Joker

Joker is all in once haunting, traumatic, sad and even endearing. It casts a light and critique on society and the fear of a bleak economic feature that cripples the have-nots and fosters a move toward instability and even an acceptance of insanity… and it happens to be really good too.

I write that last remark with genuine surprise as this film is directed by the frat-boy comedy auteur Todd Phillips, who’s prior claim to fame were films such as the Hangover series and Old School. Despite the character Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), who eventually becomes the Joker saying his life “is more a comedy than a tragedy,” this film is deciding dark and bleak.

But there are flashes of Phillips prior work, with creating dungy and dark interiors, streets littered with trash and congestion as in the Hangover II and not to mention relying on a powerful soundtrack with characters expressing their emotions in slo-motion. That’s all there. What’s new is Phoenix.

Phoenix continues to be at the top of his game and dives straight into this character both physically and mentally. I always say it’s a sign of a great actor when you forget who the actor on the screen is and believe a fresh new character is being formed in front of you.

To his malnourished body, bones under skin, yellow-stained teeth and an uncomfortable laughter that bellows from his soul leaving you to question if it’s a defense mechanism, a way to fit in or the laughter of a sad clown asking for help? It’s simply chilling.

Arthur is a 40-something-year-old man living with his ill-mother, holding on to meager clown job who does spot dances and bad magic tricks for the penny-paying customers. He is psychologically troubled as we see when we first meet him talking to a state-ordered physiologist but he is trying to make is way, getting past is own inner demons and hoping for a small piece of the pie in a challenging economic climate.

In prior interpretations of the Joker, the character has just been crazy and deranged with little or to no clue as to why? Arthur in this case is sympathetic and relatable to a degree because many of us too are searching for our place in the world and to be noticed.

It’s only through a series of tragic events does Arthur lose his quiet desperation of being something more and gradually transforms from a human being into this deranged character and even then, through the brilliance of Phoenix, there’s something sad there in his eyes that comes across on screen as somehow being empathic.

It’s no surprise Phoenix took this role but it is to a degree that Phillips wanted and even helped write the script for this film. And to do what he did, crafting a story in reality, original in tone for an iconic villain that we’ve already seen portrayed many times before was quite impressive and rewarding for audiences to experience and finally get to see the origin story of one of the most fascinating psychopathic character known worldwide.