There are actors who disappear and reappear at the least unexpected moment. It happened with John Travolta, thanks to Tarantino, in "Pulp Fiction". And he happened in much the same way with Joaquin Phoenix in the Joker, the most acidic Batman villain ever written.
A similar effect, a resurgence of great seismic intensity in both cases. And great actors never stop being great. Only that the industry sometimes forgets about them and in that bitterness that can last for years it seems as if these great performers were burdened with even greater interpretive records once the abandonment was known.
It is also true that, in the case of Joaquin, his beginnings in the cinema had that intention of a charming face with which to arouse adolescent frenzy. And perhaps that hindered his career in some way. But it may also be that after his early success he led himself to that less kind side to which the most adverse family circumstances pushed him, tracing that trip to the wild side from which to import, without wanting it at all, interpretive registers far removed from what had played.
Because Joaquin Phoenix evokes a current Dorian Gray capable of the most abysmal gaze, as of a bottomless fall or possible glimpse of light. While the other Joaquin Phoenix can recover in an instant the blue glow of his eyes to achieve the most unexpected metamorphosis and appear as the stereotypical charming actor. The most chameleon actor of our days, without a doubt.
Top 3 Recommended Joaquin Phoenix Movies
Joker
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:A brutal interpretation that makes the tragic and the most bitter support to reconstruct the character who in the future will be Batman's archenemy. And Batman is a very distant echo in the movie, like a dream that can barely be suspected among the sleaze, animosity, mental illness, abuse and everything worst that can be imagined hanging over a human being like the sword of Damocles.
Joaquin Phoenix lost a lot of kilos to show us that back traced by the marked rosary of his vertebrae, so that the clown's baggy clothes suggest an impossible body, a bag of bones. Beyond the physical, Joaquin culminates his masterpiece with a look that goes from incomprehension, from mental confusion to madness and hatred.
Under the stigma of this character in whose portrayal Heath Ledger died, Joaquin Phoenix extracts all the essences to catapult the Joker into the category of myth in cinema, the worst of all villains, coming from the hells of very close underworlds where his own human beings end up erecting it with their painful guilt in destruction made flesh.
The master
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:Considering an argument around a sect, with all its sociological derivatives in the first instance but also religious, psychological and moral, has a point of unsettling fragility. Because there remains the notion that we can all be cannon fodder, at some given moment, and succumb to the charlatan of the day and his messianic delirium.
Counting on a Joaquin Phoenix already quite back from everything, after a year 2010 in which his autobiographical film taught us in his most disturbing nudity of the soul, was a success. Succumbing to according to what centripetal forces around the most nullifying shit and waking up in a furious feeling of having been anesthetized against all the pains in the world to take advantage of the most cynical. Joaquin makes this film the perfect plea for awakening after an alienation that may seem distant but is always lurking.
We are not all war veterans in the purest American style, with a multitude of men still young but isolated and even plagued by their traumas and their difficult reintegration. Alcohol, decadence, perdition and that spark, the opportunity for the beaten dog to find in a new master the reason for him to move on...
You were never really here
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:In his recurrent mimicry between wounded, beaten, punished or traumatized characters, the friend Phoenix is not burdensome but quite the opposite. It would be something like watching your team win each and every one of their games. Always the same, yes, but it's never enough because every role is that fucking work of art. Each new character arrived from the hells of Dante brings new things.
On this occasion the idea may seem hackneyed. The modern and urban avenger that we could associate with stereotypes such as Clint Eastwood on the streets of New York through Bruce Willis in a thousand jungles of glass or even Chuck Norris if we get silly. But Joaquin Phoenix would not know how to do it with the monotone profile of a hero who provides us with security and tranquility beyond some disturbing moment. Phoenix turns his mission for good into a cause on another level, a fight in which to give up his soul if necessary...
Basically it is like this because as the movie progresses we discover those flashes of lightning that reveal Joe's true motives for doing what he does, whether to atone for his own sins or to scare away ghosts that insist on releasing old fears... Because yes, deep down, Everything could be a dubious fantasy that does not make it clear to us if he was here and if so much violence has the sole meaning of justice or if something else escapes us.
Other recommended Joaquin Phoenix movies
Napoleon
AVAILABLE HERE:Nobody better than Joaquin to play Napoleon. That's what Ridley Scott must have thought. Surely because of having represented Commodus, the Roman emperor from Gladiator, so insanely well. And without a doubt Joaquin takes all the shine in this film. Necessarily to camouflage the historical excesses carried out by scriptwriters and others.
But of course, it is also true that if we go to see Napoleon at the cinema it is not because we want them to tell us about his stomach ulcers or about his retirements or exiles writing sonnets with his feet on the shores of the Mediterranean. People go to the movies to see Dantesque battles, brilliant conquests and monstrous defeats. In other words, Ridley Scott was going, yes or yes, to get his hands on History to adjust it to plot needs.
But the thing is that if you stop behaving like a purist and tearing your clothes, you can consider that it is a free interpretation, an evocation, an inspiration towards fiction capable of captivating viewers longing for violence and epic. And yes, having Joaquin is a guarantee that the almost three hours will keep you with your stomach in knots.
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