NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM
David Fincher says he believes 2019’s Joker to be “a betrayal of the mentally ill”.
The DC film, which starred Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, has received criticism since its release for its portrayal of mental illness, and was later crowned the most complained about movie of 2019.
In a new interview with The Telegraph, director Fincher, who made his big screen return this week with new film Mank, likened Joker to a “trap”.
‘I don’t think anyone would have looked at that material and thought, “Yeah, let’s take [Taxi Driver’s] Travis Bickle and [The King of Comedy’s] Rupert Pupkin and conflate them, then trap him in a betrayal of the mentally ill, and trot it out for a billion dollars’,” the director said.
Regarding Joker‘s record-breaking box office take, Fincher stated his belief that film studios “don’t want to make anything that can’t make them a billion dollars”.
Elsewhere in the same interview, Fincher revealed that he’s working on a new miniseries based around ‘cancel culture’.
“It’s about how modern society measures an apology,” he explained of the as-yet-unannounced project. “If you give a truly heartfelt apology and no one believes it, did you even apologise at all? It’s a troubling idea but we live in troubling times.”
In a five-star review, NME called Fincher’s new film Mank “one of the best films of 2020,” adding: “Fincher’s latest is a sophisticated drama that’s worth taking the time to get your head around. It’s about power and regret, alcoholism and wasted talent, movies and love.”
The post David Fincher says ‘Joker’ is “a betrayal of the mentally ill” appeared first on NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM.
