Joker is stunning – and that's no joke

You could be forgiven for imagining that nobody had ever, ever before made a film about a loner who turns violent, given some of the hyperbolic response to Todd Phillips’s new movie, Joker – a stand-alone origin story for the infamous villain in DC’s Batman universe.

The hysteria around Joker has been such that star Joaquin Phoenix walked out of an interview with The Telegraph when the reporter asked him if he thought that the film could inspire a shooter.

Quite apart from it seeming that, in the US at least, it doesn’t take much to inspire anyone with access to a gun – and while also being aware that a 2012 screening in Colorado of Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises saw James Eagan Holmes slaughter 12 people and cause another 70 to be injured – one can only assume that the Telegraph writer in question has never seen films such as, say, Taxi Driver.

But let’s set aside such stupidity and look at the film itself.

Arthur Fleck is a troubled individual: he has serious mental health issues and a condition that makes him laugh hysterically – even at completely inappropriate moments and irrespective of how he feels – yet Gotham is slashing the social services he desperately needs.

Struggling to keep a job, he’s treated poorly by colleagues, while trying to care for his ailing mother and work up the routines to become a stand-up comic.

Nothing goes according to plan and, as Gotham itself spirals toward chaos, with the rich establishment showing scant concern for the general citizenry, Arthur is caught in the crossfire. The results are both predictable and tragic.

Joker is dark art house meets comic book: Phillips has stated that the only real comic influence on his origin tale is that of Alan Moore’s comic book, The Killing Joke, which sees Joker as a failed stand up, but this goes far further.

It’s close to impossible to not empathise with Fleck’s appalling situation and not understand his eventual reaction. Indeed, this is key to why the film has such a satisfying emotional and intellectual complexity. Fleck is not, incidentally, an ‘incel’ and this is not a movie about those who identify as such. It is a film that shows a hyper-capitalist society that is failing badly, rejecting anyone who isn't a millionaire and descending into chaos.

It is a world in which anyone less than a member of some sort of entitled elite is ignored and neglected.

In terms of the DC universe, Joker also provides a nice counter to the idea of the privileged, entitled, conservative playboy vigilante Bruce Wayne.

In terms of the cast, Frances Conroy gives a subtle turn as Fleck’s mother, while Zazie Beetz as his neighbour lends real human warmth to the piece and Robert De Niro is excellent as a smarmy TV talk show host.

But ultimately, the film rests on Phoenix’s shoulders and wow … well, what can one say? It’s a stunning performance that, unless something really crazy happens, will be featuring big time come awards season.

You cannot take your eyes off him, from the opening scenes until the end. It is a mesmerising, monumental performance.

Lawrence Sher’s cinematography is superb – Gotham is shockingly claustrophobic even in the open air. Phillips’s screenplay and direction are excellent.

The use of music is also worth noting: the shift from easy listening to rock ‘n’ roll is superb in what it reflects – and I will never be able to hear Sinatra singing That’s Life in the same way again.

Ironically, in having not been made by DC Films, it is the best film made from a DC character. Ever.

This is a classic for our times – and my goodness, it feels utterly timely too.

Fabulous stuff. Possibly the film of the year – do not miss.

Zellweger shows us the isolation – and guts – of Judy

It’s not news that Judy Garland led a troubled life – or that her problems began as a child – but one of the things that Rupert Gould’s new film, Judy, does so well is to shine a light on those problems from a contemporary perspective of understanding about mental health and abuse.

It’s 1968 and Garland – pretty much unemployable and uninsurable in the US – is broke, homeless and about to lose custody of her two children by third husband Sid Luft.

Her only chance seems to lie in leaving them with their father in the US and taking up an offer of a season at the Talk of the Town in London.

But thousands of miles away, her problems remain.

In a series of flashbacks, we see gaslighting MGM boss Louis B Mayer during the filming of The Wizard of Oz, feeding her insecurities about her looks, while at the same time, she was being chronically overworked, forced to diet drastically and then given pills to quell her appetite/keep her awake/help her wake up – and sleeping tablets to allow her to sleep.

While it’s only barely noted here, her mother’s part in all this was not a positive one. It’s also a pertinent reminder that, while the studio system produced many great movies, it was also an abusive system of labour.

Tom Edge’s script in an intelligent one: it allows us to see and understand that, while Garland most certainly was “impossible,” the seeds of that had been sown long before she had any control over her own life.

While this is central to the film, it avoids making Garland a simplistic victim. She is vulnerable and emotionally frail, without doubts, but she also has guts. And, while she detests the “business,” once on a stage and with a loving audience, she comes alive. Most of all, this Judy is complex.

It’s possibly a good 10 minutes overlong. One could make the case that none of her relationships with other character is fully developed. Yet one of the things that the film achieves is to make clear the conflict between Garland’s desperate loneliness, her equally desperate desire for love and friendship – and her constant ability to push away those who care and want to help. This is isolation.

Jessie Buckley is excellent as Rosalyn, the woman charged with looking after her in London; Rufus Sewell turns in a neat, nuanced performance as Luft, Michael Gambon appears as impresario Bernard Delfont, Richard Cordery is suitably slimy as Mayer, Royce Pierreson is excellent as bandleader Burt and there is a delightful performance from Andy Nyman as a gay fan.

But ultimately, the film rests on Renée Zellweger – and expect to see her deservedly in the awards nominations lists next year.

This is no impersonation, but what she conjures is a really deep sense of the internal struggle in Garland: this is a woman caught between performance (even if dealing with hotel staff or a doctor), the pain of not having her children with her, her own self-doubt, her need for friendship and support, and her inability to maintain any meaningful relationship.

In the stage performances, Zellweger is more than equal to the task.

Garland was an extraordinarily gifted performer. This year is the 50th anniversary of her death – as well as being the 80th anniversary of the iconic Wizard of Oz.

Judy makes one wonder if, given the abusive conditions under which it was made and Garland’s career created, it is acceptable to watch the latter. Yet her films remain her legacy and continue to give joy. It is a positive from a negative.

At the end of the film, she asks the audience: “You won’t forget me, will you? Promise you won’t.”

No. We won’t. And the films are precisely what will ensure that her iconic status continues.

The wonderful ... WONDERFUL Wizard of Oz

We didn’t go to the cinema a lot when I was child, but memory suggests that the most regular period for family film-going was from around about 1968-1971 when we lived in west London and would pop over the river to a cinema in Putney. It was during that period I saw Disney’s Snow White on re-release – and was terrified.

This was still the era of two-film programmes: Snow White was my first cinema trip and it was paired, if I remember correctly, with MGM’s Tom Thumb (Russ Tamblyn, Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers et al).

It seems fairly safe to think that I saw The Wizard of Oz at around this time – 1969 would have marked the 30^th anniversary of the film’s release and explain why it was back in cinemas.

Wizard of oz t captured my imagination then and has never stopped being an important part of my cultural life since – which includes being in two stage productions (as the Mayor of Munchkinland in a girls’ school production and later, as the Wicked Witch of the West, before you ask).

Last weekend, The Other Half and I went to our usual cinema to watch a single screening for the 80^th anniversary.

I know the film so well that I can mouth along with the songs and a load of the lines, but seeing it on the big screen for the first time in ... gulps ... 50 years was a fascinating experience.

Being in a cinema makes you pay closer attention than if you’re watching at home, with all the distractions. Never before, then, had I really appreciated Harold Rosson’s cinematography – particularly in the opening sepia section of the film.

As times change and history moves on, you can view cultural works through a changing prism.

Today, Frank Morgan’s blustering conman wizard seems like a harbinger of politicians and political leaders for whom bluster and empty rhetoric is all they have.

Terry the cairn terrier – cast first and paid best of all her co-players – really is more than a set-dressing. She’s in is much of the film. Apparently, when she broke a paw during filming, she convalesced at Judy Garland’s home – and Garland desperately tried to adopt her.

Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West remains scary – there is nothing to make her more ‘child friendly’ at any stage. There’s nothing to blunt the fact that, for instance, she is a torturer – not least in her psychological torture of Dorothy as the film builds to a climax.

And so to Dorothy and Garland’s iconic performance. Somewhere Over the Rainbow retains its magic – not least in her rendition.

She produced an extraordinary performance: there is nothing brattish about Dorothy: she’s a serious young girl – an orphan with (apparently) no friends of her own age; vulnerable at the same time as being self-reliant and with a simple yet strong sense of what’s right and what’s not.

There is an extent to which The Wizard of Oz is like Casablanca: there are many ways in which it shouldn’t work – or at least, not have travelled well down the decades.

The message of there being “no place like home” is twee and limiting. The film as a whole is arguably over long and, with the introductions of the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion, repetitious.

And yet, and yet ...

At the cinema we went to, a new generation was seeing it on a big screen for the first time

Eight decades on, The Wizard of Oz defies so much and, in retaining its own magic, reveals for us again why cinema as a whole can be such a magical experience.

Ad Astra: cinema that reaches for the stars

In the near future, the Solar System is being hit by power surges from an unknown source, causing increasing damage and loss of life on Earth. Surviving one incident, astronaut Major Roy McBride is assigned a secret mission.

McBride’s father, H Clifford McBride, had long been thought dead, together with the Lima Project that he was commanding on the journey to Neptune to look for alien life.

But now Roy is told that the surges may be coming from the ship that carried that team – and that his father might still be alive. His mission is to travel to Mars, from where he will try to make contact and find out what is happening and what (if anything) can be done to stop the surges.

Inspired by Heart of Darkness, Ad Astra has inevitably drawn comments about its similarity to Francis Coppola’s 1979 epic, Apocalypse Now – hardly surprising, though, given the shared starting point of Joseph Conrad’s novel.

But written and directed by James Gray, this is light years from being some sort of a remake. 

It is a very different kind of space opera: there are few explosions and plenty of time – it’s excellently paced – to give us a sense of the infinite vastness of space and the almost choking awareness of our own smallness. 

 At once an intimate portrait of a parent-child relationship and also an existentialist meditation both on the meaning of our own, individual lives and also our world, there are myriad threads here. Gray’s targets include our insatiable desire to desecrate nature and and crass consumerism.

The first leg of Roy’s journey is to the Moon, via a commercial space flight. One wonders if Virgin Atlantic knew, when they (presumably) gave permission/paid to have their branding used at this point, that a scene would have flight crew charging rip-off prices for the additional comfort of a blanket and pillow.

While Gray doesn’t over-egg the idea, science is perceived as only offering humanity so much: it comes with dangers, while many of the answers lie within ourselves. Indeed, one can also see the nods here to another iconic Coppola film, in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Ad Astra is the antithesis of macho adventure films, taking on ideas of emotional engagement, vulnerability and mental health. Indeed, the casting of Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland in the same film for the first time since they starred in Clint Eastwood’s 2000 astronaut romp, Space Cowboys, could be viewed as a comment that the time for such a view of masculinity is over.

On a rather less intellectual level, cult film junkies will spot a reference fo John Carpenter’s 1974 sci-fi comedy-drama, Dark Star.

Visually stunning, it’s hard not to imagine Hoyte van Hoytema’s name not being in the frame for cinematography gongs come award season, while Max Richter’s score is pitch perfect.

The performances are excellent: Brad Pitt is really at the top of his game as a the emotionally crippled son, all coiled control and desperate restraint, while Jones never goes into panto territory as his father. Sutherland’s cameo is enjoyable.

If I have one regret it’s that we see so little of Ruth Negga. Her role as the director of the Mars base is small but important, and she gives it the heft required.

But that aside, Ad Astra is a really fine, grown-up film – and one that will stick in the mind for a very long time.

Monday in the park with Loki – or meet the raven

Loki and me – that grin is really not an everyday one

It was last year, reading Joe Shute’s A Shadow Above: the fall and rise of the raven, that I first came across Loki and Coda Falconry.

While I haven’t written much about it here, I have a thing about ravens – those huge, deeply intelligent birds, steeped in mythology, but also a source of fear across the globe.

The Norse god, Odin the Allfather, feared that there would be a day when his newsgathering corvids, Huginn (knowledge) and Muninn (memory), would not return.

In March 2016, after a trip to the Tower of London specifically to go raven spotting, I wrote that there was something poetic in the idea of a god that feared losing memory. While scholars have suggested that that originally refers to a fear of not returning from a shamanistic trance, for us, it can seem poignantly like the fear of dementia.

Little over a year later, after my mother had died suddenly, it started to become clear that Dad was suffering from more than ‘forgetfulness’, as his GP blithely insisted. The ravens had flown and the mists were descending rapidly.

As we slipped into the final autumn of his life and the hospital visits became more and more frequent, I would ritualistically greet the crows that hung around the hospital itself and in the open field opposite. The ancient belief in a link between death and the cawing corvids seemed alive, yet their presence was almost reassuring.

With Dizzy, a beautiful (if brainless) barn owl

I have seen ravens in the wild since that Tower visit: in Bavaria, circling the medieval towers of Rothenburg ob der Tauber in the early spring sunshine, and kronking away from a rooftop opposite our hotel.

Last autumn, speeding past Thurrock on a train, I caught a glimpse of a pair. There had been countless crows in the fields as we passed. Then these two birds on their own, so obviously much bigger, yet (as much as I could ascertain in seconds), about as near to tracks as the crows had been.n

Later, a friend with a great deal of expertise in birding told me that, if I had such a strong gut response, then I was probably right. And as Shute’s book makes clear, ravens are making a comeback.

Loki is a rescue raven. When he arrived at Coda, he was clearly traumatised and deeply unhappy.

Yes, yes – that’s discussing a bird in terms of emotions. Not so long ago, to do as much would have been dismissed as the near heresy of anthropomorphism, but the science world is finally learning about non-human species in terms of emotion and intelligence. No longer are people who talk of their cats and dogs the only ones who contemplate such things – and while it brings it’s own challenges, it’s also a welcome end to a particular kind of species-based exceptionalism.

It took time and considerable dedication for falconer Elliot Manarin to gain his trust – and Elliot still bears the physical scars. But Loki is now very much a part of team Coda and you can arrange to meet him.

Star, a saker falcon, on my fist. How beautiful!

So, last December, The Other Half gave me a birthday present of vouchers to do precisely that – and to enjoy a half-day falconry experience beforehand.

We finally managed to get booked in a couple of months ago and on Monday, made our way up London’s Lee Valley to the falconry, which sits within the Lee Valley Park Farms. It’s a very pleasant walk from Cheshunt station to the site, across part of the Lee Valley Country Park (with lots of birds).

The OH was there to film and shoot. We were with a small group and were led by head falconer Emily Corless and falconer Paul Ryder, spending time first with Teo, a young (and very noisy) aplomado falcon, then Dizzy, an exquisitely beautiful barn owl who is Emily’s favourite (though obviously she doesn't really have any favourites).

In both cases, the group took turns to have the birds fly to their gloved fist to collect raw meat (this is not an experience for the squeamish).

Then Paul and Emily took us into nearby fields and woodland with Griff, a 14-year-old harris hawk.

Unusually, these hawks hunt in groups – and in a situation such as our walk, regard the humans with them as being that group. Griff flew straight from his box into a tree and then followed us as we walked on, with Paul setting food on fists to get him to come down, showing us a variety of his flying skills.

This got a little more complex at one point as the rain came on and Griff refused to come to the fist – until substantial food was available (a mouse).

Back at the falconry, we met Freya, a snowy owl, as she flew to us for food.

Feeding Loki cat biscuits

Then it was the turn of Star, a saker falcon. First, Emily used a lure (food on a rope, in essence) spinning it around to exercise the bird and give us the chance to admire her flying abilities. Then, giving a call of “ho!” she let the lure go. Star caught it in mid air and took it to the ground to eat.

In turn, in a “trade off” as it’s known in the falconry world, Star was then encouraged to fly to each of us in turn with more food.

A display for people visiting the farm park followed with Eclipse, a rare black barn owl, Rico, a three-year-old harris hawk, Storm, a peregrine/gyr/barbary falcon, and Otis, a tiny sunda scops owl.

Then we were given certificates and everyone left, bar the OH and me.

Now was the moment.

Outside, Paul opened Loki’s enclosure and he flew out to his little toy piano, where he hit the keys with his beak until receiving cat biscuits as a reward. He prefers the cat biscuits to the bits of chicken that I held in a gloved hand so that he’d fly up to me.

I’d been near to Merlina at the Tower, but having a raven on your fist – and then hopping around on your shoulders – is entirely another matter. They are seriously big birds – and magnificent too; iridescent blues and greens and purples visible in their feathers as a they move.

There were further toys – including one he had only seen once or twice before: but with bewildering speed, he knew how to open boxes, use leavers and remove pieces in order to get at biscuits.

The intelligence is clear. Having read about the toys, I had half wondered if it was a tad exploitive – as with a circus animal. But once you understand a corvid’s need for stimulation, it becomes clear that this is not remotely exploitation.

He is mischievous too. In the picnic area next door, Emily had parked herself in case he spotted food. It had rained, so surely there was little risk? But then a family arrived and one child pulled a cheese and ham sandwich out. Loki was there in seconds – no aggressive behaviour – with Emily having to dive in to usher him back.

Back in his enclosure, with me feeding him cat biscuits, he showed us how he stashes his food. He’ll store it as much as possible in his beak and then, when he thinks nobody is watching, bury it beneath the small stones on the floor. He does this outside too, but that can end up in infuriation when other corvids (magpies, crows) see – and dig up the food when he’s safely back in his pen.

We left for the walk back to Cheshunt and the train home. All the birds were magnificent, but as Paul and Emily noted, for birds of prey, the only thing that matters is food (and breeding, presumably): they don’t really have intelligence or emotions. Indeed, contrary to popular perception, owls are “stupid,” Emily told our small group early on.

As Paul noted during the public display later, when you can fly silently and have the hearing and sight they do, you don’t really need much in the brain department.

Loki is a bird of a different feather. And I will absolutely be visiting again. I am in love and in awe – and for me at least, this corvid affair has nothing to do with death, but very much the opposite.

• Find out more at codafalconry.co.uk, www.facebook.com/codafalconry/, at Loki's own Facebook page – www.facebook.com/lokitraven/ – and twitter.com/CodaFalconry and as @CodaFalconry on Instagram too.

• Joe Shute's superb book about ravens is readily available. I highly recommend it – and you can follow him on twitter.com/JoeShute. Read an article he penned for the Telegraph about Loki here.

A bona read!

Fabulosa! The Story of Britain's Secret Gay Language

Paul Baker

Reaktion Books

‘How bona to vada your dolly old eke!’ If you know what this means – or at least recognise something about the words – then a new publication from Reaktion Books might well be for you. If you don’t, then it still might be for you. 

But there is a proviso: Fabulosa! The Story of Britain's Secret Gay Language by Paul Baker will make some people uncomfortable. Polari, a slang that was used predominantly by theatre workers and camp gay men (mostly working class), was not for prudes.

The sentence that opens this post means ‘how nice to see your lovely old face.’ So nothing to worry anyone there.

But here’s another phrase I can remember without making an effort to learn: ‘Scharda there’s nada to vada in the larder’.

Literally, ‘a shame there’s nothing to see in then larder’. Euphemistically: ‘a shame he’s got a small penis’.

It’s a highly sexualised code and full of bitchy potential.

But then, as Baker explains, it was used by people who were outlaws within UK society – derided and persecuted on the basis of who they fancied/had sex with and how they presented. And Polari was not only an incredibly important way to communicate discretely, it also had a sense of in-your-face ‘fuck ’em’ in its bitchiness.

Baker, who has spent 25 years studying his subject, starts this book by carefully explaining the sort of technical stuff about what constitutes a language and, indeed, how Polari developed and from what roots. 

That’s fascinating enough – and it most certainly is – but in many ways, the book really gets into its stride when he starts to look deeper into why it developed: why, indeed, it was needed and what it gave to its users.

Polari has all but died out as a gay language since the end of the 1960s – partly because of decriminalisation (although Baker makes clear that that was far from the magic pill it can sound like now), but that that  also came at the end of its greatest prominence, when used as part of the Julian and Sandy sketches in the classic radio comedy, Round the Horne.

Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick were the eponymous pair: Baker interviewed co-writer Barry Took late in the latter’s life, and Took makes clear that the duo were the ones who knew Polari and fed that into the sketches. Took was apparently also rather shocked at some of the (possible) double, double meanings Williams in particular seems to have contributed, not least via ad-libbing.

But that actually emphasis how playful Polari was … how playful it IS.

One of the gay-friendly pubs in London, from the first half of the 20th century, that Baker mentions in the book – the Royal Oak on Columbia Road – was the first place I heard Polari: drinking with gay men who rattled off bits of Julian and Sandy as late as the 1990s.

I’ve long loved the camp bitchy thing – Priscilla, Queen of the Desert remains a favourite film, as does Victor/Victoria (even if the latter is not quite so camp bitchy). I don’t generally do personal ‘pride’ in much – but I do remain bloody chuffed with a couple of times I set the Oak crowd roaring with a comment.

Fabulosa! is an easy read – in places, very, very funny. But it is also a welcome social history that is a reminder of what gay men in the UK faced.

Very much recommended.