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All of Joker’s “Great Cinematography” hails from its homages to classic cinema that can be used as good desktop backgrounds. However, Phillips and Sher don’t seem to grasp why these images are iconic, they don’t grasp why the specific colors work. https://twitter.com/moviefan99_/status/1295439489423351809
All of Joker’s “Great Cinematography” hails from its homages to classic cinema that can be used as good desktop backgrounds. However, Phillips and Sher don’t seem to grasp why these images are iconic, they don’t grasp why the specific colors work. https://twitter.com/moviefan99_/status/1295439489423351809
The whole reason why certain scenes and certain shots are considered classic or iconic is that there is no better way to do them. So if Todd Phillips takes these shots and makes them brown and green, they automatically look worse.
Because color isn’t just a tool used to set a tone, it’s not just a part of the set, color is a part of the story being told. Taking shots from other stories and making them look like the other shots in your movie sounds like a good way to progress the story,
But it isn’t, it’s a lazy way to distract the audience from realizing that your story isn’t well told in the slightest, it’s a way to give people the illusion of quality. There isn’t a story in Joker, just a series of subplots set in settings covered by coffee stains
Phillips wants us to praise the cinematography because the shots are somewhat well composed, but they’re only well composed because someone else did them first. Changing the color changes the look, but it can also take away the meaning
I mean seriously, think about what the brown in Joker means, it means that Gotham is dirty.
Great.
But would the audience have been able to tell that if you didn’t remind them every 6 minutes that Gotham is dirty?
Great.
But would the audience have been able to tell that if you didn’t remind them every 6 minutes that Gotham is dirty?
No, because no matter what Phillips tells us, the colors aren’t being used properly. They’re telling us simply that Gotham needs to be cleaned up. This being both literal and figurative (the politics). And yet the riots are the brownest scenes.
Phillips can’t tell us the color is a character, the color has meaning, if he abandons said meaning when it becomes most important.
So he’s already stripped iconic shots of their meanings, but now he can’t give them their own, so they simply become static and pointless.
So he’s already stripped iconic shots of their meanings, but now he can’t give them their own, so they simply become static and pointless.
Cinematography isn’t just pictures, Cinematography is the characters, the story, the emotion. Cinematography does what words can’t.
When it’s pointless, the movie itself becomes pointless.
When it’s pointless, the movie itself becomes pointless.
