I will be looking the opening scene of Joker. Joker has been released in 2019. The Director of it is Todd Philips, the casting includes Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro and Zazie Beetz. It was produced by Warner Bros. Pictures with a budget of $70 million.
The tone and the genre has been set straight away in the opening scene. The dim and noisy environment with the diegetic sound effect of the local news underneath it gives an unsettling tone.
The handheld shooting gives a unstable feeling. From the extreme close up, we can see the facial expression on Arthur. He is putting the joker’s makeup on. From the action of forcibly pulling the corners of his mouth, we can feel a strong sense of depression on him. As he lifted the corner of his mouth vigorously, the tear remained with the dizzy makeup. Here can emphasise and express his inner pain, he has a very contradiction emotion. From his facial expression and the movements, he is clearly depresses and sad.
However, his job is to be the joker which can only express the happiness and joy. This link to the next scene with a simple straight cut, while Arthur becomes the Joker and suddenly creates a fake happy and joyful atmosphere by the diegetic music form a piano. Although in the opening scene, there wasn’t any thriller scene, the fighting scene in the end suggests the crime. This might be a hint to the thriller part later in the film. The genre of the film might be drama, crime and thriller. The unsettling and depressive tone gives the sort of slow, ramp up into insanity. Based on the genre and the tone, I think the target audience for this film might be adults and teenagers around 16 to 18. Because this contains some uncomfortable and sad atmosphere. Also, it includes the bullying and fighting parts which suggest the crime scene. In addition, from the opening scene we can feel the stress and exhaustion of Arthur in life, which may make it easier for adults to empathise.
Through this extract, we can clearly know the main character is Arthur, because he has most of the screen time. I think what surprised me the most is the transition from Arthur to Joker. At first, Arthur is in the lounge and putting his joker makeup on. We can see that he is separate from others, sitting alone in front of the mirror.
From his facial expression and the position, he expressed a depressing and lonely emotion. By the use of the depth of field, emphasises his own repression and contradiction. His silent contract with the noisy diegetic ambient sound in the background. Also, the light in this theme is dim. These connote a sad and lonely atmosphere. Then the scene changed by a sound bridge which is from non-diegetic to diegetic.
While the music starts to play, Arthur becomes the Joker. The setting changed to the busy market of Gotham.
The visual representation of the joker outfit such as the green hair and the big shoes suggests Arthur is pretending the Joker because of his job. The emotion changed to joy and happiness as the Joker can be express the positive emotion to ours. Joker appeared by the music. But even if the emotion he expressed was happy at the beginning, he was immediately bullied by a group of people. Even though he and others ask for help, at most marginalised people like him will only make people look back. Here connotes the hard and pain of his life as reflected in the indifference of the people at that time.
From the long tracking shot while they are running, the buildings behind them are very close, they have no space between which connotes the pressure and oppressive felling. Later on, there is a very special camera angle while the people are hitting Arthur. This is a high angle shot but with a strange tilt which looks like a frame in the graphic novel.
This shot make Arthur more helpless and weak. Other characters like the people that bullied Arthur are presented as bully and bad, they are opposite with Arthur. In summary, it seems that the emotions and atmospheres expressed by these two scenes are different. One is dim, quiet and autistic, however the other is lively, happy and bright. But both of them connotes the difficult life of the protagonist Arthur and his oppressive feeling.
The opening ends with Arthur wearing the Joker’s makeup and lying in a broken alley and the large yellow title. For the following story lines, I supposed that Arthur was bullied and beaten at the beginning, and there may be a reversal later. His depressed heart and forbearance all the time may explode one day. Moreover, the change might cause a serous consequence which may lead to the crime and thrill later. I suppose that there might be a oppressive feeling throughout the whole movie.
To conclude, I think the opening scene is really successful and it engaged me a lot. The whole story line at the beginning can fully express Arthur’s emotions and characteristics. In addition, the different settings and the musics lead us into the story more.
I think the story line and the ending scene left us a lot of suspense. In addition to worrying about Arthur, we will also look forward to whether he will fight back and take revenge in the future. Will he resist this kind of meaningless and painful life later in the film? Just looking at this opening will make me very interested in the plot that follows. Furthermore, from the details and good shooting techniques and narration of the story, I think this is an extremely successful beginning for a film.
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