Joker
The movie gods must have been smiling when Todd Phillips’ Joker was released at approximately the time director Martin Scorsese was getting outrage by geeksters for his (quite correct) comments on the hegemony of superhero movies at the box office. (See the New York Times editorial, “I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain.”) The reason the planets seemed to be in rare alignment was because Joker is not only one of the few movies taking place in a franchised superhero universe which aspires to art, it also specifically models itself after, and takes place in, the time in Scorsese’s career, circa 1980, when he was at peak artistic productivity. Joker‘s use of Scorsese’s doppelganger of the time, Robert De Niro, hammers in an additional nail. (Another bit of irony: Scorsese was originally scheduled to co-produce Joker.)
Phillips’ film incorporates the seedy milieu of ’70s New York (a trash-piling garbage strike is a backdrop), with gritty, sickly scenarios smartly shot by cinematographer Lawrence Sher. Sher and Phillips are best known for feature film comedies, but show a new side to their talents here. Joker belongs to Joaquin Phoenix, though, who gives a monumental, disturbing performance. Whereas Heath Ledger’s interpretation of the character was of a highly intelligent (though insane) trickster, Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck as a mentally damaged, brain-clouded embodiment of emotional pain.
Joker begins with Fleck hopped up on anti-depressants and an array of other drugs and precariously employed by a clown agency in Gotham City. He lives in a decrepit apartment with his ailing mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), and yearns to become a stand-up comedian (“Don’t you have to be funny” to do that? Penny asks). Fleck also suffers from a disorder causing him to hideously laugh at inappropriate times—is it real or psychosomatic? We never learn. When delinquent kids beat him in a back alley for no reason, a co-worker, Randall (Leigh Gill from Game of Thrones) gives Fleck a gun to defend himself with. Fleck’s soon given an opportunity to use it and this violent act, coupled with the social service agency which provides his drugs being shut down, begins a downward spiral for Fleck, cutting off his last chance for a normal life.
Phoenix, as he always does, embraces his role wholeheartedly; he lost so much weight for the film (he looks downright emaciated) that some scenes could only be shot once. There’s little joy in seeing a sad character reach lower depths, but the camera lingering on Fleck’s face, the silences and subtle body language reveal an amazingly detailed acting portrayal. Joker has a headlong, straight and narrow trajectory, from which it doesn’t deviate. It’s the super-villain origin story to beat all others.
De Niro plays talk show host Murray Franklin, who Fleck studies and dreams of. When Franklin airs footage of Fleck’s awkward and bizarre stand-up comedy routine, he verbally eviscerates Fleck in front of a nationwide audience. Seeing Fleck’s at-first smiling reaction turn into sadness is one of the film’s most creepily subtle moments. You know no good will come of these two orbiting satellites meeting.
Joker is a film which, once seen, will stay in your thoughts for long after—it has this in common with John McNaughton’s excellent 1986 film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. And, like Henry, Joker is an exceedingly well constructed work which ultimately doesn’t reach the profundity it grasps for.
The film fails, in this regard, in another way: Fleck’s nemesis in the story is his possible father, business magnate Thomas Wayne, father of Bruce Wayne. Joker retcons Thomas Wayne into a callous, snobbish socialite, not the moral visionary needed for Bruce/Batman to be inspired by—and eventually be compelled to fight the crime of Gotham City.
Since Batman is already a disturbed individual to begin with, Todd Phillips’ insistence on nihilistic bleakness needlessly changes the dynamic between Batman and the Joker. Thomas Wayne needs to be good for the dynamic to work. When a story shows not a hint of goodness or hope for its protagonists, it is not really telling the whole story, and certainly not the story nearly eighty years of Batman continuity have established.
—Michael R. Neno, 2019 Nov 12