The People’s Joker (2022)
Directed by Vera Drew
Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker will likely be many people’s favorite film of 2024. For the queer, transgender community, I can fathom that this will be their vade mecum; a pastiche trans coming-of-age story told as a parody, funneled through a perverse (and usually pretty funny) reimagination of Detective Comics’ favorite emo superhero, Batman. I was reminded of how I felt during Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, insofar that The People’s Joker is decidedly not for me: a straight, cis male of a certain age. That’s fine. After getting a handle on what this film is and how it goes about its story, I abandoned most of my critical instincts in favor of just permitting myself to explore Drew’s compelling worldview. While it’s not always for me, I can laud it for accomplishing one vital cinematic quality: it’s never boring.
The film’s framing device borrows from Night of the Hunter, where Joker the Harlequin (Vera Drew) addresses her audience directly, recounting her Smallville childhood and what it was like being reared by a domineering mother (Lynn Downey). Borrowing from Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, we’re first introduced to a censor bleep when Joker’s birthname/dead name is uttered, which is eventually used as a dramatic device, in a technique that I remain somewhat uncomfortable and skeptical about. Nevertheless, the film finds Joker attempting to get onto an SNL-style sketch show, where she eventually opts to pursue her own comic dreams, all while inhaling massive doses of Smylex, an antidepressant that etches a grin on her face. We see her flounder a bit before finding a tight-five routine that works for her, eventually leading to a romantic kinship with another Joker-type (of the Jared Leto variety), with Drew’s most perennially-online content emerging in these bits, where she dispenses with didactic Instagram-level platitudes on relationships, abuse, and narcissism
It’s a shoestring budget film, and as a result, it’s not especially pleasing to look at. Colors are garishly saturated, the mishmash of animated sequences and live-action green screen is often sloppy and inconsistent, and the gag of parodying a recognizable intellectual property loses its luster after about ten minutes. However, I hesitate to suggest that there’s no formal merit here, because what Drew does, in its maximalist excess, is quite impressive. Certain montage sequences in particular, in their visual abundance and swift editing technique, reminded me of Stan Brakhage, which, compounded with the litany of cinematic references that I haven’t even mentioned in this piece, suggests a deep understanding of the cinematic tradition that Drew is drawing from, and subsequently unravels what expectations one has from borrowing these techniques. Like with the aforementioned Barbie, I almost have to sit back and allow my expectations to be demolished because, as an object that is firmly entrenched in experiences that I do not share, it does have a few things to say that can broaden anyone’s perspective. I just wish Drew weren’t such a theater kid about it.