REVIEWS
70 | Sight&Sound | November 2019
Reviewed by Lou Thomas
It: Chapter Two’s most harrowing scene follows
a recap from the end of 2017’s chapter one, in
which the seven pre-teen friends comprising
the ‘Losers Club’ of 1989 swear a blood oath to
return to their fictional hometown of Derry,
Maine, if ‘It’ starts murdering locals again. After
an altercation at a funfair 27 years later, Adrian
(Xavier Dolan, on typically provocative form)
and his boyfriend Don are the victims of a
brutal homophobic assault in which Adrian is
thrown half-dead into a river by his attackers.
That Adrian is eaten on the riverbank by ancient
supernatural monster It – aka Pennywise the
Dancing Clown – is no great surprise to fans of
Stephen King’s bestselling source novel. The
prominent placing and emphasis of the scene
is what counts, with the tacit suggestion that
bullies, be they homophobic or otherwise,
can be as harmful as the killer in the dark.
Celebrate the difference and stand up to
bullies: a simple subtext that flows through both
chapters of Argentine director Andy Muschietti’s
It films. A story in which a (fairly) diverse group
of friends defeat their demons literally and
figuratively seems positively appropriate in
an age when representation is a key part of the
cultural discourse and hate crimes often feature
in the daily news cycle. King presumably also
approves, given the related plotlines of novels
such as Carrie and its filmed adaptations.
The majority of Chapter Two’s hefty 169-minute
running time explores what happens when
Loser Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa) recalls his
six friends to Derry to face It as adults, with James
McAvoy’s Bill Denbrough their de facto leader
since his younger brother Georgie was murdered
by It back in 1989. Their 2016 incarnations are
less keen to battle a shapeshifting serial murderer
than they were as children, but bonhomie is
felt when they reunite over a Chinese meal
rounded off with a delicious dénouement of
Lovecraftian insect hallucinations, calling to
mind Frank Darabont’s unsettling adaptation
of the King novella The Mist (2007).
As the Losers investigate their pasts around old
Derry haunts, memories both fond and foul are
evoked as Muschietti slickly works in flashbacks
from the summer of 1989. Tough Beverly Marsh
(a perfectly cast Jessica Chastain) remembers her
abusive father on a trip to their old apartment,
now seemingly home to a frail old woman. Sickly
Eddie Kaspbrak (James Ransone) heads into
the basement of the pharmacy, where he was
taunted heartlessly, to face his hypochondriac
childhood fears anew. Both vignettes feature
startling visitations from grotesque versions of
It, and epitomise where Muschietti’s ambitious
pop-horror epic is at its strongest, combining
heart-stopping terror with pungent nostalgia.
Yet one can have too much of a good thing, and
Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman
(who wrote the three Annabelle films) are a little
too reliant on their trusted combination. Chapter
Two is so stuffed with the slam-dunk of past
memories and visceral jump scares that the latter
become a touch predictable. Thankfully, Bill
Skarsgård’s terrifying performance as Pennywise
is again the stuff of sleepless nights, even if this is
augmented by overused CGI in the barnstorming
last act. Bill Hader, meanwhile, gives a career-best
turn as chatterbox-turned-comedian Richie Tozier,
who provides some welcome light relief amid
grisly murders and copious blood – even when
he’s vomiting at the thought of another atrocity.
It: Chapter Two
Director: Andy Muschietti
Certificate 15 169m 11s
Derry, Maine, 2016. Some 27 years after the seven
child members of the ‘Losers Club’ swore an oath to
return to their hometown if supernatural monster It
(aka Pennywise the Dancing Clown) began murdering
local residents again, Mike Hanlon recalls the other six
Losers to the town. All but Stanley Uris return – he kills
himself. The five remaining members – Bill Denbrough,
Richie Tozier, Beverly Marsh, Ben Hanscom and Eddie
Kaspbrak – meet Mike at a Chinese restaurant, where
they have a mass hallucination caused by It. Under
Mike’s supervision, Bill (who was the childhood leader
of the Losers after his brother Georgie was killed by It)
uses an indigenous artefact and has a vision in which
he sees It’s arrival in Derry thousands of years ago.
Meanwhile, It continues killing children. The Losers
revisit scenes of their childhood traumas and remember
some of their worst embarrassments or experiences of
being bullied and abused. They return to the abandoned
house that contained Pennywise’s lair during their
childhood. They fight It. Richie Tozier is caught in the
deadlights – a trance that will makes him levitate
towards a now monstrous alien version of It. Eddie tries
to save him, and is mortally wounded. The remaining
Losers wound Pennywise by mocking him, before
Bill kills him after ripping out his heart. The Losers
return to their regular lives after a valedictory swim.
Produced by
Barbara Muschietti
Dan Lin
Roy Lee
Screenplay
Gary Dauberman
Based on the novel
It by Stephen King
Director of
Photography
Checco Varese
Editor
Jason Ballantine
Production Designer
Paul Denham
Austerberry
Music
Benjamin Wallfisch
Costume Designer
Luis Sequeira
Production
Companies
New Line Cinema
presents a Double
Dream/Vertigo
Entertainment/
Rideback production
An Andy
Muschietti film
Executive Producers
Richard Brener
Dave Neustadter
Gary Dauberman
Marty Ewing
Seth Grahame-Smith
David Katzenberg
Cast
James McAvoy
Bill Denbrough
Jessica Chastain
Beverly Marsh
Bill Hader
Richie Tozier
Isaiah Mustafa
Mike Hanlon
Jay Ryan
Ben Hanscom
James Ransone
Eddie Kaspbrak
Andy Bean
Stanley Uris
Jaeden Martell
young Bill
Wyatt Oleff
young Stanley
Jack Dylan Grazer
Young Eddie
Finn Wolfhard
young Richie
Sophia Lillis
young Beverly
Chosen Jacobs
young Mike
Jeremy Ray Taylor
young Ben
Bill Skarsgård
Pennywise
Xavier Dolan
Adrian
Taylor Frey
Don Hagarty
In Colour
[2.35:1]
Some screenings
in Screen X
Distributor
Warner Bros. Pictures
International (UK)
The IT crowd: James McAvoy
Credits and Synopsis
Reviewed by
Christina Newland
When Arthur Fleck laughs,
it’s as if the laughter is being
ripped from his lungs. It seems
to rattle through his whole
body, and his eyes look pained, as if he might
be sobbing instead. It’s a condition, according
to a little card that he must carry for medical
purposes, a sort of Tourettes Syndrome, and the
peal of mirthless hysterics comes abruptly and
uncontrollably. It happens on the bus, where it
alarms children, and on stage during Arthur’s
hopelessly bad attempts at stand-up comedy.
What might seem absurd on paper – the classic
comic book villain’s maniacal laughter explained
in this manner – works inexplicably well in situ.
Arthur is played by Joaquin Phoenix in another
one of those performances that would look far
worse had anyone else tried it. He depicts our
Gotham villain-to-be as a lonely, mentally ill man
living with his elderly mother in an increasingly
dank, dangerous city circa 1981. The hyperreal,
grimy production design is wreathed in sallow
yellow and murky green, and Arthur keeps away
the nightmarish loneliness of the city around
him by dreaming of a life as a beloved comedian.
Initially, Arthur seems like a gentle soul,
clearly incapable of social interaction and
oblivious to cues, but his particular strain of
weirdness is alarming enough to attract bullies.
He is twice beaten up by people on the street,
laughed at by strangers and ostracised in his day
job as a party clown. A colleague gives him a
gun for self-protection, and this is – pointedly, I
think – the moment when a bedroom-dwelling
weirdo is transformed into something far
more sinister. His whip-thin torso twists like
a corkscrew as he dances through his living
room, doing an old-school show-biz shuffle
with a .38 in hand. He’s backsliding, and his
transformation into the Joker has begun.
This is madness, as Phoenix plays it, that is
both suffocatingly disturbing and surprisingly
sympathetic, even as he grows increasingly bent
on destruction. Todd Phillips has stolen wholesale
chunks from the work of Martin Scorsese,
especially Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy
(1984). The former inflects the whole cityscape
and the visual elements of the film, for example
in the shots of Arthur watching his droning TV
set with a loaded gun in hand. He even has a
journal, much like the real-life vigilante Arthur
Bremer, the man Travis Bickle was modelled on.
I’m sure the character’s first name is no accident.
Quoting so liberally from these two
masterpieces doesn’t exactly flatter their imitator,
but perhaps the best way to deal with that is
to own up to it: this is likely why Arthur’s idol,
TV host and talk show comic Murray Franklin,
is played by Robert De Niro, picking up the
Jerry Lewis role in King of Comedy with suitably
glossy self-importance. Joker not only imitates
these movies but seems to be an exercise in
imagining Scorsese’s maladjusted men in a place
where they find some level of satisfaction.
Arthur is a monster, and we know it; but he’s
also a subversive agent of chaos striking out
against Thomas Wayne, an unfeeling millionaire
running for mayor of Gotham. There’s a plot
Joker
Director: Todd Phillips
See Feature
on page 30
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