on a massive level, the thing that’s profound is this: It’s not just suspenseful, it’s not just riveting and exciting, the director subverts the audience because the Joker is a fucking nut,” Tarantino mused.
“Robert De Niro’s talk show character is not a movie villain. He seems like an asshole, but he’s not more of an asshole than David Letterman. He’s just an asshole comedian, talk show guy.”
He continued, “He’s not a movie villain. He doesn’t deserve to die. Yet, while the audience is watching the Joker, they want him to kill Robert De Niro; they want him to take that gun, and stick it in his eye and blow his fucking head off. And if the Joker didn’t kill him? You would be pissed off.
“That is subversion on a massive level! They got the audience to think like a fucking lunatic and to want [Arthur to kill Murray]. And they will lie about it! They will say, ‘no, I didn’t [want it to happen]!,’ and they are fucking liars. They did.”
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Quentin Tarantino went on to recall the tangible shift he felt in the cinema upon witnessing the scene unravel.
“It gets to the talk show scene, and you feel the entire atmosphere in the theater change,” Tarantino mused. “It’s not suspense, it’s beyond suspense,” he continued. “They are riveted. Everybody is completely plugged in. If you saw this movie on an aeroplane, if you watch this movie streaming, if you watch this movie on DVD, you didn’t fucking see the movie.”
“You got a handjob as opposed to having great sex. You got a handjob as opposed to a threesome.”
