Not since mother! has there been a movie bound to be as polarizing as Joker. This movie is armed with all sorts of contemporary issues its trying to address on all sorts of sensitive subjects. Plus, its got a truly creepy, showy performance by Joaquin Phoenix portraying a comic book character that makes Deadpool’s R rating seem cute and fluffy. Much like the character, Joker is at times awful, at times maddening, and at times brilliant, but always demanding your attention during its running time.
Apparently the Joker’s name is Arthur (Phoenix). His life is pretty bleak. He lives at home with his mother (Fraces Conroy) in a pretty crappy apartment. He has regular psychiatric meetings with a woman who doesn’t really care about him so he can get his medication for his mental issues. The one good thing in his life is his clown job which makes him happy, but even there he’s regularly beat up because he’s easy to tread upon. One night, Arthur just can’t take it anymore, and he fights back against his oppressors. Finding power in that act, and seeing other people respond to his murders, Arthur starts become more brazen and terrifying when the system tries to put him down again.
The first hour of set up is Joker’s best. It’s an important reminder of how many different factors can go into creating someone as monstrous as the Joker. Most people will identify obvious things, like an absurdly close maternal relationship or Arthur’s twisted sense of humor and laughing disorder. But Todd Phillips goes deeper and subtler than that. There’s some discussion about how mental illness facilities in the US are designed to imprison, store and forget, not to treat and comfort, and how societal push for safety takes precedence over empathy, making it even harder for Arthur to learn to connect with others. Phillips’s most effective show of how broken Arthur has become is how Phillips directs the character in and out of real life scenarios. One minute, Arthur will be talking to his mom, the next he’ll be chatting with his favorite talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) as if he’s the guest. This move gives Joker a surreal, delusional feel putting you inside Arthur’s head as he drifts more slowly into madness. Each little slight or break from his delusion leaves Arthur twitchy or pissed off; he would openly punch inanimate objects and have all sorts of violent thoughts written in his journal. The saddest part as you’re watching is how inevitable this turn is going to be because of how poor a hand Arthur was dealt. All this character building probably won’t make you like the Joker – because, you know, he’s a despicable human being, but they’ll at least make you understand Arthur and his demented psyche.
It’s when Joker finally breaks bad that the movie gets more confusing. Arthur’s anger becomes more and more surface level as he fully becomes who he’s supposed to be, meaning the movie needs to start finding outlets for his anger. The thing is, Joker (the movie) projects anger onto ALL sorts of subjects, especially many subjects people care passionately about. This movie brings up gun violence, fear of mentally ill people, violence as a joke, antifa, the PC police, and people drunk with power and sort of throws all of it into a stew, hoping it will land effectively. The most effective parts of the storytelling are when the theme merges with the Joker character study the movie is doing, such as the greatest examples of cringe inducing dark, dark comedy I have seen in some time. However, in the background of the movie, Todd Phillips sets up New York as this powder keg of anger waiting to be released. That anger is better left being said that way: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” However, the movie feels the need to start tying in other subjects along with that message, confusing the viewer and irresponsibly using hot button issues to make Joker seem more woke and important. In general, more of Joker hits than it misses, but those misses are so offputting at times you feel like walking out of the movie in frustration at what’s going on.
The word I keep coming back to for Joker is fearless. This movie deploys the perpetually fearless Joaquin Phoenix to inhabit as repulsing and deplorable a character that exists, and makes us try to understand, and maybe even…empathize or care about him. It also tries to use issues of today in the movie to do so, with reckless abandon. Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix are so good at creating this truly brutal despicable, twisted character, that I never want to see Joker again…in part because of the subject matter, but also because of how good Phillips and Phoenix are in making you pay attention.