Movie Review: Joker
SPOILER ALERT: I will be talking about elements of the film’s plot, so you may want to wait until you’ve seen the movie before reading this review. I do encourage you to jump down to the bottom of this post for a note on the film’s content, however, as this is certainly a dark and somewhat disturbing movie. Viewers should be prepared for that going in.
I often gauge my experience with a film based upon the emotions it elicits from me. There are surely many other elements in a film that can cumulatively impact the viewing experience, but I always come back to that emotional connection as a foundational piece. Bad or good, I think a critic’s job is to be honest about that experience.
Joker, the newly-released film from director Todd Phillips, did elicit emotion within me. In key moments, it left me horrified in ways I don’t remember ever quite feeling with another film.
The main character in this film is - of course - the Batman villain known as The Joker (Joaquin Phoenix). Having an origin story about this character, in particular, was another controversial point about the film’s release. Heath Ledger famously brought the role to life in Christopher Nolan’s film The Dark Knight, and a key aspect of that performance was that it felt like The Joker had come out of nowhere - that he was a completely empty and soulless being with no morals, only chaos.
Ironically, I think that might just be the perfect description of this film.
Well, maybe it isn’t completely empty. I think this is a film that can open up a lot of discussion (clearly it already has). I’m just not sure it does much beyond that. I will say with no equivocation that this film contains an incredible performance from Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role. He dives into this role in a frightening way. He gives a very physical performance - twisting and turning around the screen in a dark dance. He shows here why he is one of the finest actors working today. There are very few who can embody such quirks, let alone such darkness.
The question then becomes - is there a point to embodying such darkness? Some will say that this is a film that paints The Joker as a hero. They will say that we should not have films about such characters and that there is a limit to where art should be allowed to go. I think there’s a worthy discussion to be had about where those limits may be, but I do not think this film crosses any of them. I do think films should be able to depict darkness for us to discuss. Glorifying darkness is something else altogether. I can’t say that I felt this film glorified the darkness, but I also didn’t feel that it depicted it all that artfully. It left me feeling empty, without much to hold on to.
The film follows Arthur Fleck (Phoenix), a clown who works at various odd jobs around the city. We watch as he is mocked and beaten. Everyone can see that he is different. In fact, different doesn’t really describe Arthur. He’s unsettling. There’s something off about him. When a woman on the bus tells him to stop making faces at her son, he begins to laugh hysterically. Horrified, she stares at him. He hands her a card that explains that he has a condition where he laughs uncontrollably at inopportune times. It’s a mental disorder.
Here again, I’m sure many comic book fans will scoff at the idea that The Joker can be described away by a mental disorder. I, too, wonder about that artistic choice. But is the card truthful, or is The Joker just playing with her? It happens early enough in the story, that I wonder if his Joker persona is fully formed yet. Maybe it always was.
But here, I must say, I think I’m giving the film too much credit. I don’t think this film cares at all about character questions like that. As much as it wants to be a character study, it really isn’t. It is mostly a hodgepodge of tricks and tactics used in other films that truly are character studies. It’s almost as if the filmmakers thought that if they just put together pieces from some of their favorite films, added in a dash of popular intellectual property and mixed it all together, they’d end up with a masterpiece.
I’m sorry, but I don’t think it works that way.
In terms of the films it owes a major debt to, you have to start with the films of Martin Scorsese - most notably Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. Both of those films are about isolated men on the fringes of society that view themselves as heroes. But neither of those films end up painting their main characters as true heroes (at least, not in my opinion). Joker has many scenes, especially in the first 30 minutes, that are almost exact replicas of those films. I’m all for a director paying homage and wearing influences on his sleeve, but at least go somewhere new and original with it. The early part of this film felt completely derivative, and it definitely pulled me out of the experience.
Unfortunately, that continued throughout the film. Dream sequences are used in exactly the same way as they were in The King of Comedy. You even have Robert De Niro basically performing the role that Jerry Lewis did in the earlier film - the late night talk show host that the main character envies.
Then the ending owes a great a debt to Network - one of my all-time favorite films. That is not a spoiler, necessarily, because the endings are different. But there are certain shots that are, again, pulled directly from that film. This was my least favorite choice that Phillips made. I think he could have paid homage to those films without wholly replicating scenes and images.
There have been other directors who used famous shots or scenes in their films but found a way to put a new twist on them. Take Phantom Thread and Psycho, for instance. Paul Thomas Anderson uses the famous Hitchcock shot of a man looking through a peephole, but it is only a reflection of the shot in Psycho. Thematically, it is entirely different, yet the same feelings are evoked. Where is the thematic difference when we see a shirtless Arthur flexing violently to the point where we think his muscles might explode out of his gaunt body? That’s Travis Bickle before us even if the name is different.
But the film does go to places of originality. Especially in its final third, it wrestles with the horror that we try to come to grips with but can’t. You know what I mean. The horror that faces us every time we turn on the news. Not even that, the horror that breaks into our very lives!
Just about a week before I saw this film, I was in a public area at night. I was doing some work, and an older man and his adult daughter sat down next to me. Knowing that I might be making some noise, I explained to them that I was working and that I hoped it wouldn’t bother them.
“Am I gonna have to kill you?” the man said.
“I sure hope not,” I replied.
At no point did I really feel in danger during the experience. But when I thought about it later, it horrified me that someone would just come out and say that in public.
Am I comparing that man to The Joker? No, he did not shoot me in a blaze of violence like the character in this film does with others. But it does underscore the most frightening and original aspect of this entire film - that we all know the horror of this film on an intimate level.
A quick note on the film’s violence, because it is quite graphic. To me, it felt like a group of adolescent boys repeatedly trying to come up with something to shock the audience. There didn’t seem to be much purpose in it. Directors like Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino certainly use violence just as graphic in their films, but I would submit that those films handle it better because it comes out of the story they are telling or it is done in a more artful way. There’s no purpose here other than to shock. Maybe that’s the point of it all - pointlessness. That’s supposed to be this character’s ethos, right? Absolute chaos. Well, it feels even emptier than it sounds when you watch this film.
But even as an origin story for The Joker, I think this film falls short. I will give it credit that in being a mostly empty and soulless experience, I guess it pays homage to the character in some way. If that sounds like a backhanded compliment, I guess that’s because it is. I don’t think that the idea of an origin story for this character is an absolute non-starter. Artists should be allowed to reach for seemingly unreachable stories. But when you’re going for such an ambitious idea, you’ve got to nail it, and I don’t think this film does. For one thing, with the way this film ends, it’s hard to imagine how the story would get to a place where The Joker is mostly unknown - as it seems he is at the beginning of The Dark Knight.
Also, I think the way the film handles race is suspect at best. Here, again, it seems to be attempting to draw on Taxi Driver. Travis Bickle’s obvious racism was one reason that I don’t think Taxi Driver paints him as a hero. But here, the way that people of color are used as side aspects of certain shots and mostly as instigators of either Arthur’s rage or his lust seemed to be a clunky attempt, if not an outright offensive one, at adding racial themes into the story.
I also felt that Zazie Beetz was sorely underutilized. She plays Arthur’s neighbor, and she gives her role as much depth as she can. She’s a fascinating actress who has already started carving out a nice career in films like Steven Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird. Unfortunately, the script doesn’t serve her talents quite like it does for Phoenix’s.
Some were worried that this film would paint The Joker as a hero. I never felt that way. Even the early scenes that show him being beaten and mistreated are not played in any way as to make you feel much empathy for the character. It may begin that way, but because of the way the rest of the movie is sequenced, any feelings of empathy are quickly quashed.
Take scenes towards the end of the film, for instance. There are multiple moments where The Joker is shown dancing wildly with rock music playing in the background. These scenes could be interpreted as taking on a heroic feeling. But they all come directly after a scene where we have watched The Joker engage in brutal violence. The effect this sequencing has is that any heroic nature is stripped from the scene and we’re simply left feeling horrified. These were the “best” moments of the film, if you can call them that. If nothing else, this is where the film becomes original and stakes out new territory. It leaves you feeling empty, but it takes an original path to get you there.
This is a movie for our time, for better or worse. When schools are being victimized by gun violence, does anything that happens in this film really shock us? When reality TV and social media are bringing people from the fringes of society and putting them in the spotlight, are we really surprised that Arthur Fleck would be invited on TV? While there are interesting discussions that can come out of this film, I’m not convinced that they are any different than the discussions you might have after watching Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, or even Network. What is different about this film is its connection to the comic book culture that spawned it. There, too, it is a movie for our time. But while other comic book stories are clearly from another world, this one feels like it’s taking place all around us.
That just might be the most frightening thing about it.
NOTE ON CONTENT: This film is graphically violent. It earns its “R” rating. There are multiple scenes where a character is shot or stabbed at point blank range. Nothing is hidden in these moments. They are shocking, horrifying, and graphic. There is also a strangulation, and scenes of physical and verbal abuse. There is profanity throughout the film. The film’s sexual content is relegated to sexualized movie posters and photos in Arthur’s journal that are meant to depict the depravity of the world around him. This is a film that leaves you feeling empty. At the same time, it has a lot of moments that open up discussion. However, this is surely not a film for young viewers, as it is a particularly disturbing experience.