When they released it, they didn’t introduce it as a joker, but well – Joaquin Phoenix took home one of the top prizes at the 2020 Golden Globes.
Joker has been nominated for four Golden Globes awards, including Best Actor, Best Director (Todd Phillips), Best Score (Hildur Gudnadóttir) and Best Film. In addition to Phoenix ‘victory, Gudnadóttir was the first composer to win the award for her guttural soundscape.
In Joker, which grossed an incredible $ 1.06 billion worldwide, Phoenix plays wannabe comedian Arthur Fleck, whose gnarled psychology eventually evolves into a criminal icon that resembles Batman’s archenemy. Inspired by Martin Scorsese’s taxi driver and The King of Comedy, Phillips’ genesis gave Phoenix a blank canvas on which to paint a portrait of a troubled, possibly misunderstood, man caught in the tide of economic turmoil. Since most of the Dark Knight lore is not in the picture (though Arthur crosses with a young Bruce Wayne and is already muttering a Joker 2, suggesting that the drama contains a little more comic film DNA than that first time), the actor is the one who took a big swing. He was reportedly losing 52 pounds to inhabit Fleck’s gaunt figure and turned Joker’s laugh into an extension of the character.
“Before I even read the script, Todd came up to me and told me what he wanted from this character and this film. He showed me some videos and described the laugh as something that was almost painful,” Phoenix told the audience at Venice Film Festival last August. “And ultimately, I think Joker is part of him trying to show up, and I think this was a really interesting way of looking at that laugh. ( .) It felt like a new, fresh way to look at it, but honestly I didn’t think I could do it, I would practice alone and then ask Todd to come over to play my laugh because I felt like I was there and And had to do it in front of someone else. It took me a long time. “
Phoenix is now the second actor to receive a Golden Globe for the legendary DC Comics villain. In 2009, Heath Ledger posthumously won the Best Actor Award in a supporting role for his work in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. In the same year he won the Oscar for supporting actor at the Academy Awards. Jack Nicholson also received a Golden Globe nomination for his work as a joker in Tim Burton’s in 1989, but lost to a Dark Knight alum: Morgan Freeman, who appeared in Driving Miss Daisy. (Nicholson’s Joker contributed to the Best Actor in a Movie – Comedy or Musical category to give you an idea of what most people thought about comic films in 1990.)
Phoenix led Christian Bale in Ford against Ferrari, Antonio Banderas in Pain and Glory, Adam Driver in Marriage Story and Jonathan Pryce in The Two Popes. After receiving Screen Actors ‘Guild nominations, the Critics’ Choice Awards, and a handful of national criticism awards, Phoenix is expected to ride his Golden Globes win for an Oscar nomination later this month.