Following performances like those of Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix had sizeable shoes to fill in Joker. In Todd Philips’ intimate take on the origins of Joker, we see an empathetic side to one of the greatest villains of all time.
Meet Arthur Fleck: an unusually limber man who cares for his mother and struggles with social interaction. But Arthur is much more than a part-time rent-a-clown with a medical condition. He’s an off-kilter loner grappling with the cards he’s been dealt: the desire to make people laugh and the inability to do so. Phoenix’s rendition of this character presents a fresh side to the villain – one an audience can pity.
As the film climaxes, we see an organic transformation from Arthur to Joker. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Philips noted, “We wanted to look at everything through as real and authentic a lens as possible.” Instead of falling into a vat of acid à la Suicide Squad, we get a playful slow burn experimenting with facets of mental illness, shockingly graceful dance montages, and green hair dye. After his first handful of murders, Arthur effectively becomes the leader of the clown-dominated rebellion responsible for the Wayne Family murders, and both Batman and Joker are born on the same chaotic night.
Joker does a lot of things right: we catch a glimpse at Gotham’s 1% through the eyes of the lower-class, meeting a pompous Thomas Wayne in the middle of his bid for city mayor. We come to understand the Joker/Batman feud from the antagonist’s side and we find Joker was once, indeed, human. But the film left something more to be desired and we’re not entirely sure what to make of the young Bruce Wayne flashback at the end of the movie.
Critical reception is pretty hit or miss. Some are calling for a total ban of the movie, others are calling it a ‘masterclass in filmmaking', but we give it a solid 7.5.
Photo by Warner Bros.
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