With an origin story for the most notorious villain in the Batman universe, Todd Phillips had an opportunity to make the Natural Born Killers of our time: a brilliant movie that unflinchingly shows just how sick we truly are as a society. Joker, alas, isn’t that. I actually don’t oppose categorically tapping into the isolation of young (usually white) men who sometimes become the next sinister mass shooter we read about in the news.
You can, in theory, make a picture for the age of incels, the alt-right, and gun massacres. One just has to do so both thoughtfully and responsibly. By rendering Arthur Fleck (a mentally unstable loser in the rot of early 80s Gotham with dreams of becoming a stand-up comic played-as if anyone doesn’t know-by Joaquin Phoenix) so truly, pathologically damaged and everyone around him such hypocrites, jerks, and soulless liars, Phillips may think he’s merely exploring what-I believe-he comes perniciously close to excusing.
It’s certainly an interesting angle, for instance, to depict Thomas Wayne as a clueless jerk-plutocrat living a posh life while his city suffers (which his savior complex tells him can only be corrected if he’s elected mayor). I just often wasn’t really sure how we were supposed to feel, like when watching three yuppie jerks get their bloody comeuppance from Arthur after cruelly assaulting him (his first act of violence). A better (and less reckless) film might’ve forced us to confront the Joker doing horrid, grisly things to people who never wronged him in any way.
Moral and philosophical objections aside, Joker is plagued by a masturbatory, self-consciously dark tone along with shameless Taxi Driver plagiarisms. While if anything Phillips displays more of an intuitive sense about visual story-telling than Christopher Nolan did, with all his crushing over-seriousness he makes The Dark Knight trilogy look like unabashed, anti-realist comic book fare.
Perhaps all that sweating to make everything look as real and believable as possible is to compensate for how implausible much of what transpires actually is. I didn’t buy for a second that a person with Arthur’s condition would be allowed to perform as a clown at a children’s hospital. And even after a handgun falls out of his pocket in the middle of his set (which gets him fired and strangely not arrested or fined), that’s still considerably easier to accept than many other things that happen and are revealed.
The nearly pornographic dreariness and ugliness may thrill you—or it may wring you out and have you clamoring for the closing credits and exit. This promises to be one hugely divisive movie if nothing else. Phillips-who co-wrote the one-note script with Scott Silver-appears to have a clearer sense of the disturbing ugliness he wanted to examine and attitudes he wanted to convey than how the plot should develop. The pacing is plodding throughout and audiences are treated in lieu of quality, memorable dialogue to an excess of Phoenix laughing hysterically like a deranged maniac, dancing around, and descending into darkness with Travis Bickle-Esque posturing.
Joaquin Phoenix is arguably among the greatest actors working today, let there be no misunderstanding. Among others, The Master, You Were Never Really Here, Inherent Vice, and the fantastic (and underrated) Two Lovers bear testament to his commanding talent and versatility. With a big budget and the auteur who brought us The Hangover pictures at the helm, Joker could well be the first Joaquin Phoenix movie that a decent number of people watch (at least this side of Gladiator and Signs).
That’s really a shame. Phoenix, who has a knack for playing weird and brooding (though he can also be quite funny, too), has played all these notes before much more gracefully than here. His Joker depiction is not a total misfire, even if it looks especially calculated and over-done. It’s just that he may receive accolades more for the method intensity he brought to it, the over 50 pounds it’s reported he shed to look extra creepy and skeletal, and the simple fact that the Joker is a fascinating character who has been extremely compelling on the big screen before. On the merits of his acting itself, this isn’t a bad performance–it’s just way too much of one.
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