US/Canada | 2019 | Directed by Todd Phillips
Logline: A desperate comedian falls prey to his own mental instability and increasing contempt for the society surrounding him leading him to murderous action.
Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) only wants to give joy and laughter to the world. His dear ailing mother, Penny (Frances Conroy) told him he had a purpose and to smile and put on a happy face. But Arthur hasn’t felt genuine happiness his entire life. You see the worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don’t. Everyone is one day away from madness.
“I hope my death makes more cents than my life,” writes Arthur in his journal of scrambled thoughts and paranoid delusions. He hopes to make it big as a stand-up comedian, to leave his sad clown act behind. He struggles to put on a happy face. His social worker feels society’s disregard weighing heavily on the man’s skinny frame. There’s only so much pain and rage that the medication can keep at bay.
Celebrity talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) is Arthur’s inspiration, whilst his weary mother is the petal in his hand, the thorn in his side. Just who exactly is Arthur’s father? He needs to get to the bottom of it all, down to the emotional cul-de-sac, where the Manor behind the huge iron gates looms like a shadow from his future past.
This is a dark and grim study of psychological fragility and inevitable collapse from a director who began his own career with a study of a similar ilk, Hated, a documentary on GG Allin, the punk rocker who alienated his own audiences with his extreme behaviour. Phillips’ portrait of one man’s descent into his own private hell, and those he drags down with him, is very reminiscent of Scorsese’s masterful portrayals of God’s lonely men in Taxi Driver and The King Of Comedy, especially in tone and setting.
Joker depicts the origins of one of the great comic book villains of all time, and yet also paints a singular picture of a psychopath that could be anyone on the street that passes you. The danger is palpable; the atmosphere is gritty and authentic. Phillips went out of his way to make his movie as realistic as possible, removing it stylistically from the DC Superhero Universe so that it can stand alone, and it stands tall and formidable.
Joker is an extraordinary film, a powerful and compelling drama, a nightmare movie for the now and here. It is fictional Gotham City, but it is every city in the real world. We’ve all known an Arthur Fleck, or known of, or thereabouts, six degrees of separation, horror at arm’s reach. Superbly filmed, with Phoenix delivering a career performance, Phillips stays close to the character, he’s in almost every scene, we watch him brood and lurk, we watch him fidget and slow dance, oh yes, the dancing. It’s creepy and morbidly mesmerising, like a train wreck in slow motion.
Joker is confronting and disturbing, yet there’s the darkest kernel of comedy lurking in the bowels, like a kidney stone. “I used to think my life was a tragedy, but now I realise, it’s a comedy,” Arthur states matter-of-factly. His life has become an out of control delusion (the “grandeur” comes at movie’s anarchic end). How much of Arthur’s world is happening inside his cracked mind? Certainly some of it is. We know this much is true because Arthur craves love and intimacy and acceptance. He is an abandoned man.
Arthur fabricates and hides behind guises, just like Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy, just like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. He searches for peace of mind, but there is only deception and manipulation, only ridicule and humiliation. He’ll have to snatch the facts to uncover an ugly truth, and he’ll need to confront his demons in person.
Arthur dons his red garb, his face paint a diabolical clown, he skips and skirts down steps, twirling to his own tune, and it’s a glam rock song tainted by the awful sociopathic crimes of its singer, in some kind of hideous (un)intentional parallel.
“What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you fuckin’ deserve!”
Blow Out, Wolfen, Arthur, Zorro the Gay Blade … these are the movies playing in the cinemas on the streets; serial killers, savage animals, the deluded rich, the vigilante folk hero.
In a mirrored nod to Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, Arthur Fleck leans against a car window as it traces through the ruined nightlife of Gotham City.
Somewhere a young boy mourns the death of his parents and another seed is born.
In Arkham Ayslum a psychiatrist asks what’s funny.
“You wouldn’t get it,” the patient replies, smirking … snarling.
It’s the killing joke.