Variety absolutely eviscerated Hollywood sweetheart Joaquin Phoenix’s “one-man cult of depressive method acting vanity” in a column published Saturday.
Writer Owen Gleiberman held nothing back as he utterly destroyed Phoenix for being “such a flamboyant hunk of miserablism that you can fill in your own adjectives for almost every role” he’s taken on. Listing examples like “Joker,” “Her,” “The Master” and more, Gleiberman laid out a perfect argument for Phoenix to lighten up and stop descending into his own misery in every single role he takes on … even the role of being a regular guy.
Gleiberman used examples of Phoenix’s real-world misery with examples like an acceptance speech he gave after winning Best Actor for “Joker.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the distressing issues that we are facing collectively,” Phoenix told the audience, noting how “many of us, what we’re guilty of is an egocentric worldview, the belief that we’re the center of the universe.” An example of this? “We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow, and when she gives birth, we steal her baby even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable.”
Gleiberman, like most of us living in reality, was quick to call out Phoenix for just how bizarre and miserable the speech was and how it was clearly intended to make everyone around him feel like shit, too, just like Phoenix’s movies, the column argues.
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I might be wrong, but I’m 99% sure y’all kicked my old country folk off the continent for shit way less crazy than this https://t.co/TvfStzQwKc
— KAY SMYTHE (@KaySmythe) September 15, 2023
This purposeful misery is tracking through most of Phoenix’s most recent works, Gleiberman noted. He went so far as to say Phoenix is just repeating Marlon Brando’s worst performances, “the ones where he would hijack a movie for the sheer hell of it, taking it over with his flaky mythology.”
So, what’s the point of all this? Well, apparently Phoenix is a bit of a shallow, one-trick pony these days, playing “severely damaged people” who allow him to project “the dramatic image of himself as an actor reaching into the lower depths.” The result is another Phoenix-led movie with the “depressive wacked song of himself.” (RELATED: Actor Woody Harrelson Poses In RFK Jr. Hat, Libs Lose Their Minds)
It’s hard to argue with Gleiberman’s thesis. Phoenix is a great actor, sure, but he really does play the same role over and over again. How much this translates into him being difficult to work with is unknown. But it’s a damning portrayal of a man who just released one of the biggest films of the year (“Napoleon“) … and really needs Hollywood’s leading outlets to be on his side once awards season starts again.