JOKER | Film Review

Some men just want to watch the world burn.

In terms of cinematic villains, Joaquin Phoenix is in rarified air. Not a single representation of Batman’s infamous foe has gone without some measure of success, and each take has established itself as distinctly unique. Even with a wide array of interpretations from a host of talented actors – Caesar Romero, Mark Hamill, Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Jared Leto – it is near impossible to find anything innately wrong with any of their choices besides Leto’s dopey grill and face tattoo ensemble. Each iteration of the Joker has a little something special about it. And Joaquin Phoenix’s harrowingly method approach is no exception.

Gotham City in 1981 is not too far removed from any major city today. The rich carry on with their desperate quest for infinite wealth and a fairly easy existence, while the poor claw their way to a mediocre lifestyle, wrought with debt and struggle. As presented by director Todd Phillips, Gotham is a dirty, grimy city going through a garbage strike…which serves to make it even dirtier and grimier. It holds a specific New York City-laden template and builds on the despair from there. The city itself is both a backdrop and a full-fledged character, giving life to the character’s story that is about to be told. And that tale belongs to Arthur Fleck.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as Arthur, a mentally unstable wannabe stand-up comic incel with a horribly debilitating societal disorder that causes him to erupt in spontaneous laughter at the most inappropriate times. He is a sad, empty shell of a man in constant search to turn his mindset around. As Arthur grapples with identifying a way to turn his frown upside down, we’re introduced to his emotionally wrought mother (Frances Conroy), empathetic neighbor (a criminally underused Zazie Beetz), and prickish TV-show host Murray Franklin (Robert DeNiro, doing his best work in years). The film – for the first time – tells a fleshed out origin story on the Clown Prince of Crime, following Arthur as his depression and unhinged persona desperately leads him towards the path we all know is coming: his descent into the madness and mayhem that is The Joker.

We have all been around odd characters such as Arthur, and watching society withdraw nervously from his existence due solely to our indifference or react emotionally to his behavior is as much an indictment on his condition as it is our own. In many ways, Joker is commenting on society’s own responsibility in creating personalities such as Arthur. Our hypocrisy and inability to accept anyone who fails to reside within our comfortable wheelhouse of societal actions, as well as our lack of interest in supporting a health care system that values people with mental illness, is as much on trial as Arthur’s growing mental instability.

Though Joker is an original story told completely separate from DC’s well-established universe, there is an obvious nod here to The Killing Joke, the ground-breaking comic where Joker’s backstory illuminates us all to his past as a failed stand-up comic. Even Joker’s infamous line from that graphic novel, “If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice”, is utilized in the film’s own clever fashion. Aside from this knowing wink and obvious references to Batman and the Wayne family, Joker is a completely isolated venture, free from expectations or insider knowledge. Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver do what almost no one in comic book related films strive for: they show little interest in satisfying fandom’s purist demands. And unlike most characters in comics, they chose the one most able to be explored in this way, as Joker has no truly firm backstory in his source material to begin with.

Does it completely work? Mostly. Strictly from a storytelling perspective, Arthur has so much go wrong for him and the police are so slow at following up on obvious connections and leads, that occasionally the film does suffer a bit from convenient plotting. Thankfully, Phillips and Silver also toss enough distraction and contemplation around – this is Joker’s fractured mind we’re dancing in, after all – that everything seen will have you rethinking and dissecting the story for hours or days after leaving the theater. Complemented by a devastatingly haunting and yet fitting score by Hildur Guðnadóttir, Joker is grim, dark, and surreal; but it’s also pushing the boundaries of how stories like this are told. For each negative there are several more positives perking the film back up.

Every performance in the film lands soundly and fairly sympathetically, but this film is completely dominated by Joaquin Phoenix. Long thought to be an off-kilter oddball possessing a powerhouse talent, Phoenix also loves to play with performance art, making him a perfect fit for a character like Joker. Never has that been more obvious than as he takes chance after chance, by allowing his talent to stand on its own, naked and unafraid of any audience concerns.

Throughout Arthur’s descent into madness we witness him laughing himself into tears, choking on his own yuks, randomly dancing as if he were auditioning for the Gotham ballet, explosive fits of rage that cause us to jolt up and remind ourselves that Arthur is NOT a good guy; and through it all we get lost in Phoenix’s performance. I cannot stress how difficult it is to pull this off for such a renowned actor and an even more well-known character. Heath Ledger was able to capitalize in this same manner, and it is with no trepidation that I proclaim Joaquin Phoenix has pulled himself within walking distance of that legendary performance. If he is not in the Best Actor discussion for this year’s Oscars, then that race has obviously allowed its bigotry towards comic book properties to outweigh the brilliance of a singular performance.

As stated earlier, there are a few negatives, and the heavy-handed finale is definitely one of them. It won’t be spoiled here, but you’ll understand when you see it (and the complete lack of security professionals when they’re needed most). That said, Joker remains one of the most intriguing origin stories we have seen in several years, and a testament to the power of the right actor to elevate occasionally shaky material to a gold standard. It is the story of the rise of the comic world’s greatest anarchist, and Joaquin Phoenix’s humanity-laden performance is the perfect mix of futility and fury to leave audiences with a smile on their face.