“All I have are negative thoughts,” Arthur coldly confides to his social worker. Of course he does. I don’t see how he could come up with a positive one in a film like Joker. In one of the earliest scenes, we see him working a mopey sign spinner job on the street as a clown-for-hire. A couple of kids grab his sign, smash it over his head, and beat him in an alleyway, ostensibly because they have nothing better to do. When he turns up without the sign, his boss accuses him of stealing it. I imagine that when it’s time to pick straws, the short one gets thrown in Arthur’s face.
The movie appears to blame Gotham’s upper class for this, but quite frankly, Arthur is shunned by the rich and poor alike. He is treated as either a creep or a joke, and he has received sympathy from no one. In his journal, he scribbles, “I wish my death makes more cents [sic] than my life.” To think, this level of sadness was inspired by a comic book.
Arthur, of course, will funnel this frustration into a life of crime and get around to fighting Batman someday, as lore must have it. Bruce Wayne is only a young boy at the time Joker takes place, and his origin story — told time and time again throughout the superhero’s reign over pop culture — is a little down the road. I wasn’t expecting to miss Batman in this movie as much as I did. The world he inhabits is ugly and hostile, but the reason I’m not completely bummed out while watching The Dark Knight is because its protagonist provides a light in the darkness. Without him, Gotham is practically a living hell.
This is more the mantra of Joker. It confirms what we likely would’ve guessed about the Batman villain, even without a separate spinoff film of his own: his childhood has been plagued by trauma, his unpredictable behavior stems from a mental illness, and he is embittered by a society he deems crooked and unfair. This is what I gathered, at least. His thoughts are often unclear, which I suppose is appropriate for an irrational character. However, while Taxi Driver — which this film vaguely resembles — traced Travis Bickle’s actions to a complex web of insecurities, Joker is a simpler tale of scores getting settled. Arthur lashes out at his bullies simply because, in the eyes of the film, they deserve it.
He lives in a cramped apartment with his aging mother, suffering from a disorder that provokes spontaneous, uncontrollable laughter. He aspires to be a comedian, and while he’s completely oblivious to what makes a good one, I suppose everyone has to have a dream.
In tedious fashion, Joker slowly puts a knife into Arthur’s. The screenplay, written by Todd Phillips (also the director) and Scott Silver, drags him through a gauntlet of abuse, and it does little but demonstrate that he is a public punching bag. Even the people who mean well cause extraordinary damage. The talk show host he idolizes (Robert De Niro) humiliates him on national television. His coworker hands him a gun for “self-protection,” a term that could not be further from the reality of the situation. The lone beacon of hope seems to be his love interest, a woman who lives on his floor (Zazie Beetz), but she is distant in more ways than one.
Joaquin Phoenix portrays Arthur with deep pain. Was the casting of Phoenix, known for his tragic roles in such movies as The Master, too obvious for the part of an alienated loner? The answer might not matter to audiences; as expected, his performance here has earned comparisons with Heath Ledger’s in The Dark Knight. I believe the similarities end with the clown mask. Keep in mind that the Joker of Christopher Nolan’s film is there to make the story more exciting, and while Ledger’s monster is no doubt frightening, we’re more fascinated by how he toys with other characters in the plot, as one would in a careful game of chess.
Alternatively, Phoenix grounds Arthur in a brutal reality, much like Phillips did with his The Hangover trilogy (which were supposed to be funny, mind you). I don’t think there are any villains in Joker, because villains in the movies stand for something. Arthur is simply pushed to a rock-bottom state of mind, and he reacts in a way that is not only misguided, but confused and directionless. In other words, Ledger’s Joker belongs in an action movie, while Phoenix’s Joker belongs in a film not meant to entertain but to disturb.
I did not admire the violence in Joker, not only because it is more graphic than necessary, but because it is the film’s only novelty. The Gotham that Phillips invents is otherwise boring, to the point where it can be summarized in one word: mean. The script leaves out any redeeming quality of the city, likely because it’s too eager to fast-track Arthur to insanity. For example, there is a jarring scene where he commits his first act of sin. He dashes into a nearby bathroom out of panic, and the camera lingers on him as his tremors slowly transform into the steps of an odd, improvised waltz. This shot suggests a significant transition, but rather than dwell on it thematically and explore what Arthur feels, Joker plods along, giving him more targets to hunt.
The film’s moral opponents believe that Joker is trying to build empathy for this character where empathy is not due. Many people I’ve spoken with liked the movie, probably because they interpreted it as a critique of the character and didn’t find it uncomfortable to invest themselves in the story.
I personally can’t determine what this movie is trying to say, and neither can its creators, I assume. All I can say for sure is that Joker is obsessed with the degradation of the human spirit, and if it’s not the most intelligent movie on the subject, then it certainly feels like one of the longest.
