Craft team behind the mirror

A single brief scene highlights the artisanship and teamwork that have made Joker the year’s most nominated motion picture. According to Todd Phillips and Scott Silver’s script, Arthur Fleck was to follow his first violent act — wiping out a trio of privileged jerks (the crew called them “the Wall Street Three”) in a subway car — with a panicky run through lurid city streets and into a public restroom.

There, he was to dispose of the gun, wash off his clown makeup and look at his reflection in the mirror. Cinematographer Lawrence Sher sums up the original conception: “He comes into the bathroom, collects himself: ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ ”

The straightforward, plot-driving sequence, which appeared on the shooting schedule 10 days in, was prepared with the same care as the rest of the movie. For the set, built in-studio, Sher says he and production designer Mark Friedberg sought to “come from a place of reality.”

There’s a harsh, flickering fluorescent light overhead, two smaller bulbs (one burned out, natch) next to a filthy mirror, and the mixed palette Sher favored — greens and reds mixed with yellows. “You can feel the sense of sodium vapor” hovering in the air, Sher says. “[It’s] a very powerful color in the movie.”

Contributing to the effect would be Arthur’s clown face paint, smeared with the blood of the Wall Street Three. Makeup designer Nicki Ledermann was ready to make it “really messy and bloodied, conveying the shock and the anxiousness he just experienced.”

Superior preparation allows a production team to pivot quickly when ideas strike. Sher recalls director Phillips sauntering over at one point to say, “Listen, I think we have another idea … We’re going to play this piece of music.”

Phillips was referring to an early selection Icelandic composer Hildur Guona-dottir had scored for what she calls “my main instrument” — an electric cello, here subtly augmented with multiple sounds and sources. Guonadottir notes one of the first elements of the screenplay that grabbed her was the murders and their aftermath. That planted the seed in her mind: “I sat with it for a while ... The notes just clicked, and then they just hit me in the chest.”

They would soon hit everyone in the chest, for as Sher recounts Phillips’ instructions, “ ‘Joaquin’s going to come into the bathroom. Let’s put the camera in place. You won’t know where he’s going.’ And we didn’t want to know.” The DP adds that the director’s aim was clear: Let the camera dance with Joaquin.

Friedberg and Sher’s work readily accommodated this last-minute inspiration. “Our intent was for Joaquin to be able to go anywhere in that bathroom,” Sher says. “Mind you, it’s very small.”

What his camera captures, as anyone who has seen the movie will recall, are the earliest moments of Joker’s emergence, as Arthur’s mask of pain starts to fall away. “Todd put on the music really loud,” Ledermann says. “None of us had heard it before. And I have to say the entire crew was truly watching with their mouths hanging open in awe.”

Only a couple of takes were needed to achieve an effect of uninterrupted ecstasy. Editor Jeff Groth says, “There’s a cut to one shot from within the bathroom stall … which we liked because it had a kind of framing that looked like he was on a stage.” Otherwise, Groth cuts only three times before Arthur, his anguished face now triumphant, faces the mirror with arms spread — a new beginning.

The assembled crew agreed something remarkable had happened. “Instantly we went, ‘This is really haunting.’ It speaks to the metamorphosis in a way that’s true to the movie, which has a lot of silence,” Sher says. “It allows for this really beautiful connection between music, cinematography and acting.”

That interplay between artisans and actor continued throughout shooting, helping Phoenix create his acclaimed performance.

“I could not believe my eyes every day,” says producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff. “Being on that set watching Joaquin work was one of the great privileges of my career to date. I don’t know how he does it.”

– Courtesy: Variety