Joker

This Joker is very far away from Jack Nicholson’s version, and pretty far from Heath Ledger’s interpretation of a psychopath with a sense of humour, but absolutely no moral scruples. We never found out how the character got to that point, but in Todd Phillips nasty new film we do.

Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) lives in a nasty Gotham flat, where he cares for his elderly mother (Frances Conroy). Flack works as a jobbing clown, and is employed to promote the closing down of a shop by standing outside spinning a sign around and generally being a clown. He is set upon by some thugs who beat him up and smash up the sign. This world of Gotham is pretty much polarised between rich people who don’t care and poor people who can’t live. Fleck’s mother believes that the businessman for whom she once worked will help them out if he only knew of their predicament. She also tells Arthur that he was put in the World to bring joy to everyone. Fleck thinks that he is a talented comedian who would do well on the hit chat show, fronted by Murray Franklin (Robert DeNiro). He does get as far as the audience and Franklin notices him, but his performance doesn’t go the way he thinks.

So Arthur Fleck is another guy with mental health issues who is ignored by much of the city. He is prone to outbursts of laughter and has a card which he can pass to people so that they understand, but mostly they don’t. Only Sophie Diamond (Zazie Beetz) a waitress with a young daughter, seems to like Arthur and the pair have a close friendship.

Everyone knows that this is The Joker from the Batman franchise, so as much as the film dresses itself up like an 80s movie with the retro studio label and the grimy depiction of that era in New York, this isn’t an even handed look at a man with mental health issues; there’s no question as to where it is all going. Fleck is set upon by some “Wall Street Guys” who taunt him with a Sondheim show tune (what?!), and so he shoots them. The gun was given to him by a colleague and is instrumental in getting him fired—in the only scene in the film that made me laugh, but it was a shocked kind of laugh that I instantly regretted. Fleck’s social worker is forced to abandon him and his life falls apart as the police slowly close in, and people who welcome the “vigilante” shooting begin to riot in clown faces. Here we see Gotham City as a place where people are exploited by Thomas Wayne, who announces that he will stand for mayor in order to sort out the crime wave…

There’s no doubt that the entire film hangs on Joaquin Phoenix’s performance, and he is incredible. Thin and gangly he exudes a troubled soul, and the laugh teeters between joy and sadness. The camera lingers on him as he prepares his look, and when he is ‘in performance’ he flips into a kind of manic charisma which is of course terrifying in context. Plus he can dance in an exaggerated and excessively technical way.

 And the film’s setting looks like an 80s news report of violence on the subway. When the situation crescendos and everyone in a carriage is dressed as a clown and the detectives are looking for just one, there’s a pleasing tension. What’s come before though is violence that may fit within the restrictions of a 15 certificate (“Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. Strong sadistic violence is also unlikely to be acceptable. ) You may find yourself wanting to look away.

There’s a pretentiousness about this film that should be addressed: it’s not supposed to be part of a series, so apparently that’s it for the character after what amounts to an origins story. Joker is like an art film complete with Robert DeNiro in a role that’s the opposite of the Scorsese film The King of Comedy, where the actor played a man who thought he was funny enough to go on a talk show. DeNiro is great in this, of course.

In a proper comic book film it’s fine to root for the villain, and in the Christopher Nolan Batman films the blurring of morality was kind of the point. This film seemed to be a story of a man who might be relatable: someone who’s just lost in the world, and if the viewer can identify with him then his transformation into someone evil is more interesting and more terrifying. But Joker isn’t interested in taking the viewer on such a journey and so it seems like an excuse to just watch what happens to a very unfortunate person.