This new rendition of Joker comes brought to us by Todd Phillips, best known as the director of The Hangover trilogy, and has an extensive background in comedy. Which makes Joker such a drastic deviation, given the dark subject matter of the project involved, and pulling an American Hustle, makes obvious the debts he owes to the films of Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy among them, that even drastically downplays the comic book-roots of the character. Aside from loosely adapting the Killing Joke storyline (and I do mean loosely), Joker could almost exist completely detached from DC's lineage. Unfortunately, Phillips' intentions, while interesting, is far less than the sum of its parts.
We can start off positive with the main draw, that being Joaquin Phoenix's performance, because bless him, he attacks this role with everything he's got. With the impressive lineage he's coming into, it's vital for the film's success that he and Phillips work quickly to establish a unique representation of the character, which they do so by focusing squarely on his human side. Arthur Fleck is not a very fortunate man. He's a lonely, depressed, mentally unwell man, continually beat down and taken advantage of by other people, stricken with severe emotional incontinence, and serving as sole caretaker of his elderly mother.
Ironically enough, it's always been Arthur's dream to be a comedian, with many of his jokes (some very pitch black in nature) scribbled almost incomprehensibly in a notepad. They say that tragedy inspires the best comedy, but with each punchline Arthur delivers, the result isn't so much funny, as it is a devastating step into his damaged psyche. His is the kind of mind that society - very pointedly stated - doesn't care about, a minuscule blip on the classist hierarchy of Gotham, paralleling our own societies downplaying of mental illness, neglect of middle or low wage individuals, and favor catering to the wealthy privileged.
While the actual writing of the character has its issues (more on that later), Phoenix's commitment to the role cannot be understated. If not unfamiliar territory for him, especially for any familiar with his Freddie Quell of The Master, it's still a harrowing and engrossing tour de force from him, managing at once to create a figure both oddly charismatic, but also deeply violent and unnerving. While I still feel Heath Ledger's rendition is virtually untouchable, Phoenix does well to make the character his own, and is often single-handedly hoisting this movie on his shoulders.
There's a reason that so many would focus exclusively on Phoenix, because outside of him, the overall film is a mess. While Phoenix may be committed as can be to the character, the actual material given to him is so often a wildly unbalanced one. As evidenced before, Arthur is a very tragic character, coming into his own after one act of cruelty too many, but with that focus on tragedy, I feel like that somewhat misplays the character. Because of how cruelly Gotham treats him, we're geared very early on to sympathize with Arthur, and almost encouraging us to root for him. Already, that's somewhat the antithesis to Joker, given that his entire MO has always been chaos without reason. He's a nihilistic character intent on bringing out the darkest in people, which is not something to readily feel sorry for.
And I'm okay with a more sympathetic rendition of Joker on paper, but too often it feels like this movie tries to have its cake, and eat it. I suppose you can make the argument that the movie doesn't want us to *sympathize* with Arthur, but more *empathize* with him, or at least see him as the classic unreliable narrator casting himself as the hero. The problem is that, tonally speaking, the movie walks a very shaky line when it comes to his handling. With how often this movie hammers its talking points home, and the way Phillips portrays his gradual descent one beating at a time, intentional or not, it still feels like it's projecting this undercurrent of sympathy for him, while at the same time falling back on writing him as a straight villain, inspiring city-wide extremism and rioting playing in the background. It tries to cater to both forms, but it would have been better to skew towards one side rather than the uneven approach here.
But does that make it an irresponsible film? Is it the type of movie to inspire gun violence, as has been tastelessly touted by heated pre-release debates before its release? Absolutely not! I in no way believe that such art does that, and that it is the individual with which those issues lay. However, if Phillips does indeed go for that societal satire, that doesn't do much to muddy his themes up less. But speaking of Phillips, as this really is just the Joaquin at the end of the day, he really is just pulling a David O. Russell. He's done well to capture the Scorsese aesthetic, with a multitude of stylistic choices thrown out, but it still hasn't managed to capture the Scorsese spirit. It just does feel like something of a pale imitation, with well intentions, but ends up feeling like empty flattery. Honestly, at some point, it does feel as if Phillips is a journeyman, whose direction is not the main draw of the attention.
All of the attention is owed to Arthur, for better or worse. From Phoenix's larger-than-life performance, to the very nature of the character as put to paper, there's surely a lot to discuss and dissect about Joker. There's definitely a reason that this film is so polarizing to viewers, with equal merit on both ends of the spectrum, regardless of where you fall. If you liked the film, good. I'm happy that it did something for you. It just didn't for me. But hey, that's life...
**1/2 / *****
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