joker movie review essay

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In mainstream movies today, “dark” is just another flavor. Like “edgy,” it’s an option you use depending on what market you want to reach. And it is particularly useful when injected into the comic book genre.   

Darkness no longer has much to do with feelings of alienation the filmmaker wants to express or purge, as was the case with a film like “ Taxi Driver .” It’s not about exploring uncomfortable ideas, as was done in “ The King of Comedy .” Do you think Todd Phillips , who co-wrote and directed “Joker,” and references those movies so often you might expect that  Martin Scorsese  was enlisted as an executive producer here as a way of heading off a plagiarism lawsuit (he dropped out not too long after signing on, however), really cares about income inequality, celebrity worship, and the lack of civility in contemporary society? I don’t know him personally but I bet he doesn’t give a toss. He’s got the pile he made on those “Hangover” movies—which some believe have indeed contributed to the lack of civility in etc.—and can not only buy up all the water that’s going to be denied us regular slobs after the big one hits, he can afford the bunker for after the bigger one hits.

Which is not to go so far as to say that if you buy into “Joker,” the joke’s on you. (Except in the long run it really is.) If you live to see Joaquin Phoenix go to performing extremes like nobody’s business, this movie really is the apotheosis of that. As Arthur Fleck, the increasingly unglued street clown and wannabe stand-up comic down and out in what looks like 1980s Gotham (although who knows what period detail looks like in fictional cities), Phoenix flails, dances, laughs maniacally, puts things in his mouth that shouldn’t go there, and commits a couple of genuinely ugly and disgusting crimes with ferocious relish.

Much has been made, by Warner, and I guess DC Comics, of the fact that this is meant as a “standalone” film that has no narrative connection to other pictures in the DC Universe, but that’s having your cake and eating it too when you still name your lunatic asylum “Arkham” and your cinematic DC Universe is changing its Batmen every twenty minutes anyway. Maybe what they really mean is that this is the first and last DC movie that’s going to be rated R.

A rating it thoroughly earns. The violence in this movie means to shock, and it does. Fleck’s alienation in the early scenes evokes Travis Bickle’s, but this movie is too chicken-livered to give Fleck Bickle’s racism, although it depicts him mostly getting hassled by people of color in the first third. Fleck is also fixated with a Carson-like talk-show host played by Robert De Niro , reversing the “King of Comedy” player positions. He also likes the black woman down the hall from him, played by Zazie Beetz . The casting is not just meant to give the movie bragging rights on the zeitgeist curve, but to evoke Diahnne Abbott in both “Taxi Driver” and “Comedy.” Fleck’s seemingly successful wooing of the character is a jaw-dropper that had me thinking Beetz ought to fire her agent, but a late-game clarification makes it … well, forgivable is not quite the word, but it will do.

As Gotham begins to burn (the civil unrest starts with a garbage strike), Fleck, who has been taken as a vigilante by much of the city’s 99%, doesn’t quite know what to make of his underground cult stardom. (The city is beset by rioters in clown makeup and clown masks; because this movie is rather suddenly behind the curve in “clowns-are-scary” awareness—only Pennywise gets a special dispensation these days—these sequences look like “The Revolt of the Juggalos” or something equally laughable.) His mom ( Frances Conroy , the poor woman) has been writing letters to her former employer, the magnate Thomas Wayne, and Arthur opens one of the missives and reads them, learning something disturbing. 

The storyline in and of itself is not a total miss. But once the movie starts lifting shots from “ A Clockwork Orange ” (and yes, Phillips and company got Warners to let them use the Saul Bass studio logo for the opening credits, in white on red, yet) you know its priorities are less in entertainment than in generating self-importance. As social commentary, “Joker” is pernicious garbage. But besides the wacky pleasures of Phoenix’s performance, it also displays some major movie studio core competencies, in a not dissimilar way to what “A Star Is Born” presented last year. ( Bradley Cooper is a producer.) The supporting players, including Glenn Fleshler and Brian Tyree Henry , bring added value to their scenes, and the whole thing feels like a movie. The final minutes, which will move any sentient viewer to mutter “would you just pick a goddamn ending and stick to it?” are likely an indication of what kind of mess we would have had on our hands had Phillips been left entirely to his own cynical incoherent devices for the entire runtime. Fortunately, he gets by with a little help from his friends. 

This review was originally filed from the Venice Film Festival on August 31st. 

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Joker (2019)

Rated R for strong bloody violence, disturbing behavior, language and brief sexual images.

118 minutes

Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck / Joker

Zazie Beetz as Sophie Dumond

Robert De Niro as Murray Franklin

Brett Cullen as Thomas Wayne

Frances Conroy as Penny Fleck

Douglas Hodge as Alfred Pennyworth

Shea Whigham as GCPD Detective

Marc Maron as Ted Marco

• Todd Phillips
• Scott Silver

Cinematographer

• Lawrence Sher
• Hildur Guðnadóttir

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‘Joker’ Review: For Better or Worse, Superhero Movies Will Never Be the Same

David ehrlich.

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Todd Phillips ’ “ Joker ” is unquestionably the boldest reinvention of “superhero” cinema since “ The Dark Knight “; a true original that’s sure to be remembered as one of the most transgressive studio blockbusters of the 21st Century. It’s also a toxic rallying cry for self-pitying incels, and a hyper-familiar origin story so indebted to “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy” that Martin Scorsese probably deserves an executive producer credit. It’s possessed by the kind of provocative spirit that’s seldom found in any sort of mainstream entertainment, but also directed by a glorified edgelord who lacks the discipline or nuance to responsibly handle such hazardous material, and who reliably takes the coward’s way out of the narrative’s most critical moments.

“Joker” is the human-sized and adult-oriented comic book movie that Marvel critics have been clamoring for — there’s no action, no spandex, no obvious visual effects, and the whole thing is so gritty and serious that DCEU fanboys will feel as if they’ve died and seen the Snyder Cut — but it’s also the worst-case scenario for the rest of the film world, as it points towards a grim future in which the inmates have taken over the asylum, and even the most repulsive of mid-budget character studies can be massive hits (and Oscar contenders) so long as they’re at least tangentially related to some popular intellectual property. The next “Lost in Translation” will be about Black Widow and Howard Stark spending a weekend together at a Sokovia hotel; the next “Carol” will be an achingly beautiful period drama about young Valkyrie falling in love with a blonde woman she meets in an Asgardian department store.

“Joker” is a movie about a homicidal narcissist who feels entitled to the world’s attention — a man who’d rather kill for a good laugh than allow the world to treat him like its punchline. It’s also a movie about the dehumanizing effects of a capitalistic system that greases the economic ladder, blurring the line between private wealth and personal worth until life itself loses its absolute value. Phillips, whose cinematic legacy was previously defined by the “Hangover” trilogy and that scene in “Road Trip” where he cast himself as a random creep who sucks on Amy Smart’s toes, has made a film that is somehow all of these things at once: It’s a visionary, twisted, paradigm-shifting tour de force and a bar-lowering mess of moral incoherence. It’s nothing less (and nothing more) than an agent of unbridled chaos.

And we haven’t even gotten to Joaquin Phoenix yet, whose hypnotic and inimitable performance would feel completely new if it didn’t borrow so much from his past work. If Freddie Quell and Theodore Twombly stepped into the teleportation machine from “The Fly,” Arthur Fleck is who they would mutate into. Living in the margins of an early ’80s Gotham City that was rotting long before the garbage workers started their ongoing strike, the Pagliacci-esque Arthur is first introduced as he stares into a mirror and paints on the makeup that he’s forced to wear for his miserable day job; even in a room full of self-loathing clowns, this guy still feels like a special kind of sad. Emaciated and rippling at the same time, Arthur looks like a werewolf who got interrupted mid-transformation (which might explain his stringy mop of wet black hair).

He’s one of the downtrodden — one of God’s unfortunate creatures. And just to make things worse, he suffers from a Pseudobulbar affect, which results in uncontrollable episodes of hysterical laughter (he carries a laminated card that he hands out to apathetic strangers who look at him askance, a ritual that would make anyone feel sorry for themselves). If Christopher Nolan’s Joker was an inscrutable force of nature, Phillips’ couldn’t be more human — all of his eccentricities are explicitly diagnosed. That literalness has its virtues, but it can also be insufferable; Phillips blurs fantasy and reality in the same way that Scorsese did in “The King of Comedy,” but he insists on doubling back and drawing a clear line between fact and fiction. It’s one of the many ways that “Joker” poses as a movie worthy of serious thought, but lacks the courage to behave like one.

Phoenix, meanwhile, follows his own muse wherever the hell he wants. Once the Joker bleeds through, he becomes mesmerically unpredictable. The essence of Phoenix’s performance — and the most lucid example of why it’s a worthy complement to Heath Ledger’s lip-smacking, carnival-esque take on the character — is that it’s always hard to tell if Arthur is laughing or crying, or which reaction would make the most sense. Who among us can’t relate?

Gotham is overrun with super rats, Trumpian billionaire Thomas Wayne is running for office and claiming that he’s the only one who can help the city’s poor, and Arthur’s mom (Frances Conroy) still insists on calling her son “Happy” because she sees his condition as evidence that he “was put here to spread joy and laughter.” The world is a joke, and it’s on him. But Arthur is so close to turning things around — he just has to realize that his life is actually a comedy (easier said than done in a movie so desperate to be taken seriously that it can’t afford to have a sense of humor).

Maybe he can become a comedian, like his hero Murray Franklin: Robert De Niro , graduating from Rupert Pupkin to Jerry Lewis’s Jerry Langford, plays the late night TV show host as a savage parody of Jay Leno. The extended Batman universe, so fascinated by masks and other layers of unreality, has always been attuned to the way that lonely Americans forge most of their connections through television, and “Joker” is at its best when digging into that particular darkness. But Arthur is too isolated to understand what makes other people laugh. In his journal/joke diary, he scrawls that “the worst part about having a mental illness is that people expect you to behave as though you don’t.” Anyone with a heart can sympathize with that, and anyone with a similar history can probably see themselves reflected in those words. Arthur is established as a poor soul, not a pariah, and Phillips is fooling himself if he thinks the rest of the movie does enough to muddy the water.

On both a personal and a political scale, “Joker” finds that things in this world need to be very, very bad before people can actually be bothered to change them. Trauma is transformative. Arthur doesn’t hit bottom until three drunken finance bros attack him on the subway, and he kills them in self-defense. Well, he kills some of them in self-defense. The next thing he knows, the news is full of breathless reports about an unidentified clown murdering some up-and-coming employees of Wayne Enterprises, and the tension between Gotham’s haves and its have-nots begins to boil over. The city needs to be saved, but Bruce Wayne is still just a child. Someone else will have to step up.

Not that Arthur has any interest in spearheading a cause. Put a microphone in his face and he’ll yowl that he “doesn’t believe in anything.” Yeah, he wants the world to look at itself in the mirror — the way he has to every morning — but really he just wants a hug, and for someone to tell him that he’s really there. While “Joker” often plays like a beat-for-beat remake of “The King of Comedy,” that movie was about a talentless man who was convinced that he was special; this movie, by contrast, is about a talented man who swallows the red pill and becomes convinced that nobody is. That perspective allows Phillips to feign an apolitical stance and speak to the people in our world who are predisposed to think of Arthur as a role model: lonely, creatively impotent white men who are drawn to hateful ideologies because of the angry communities that foment around them.

It’s a confused and self-negating approach to a movie that sees personal revenge as a viable spark for political revolution, and a profoundly dangerous approach to a movie that’s too self-impressed by its own subversiveness to see Arthur as anything but a hero. Lawrence Sher’s gorgeous and grimy cinematography fawns all over Joker, the swooning and weightless close-ups watching Phoenix do his Twyla Tharp-like clown dance like he’s possessed by the holy spirit. But Phillips’ direction abjectly fails to put us inside Arthur’s head — to risk the more nuanced identification that would come from a more subjective camera.

As “Joker” emerges from a turgid second act for an operatic grand finale, the film grows drunk on its own unexpected grace. There are moments of shocking violence, but mostly Philips is swept away by Arthur’s newfound power. There’s a fundamental difference between telling a story like this in the form of a dingy, misanthropic art film like “Taxi Driver” and telling it in the universal language of a superhero movie that’s going to open in multiplexes the world over. In this context, that story can’t help but feel aspirational . And Phillips is the first person to be seduced by its pull — to be helplessly pulled along by an innate desire to see Joker at the height of his power.

“Joker” is a movie about how fucked up people can exist in a fucked up world — a movie that insists to the bitter end that one does not negate the other. Arthur isn’t deranged because Gotham is a garbage town, and Gotham isn’t a garbage town because people like Arthur are deranged. Rich or poor, bad guys are the only ones who think like that. And yet, for decades on end, Batman and the Joker have continued to invent each other because we’re all stuck on an endless seesaw between heroes and villains, order and chaos. As the news anchor puts it: The only answer for super rats is super cats.

But Phillips, stuck between reinventing the superhero movie from the ground up and throwing a cheap disguise on the same dumb origin story we’ve already seen 1,000 times, needs his Joker to be both the light and the dark, the yin and yang, the only sane man in a world gone mad. He needs to have his cake, and to smear it all over his face in a big red smile too. The result is an immaculately crafted piece of mass entertainment that wants to be all things to all people, less a Rorschach test than a cinematic equivalent of Schrödinger’s Cat that leaves us feeling like the movie, and the current state of studio filmmaking itself, might actually be dead and alive at the same time.

By the time “The End” comes in its cute, old-timey font, “Joker” is neither a game-changer nor just “another day in Chuckletown.” It’s both. It’s good enough to be dangerous, and bad enough to demand better. It’s going to turn the world upside down and make us all hysterical in the process. For better or worse, it’s exactly the movie the Joker would want.

“Joker” premiered at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival. Warner Bros. will release “Joker” in theaters on October 4.

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79 Joker (2019)

How Class Divide Leads to Violent Anarchy in Joker (2019)

By Zach Foutch

Joker looks on as Murray and his studio audience watch his failed stand-up routine. He becomes visibly more agitated. Tonight, he had planned to kill himself, hoping that his death would make more “cents” than his life; however, watching his boyhood hero, Murray Franklin laugh at his failure, Joker decides on a different path. Everything in the past week has led to this moment, Joker has been beaten down and cast out from society. Now, his eyes are open to how truly awful people have become. His final joke will be the catalyst that causes the lower class of Gotham to rally around the clown and overthrow the elites and oppressors that have kept them down with myths of opportunity. He turns to Murray, “How about another Joke, Murray? What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? I’ll tell you what you get! You get what you … deserve!” BANG! Murray dies and the man who was nobody, who lost his identity. Feeling abandoned by society because of his difference, he becomes a somebody.

The man who would become somebody does not start out as Joker. Rather, Arthur Fleck lives a seemingly normal life. He works as a clown for hire. He has a small and run-down apartment, but he can at least provide for himself and his mother. On the surface, Fleck works to carve out his own place in society. However, when examining his character some dark truths begin to emerge. Fleck is lonely, mentally ill, medicated, and as he explains to his therapist, “All I have are negative thoughts.” It’s no surprise then, to learn that Fleck frequently escapes his dreary life with vivid fantasies of love and support from those around him. Indeed, these stories are so encoded with realism, the viewer is left to decode the message as reality vs. fantasy.

Furthermore, his life as a clown is not a happy one. A group of students steal his sign and when he gives chase, they beat him harshly and leave him curled up in the alley, as people walk by, barely sparing a glance at him. Early on in the film, the director, Todd Phillips makes it abundantly clear that, Arthur has been shunned by society. He is different and the people of Gotham want nothing to do with him, because of that difference. Consequently, Arthur and his peers within the lower social class, face constant discrimination from the powerful elites who believe themselves inherently better than the lower echelon of society.  Although Arthur is a member of the lower class, the director depicts his peers constantly shunning him because of Arthur’s quirks. Arthur is different, he has an uncontrollable laugh disorder, that causes him to break out laughing at inappropriate moments. His disorder makes those around him uncomfortable and keeps him in a perpetual state of loneliness.

The parallels between our society and that of Arthur’s are extraordinary. We cast out those we deem different for fear of opening ourselves up to discrimination for associating with the undesirables of society. Arthur is very clearly meant to represent an undesirable. He is poor, mentally ill, medicated, uneducated, and unaccepted. The point of Arthur’s constant beat downs lays the groundwork for his eventual turn into Gotham’s prince of crime. Though he is discriminated against, his difference is a much bigger focus of the movie. Arthur’s laughing disorder causes him to laugh loudly and uncontrollably at inappropriate times. It’s a major stigma to be mentally ill, mental illness is by and large, not understood by society. In fact, one of Arthur’s jokes makes a powerful statement about the difference those with mental illness feel. Arthur believes, “The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don’t.”

Much like ours, Arthur’s society expects everyone to conform to societal norms. However, the problem for Gotham and us is those norms do not allow for people that are desperately searching for help to receive that help. Too often, like Joker, the despondent forgotten people of society lash out violently at those in power, whom they feel have wronged them. For Arthur and Gotham, it’s lashing out at Thomas Wayne, the wealthy politician when he calls the people of Gotham clowns. In response to the violent murder of three employees, Wayne goes on tv calling the murderer and people like him clowns. He makes no effort to disguise the fact that the people of Gotham are beneath him. Wayne announces a candidacy for mayor and arrogantly informs Gotham that they have to follow him and that only he can lead Gotham out of economic ruin. His arrogance is predictably met with resistance from Gothamites and, as Charles Gerain states in his Joker movie review, “Gotham is torn apart by classism and societal woes as billionaire patriarch Thomas Wayne campaigns for Mayor, representing the 1% and the free-reign of the rich.”

By this point in the movie, Arthur has lost his job. His therapist informs him the city is cutting funding for social services and that Arthur will no longer have access to his meds. Quite literally, Arthur has no power, until, by a stroke of luck, Arthur finds a letter written by his mother, Penny, to Thomas Wayne. The letter claims that Thomas is Arthur’s father and suddenly, the power dynamic shifts. In this moment, it is possible that Arthur is part of the elite 1% and for a moment, Arthur allows himself to believe that salvation is at hand. Only for those beliefs to be crushed when Wayne rejects him. According to Thomas Wayne, Arthur’s mother is delusional. She invented the affair between her and Wayne as an excuse to cope with her reality. In actuality, Arthur was adopted by Penny and, as we find out, Arthur was beaten quite severely at a young age by Penny’s boyfriend. However, while the explicit story plays out on screen for the viewer, a deeper examination throws the narrative into disarray. A common theme from Phillips is that nothing is explicitly stated. It is implied and up to the viewer to make their own determination of the events in Arthur’s life.

Looking back at the Thomas Wayne is Arthur’s father storyline, while the narrative explicitly states that Arthur is a nobody, there are subtle clues that Thomas Wayne used his power and money to fabricate the entire event. It is not a stretch to believe that Wayne used his enormous fortune to forge an adoption form and had Arthur’s mother committed to hide his affair from his wife, Martha. Regardless of what the viewer wishes to believe, the story is driven by Arthur’s understanding.

We have finally arrived at the catalyst for Arthur. He is a mentally ill loner, he has lost his job, his access to medication is gone and, as it turns out, his name isn’t even Arthur Fleck. Society has constantly pushed him away, choosing to discriminate against a person they perceive to be different from them. However, Arthur has a dark secret. Unbeknownst to Gotham, Arthur is the clown who murdered Wayne’s three employees. The underclass of Gotham has taken up that symbol in protest against Wayne and the elites that seek to control their lives. Now that he is nobody, Arthur is free to be whoever he wants and what he has always wanted above all else is to be accepted and loved by society. Arthur dawns the iconic makeup of the clown and gives himself a new identity, Joker. Joker will become the symbol of Gotham’s protest, not as the head of the movement but because it’s fun, and all he wants is to have fun. Albeit, Joker’s concept of fun is twisted and dark.

Inevitably, there are those in our society that fail to understand the story Todd Phillips wants to tell. They view this movie through their narrow perspective that says everything Joker accomplished was due to his whiteness. They confirm their bias when refusing to contemplate and understand what this movie actually is. For example, Lawrence Ware of The New York Times writes, “what struck me most is what the film wants to say-about mental illness or class divisions in American society is not as interesting as what it accidentally says about whiteness. For it is essentially a depiction of what happens when white supremacy is left unchecked. It shows the delusions that many white men have about their place in society and the brutality that can result when that place is denied. The fact that the Joker is a white man is central to the film’s plot. A black man in Gotham City in 1981 suffering from the same mysterious mental illness as Fleck would be homeless and invisible. He wouldn’t be turned into a public figure who could incite an entire city to rise up against the wealthy. Black men dealing with Fleck’s conditions are often cast aside by society, ending up on the streets or in jail.”  Lawrence Ware utterly fails to comprehend what the Joker narrative is intended to be and instead, turns the movie into a racial issue. Ware believes Joker is an example of white supremacy and that the difference, power, and discrimination present in this film are products of race. He ignores the obvious implications of classism and the story of how society reacts when oppressed by elites that look down upon them. The lower echelons of society are meant to be followers, subservient to our leaders, the elites, the 1%. Whether intentional or not, Todd Phillips has painted a vivid picture of what is happening to our own society. Our own society is struggling with an imbalance of power and wealth. In fact, the extremely wealthy, continue to become richer, while the rest of us struggle to meet the demands of day to day life.

Joker tells the story of what happens when a society is pushed to the brink. The lower class is choking under economic pressures and inability to care for themselves because the jobs they rely on are disappearing. Their problems are capitalized when the wealthiest man in Gotham calls them clowns and instructs them to follow him, as he is their salvation. Like Gotham, our society has experienced rapid economic growth that disproportionately benefits the upper class. According to Reuters, our society is struggling with the fact that the wealthiest fifth of Americans hold 88% of the country’s wealth, while the number of people receiving foods stamps has gone up to 39 million, a 40% increase from 2008. Joker personifies our society, showing us what happens when a person pushed to the brink can become.

While Joker lashes out and seeks to become a bully for fun, he unintentionally becomes a rallying point for the disillusioned lower class of society that is fed up with the status quo. That his outbursts become violent is simply a by-product of his desire to be heard by society. Now that he understands how truly awful society is, Joker gleefully goes on a rampage bullying those who have bullied him. He seeks retribution and will stop at nothing to avenge himself. If people die, so be it.

Brown, Elizabeth Nolan. “Everyone Is Getting Joker Wrong.” Reason.com, Reason, 8 Oct. 2019, reason.com/2019/10/08/everyone-is-getting-joker-wrong/.

Debney, Ben. “Liberals, Class and the Joker Complex.” CounterPunch.org, 6 Oct. 2019, www.counterpunch.org/2019/10/11/liberals-class-and-the-joker-complex/.

Gerain, Charles. “Review: JOKER Is Disturbing and Captivating.” Blackwell Journal-Tribune, Service Blackwell & Kay County since 1915, 14 Oct. 2019, www.blackwelljournaltribune.net/articles/10993/view.

Hunnicutt, Trevor. “Rich Get Richer, Everyone Else Not so Much in Record U.S. Expansion.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 2 July 2019, www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-expansion-contrasts/rich-get-richer-everyone-else-not-so-much-in-record-u-s-expansion-idUSKCN1TX0HE.

Ware, Lawrence. “The Real Threat of ‘Joker’ Is Hiding in Plain Sight.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 9 Oct. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/movies/joker-movie-controversy.html.

Difference, Power, and Discrimination in Film and Media: Student Essays Copyright © by Students at Linn-Benton Community College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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“Morally bankrupt”? No, ‘Joker’ is a deeply moral movie about the power of kindness

It's been written off by some as nihilistic pornography, but the Batman villain's origin story conveys a powerful message

Back in 1995, The New York Times called Kids , Harmony Korine’s unflinching cinema verité -style exploration of 24 hours in the lives of disaffected teenagers, “a wake-up call to the modern world”. The New Yorker , meanwhile, wrote the film off as “nihilistic pornography”. It’s a divisive critical appraisal we’ve seen repeated around Joker , Todd Phillips’ Scorsese-inspired, ‘80s-set reimagining of the Batman villain’s origin story, with Joaquin Phoenix in the titular role, here initially known as Arthur Fleck.

Fleck is a sad sack who has taken so many beatings – both physical and figurative – from the world that, eventually, he snaps. By the end of the movie, he has transformed into the Joker, a malicious murderer who, he says, believes in nothing. The film premiered at Venice Film Festival back in September and was awarded five-star reviews pretty much across the board, even scooping the Golden Lion – the festival’s highest award – which is unheard of for a mainstream Hollywood superhero movie.

Then came the backlash.

Rumblings began on social media – discontent bubbling on ‘film Twitter’ – and mainstream publications soon followed suit. The Guardian , which had awarded the movie five stars in Venice , followed-up with a two-star review that decried Todd Phillips’ vision as “shallow”. The New Yorker went further, claiming “‘Joker’ is an intensely racialised movie” (at one point Arthur is attacked by some young people of colour) but declines to examine that subtext in favour of a “numbing emptiness”. It seems the underlying charge is that Joker is “dangerous, irresponsible and morally bankrupt” .

On the contrary, this is a deeply moral movie about the power of kindness. Much has been made of the film’s depiction of fat cats screwing over the little guy in a Gotham besieged by garbage strikes and lacerating Government cuts. That’s a large part of Phillips’ message. Yet there’s not just top-down viciousness –  Joker is an allegory about what happens in a society where cruelty reigns and empathy is absent.

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First let’s look at the fat cats. We meet Thomas Wayne, father to a very young Bruce Wayne, many years before the latter becomes Batman. He’s filthy rich and, in his bid to become the Mayor of Gotham, calls the seething underclass “clowns”, a slur that contributes to the violence that follows. Far from a kindly, benevolent philanthropist, the Thomas Wayne of Joker is a mean, selfish bully. Arthur’s mother, Penny, claims she had an affair with him many years ago. Arthur, she says, is their son. Authorities insist that, mentally ill, Penny fantasised the whole thing and that Arthur was adopted.

• Read more:  Why Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is the villain 2019 deserves

She counters that Thomas Wayne, the most powerful man in Gotham, had the adoption papers forged. The truth is left ambiguous (again the hospital staff blame Penny’s illness) though in one scene Arthur turns over a black-and white photograph of his mum. It’s scrawled with the caption, “I love your smile”. The viewer – and this is deliberate –  can’t quite make out the initials with which it is signed, though it seems they might read “T.W.” Arthur challenges Thomas, only to be attacked and dismissed.

In another scene, we see Arthur interact with Bruce through the gates of the sprawling Wayne mansion. They’re united in the mise en scene , Arthur’s tan jacket matching the colour of Bruce’s sweater. This much is unambiguous: Arthur Fleck and Bruce Wayne – Joker and Batman – are two sides of the same coin. One, though, has been showered with love, money and privilege; the other has gone without.

Gotham is ravaged by austerity and inequality. It’s the reason that Arthur’s seven types of mental health medication, plus his cognitive therapy, are withdrawn. That New Yorker piece appeared to imply that Joker is a racist movie because Arthur is attacked by a group of people of colour and a woman of colour is cruel to him on a bus, but the point is actually that the city’s systemic inequality forces black people to live, like Arthur, in its poorest areas. Thwarted and frustrated, the poorest inhabitants – of all colours – turn on each other. A white co-worker, for instance, refers to Arthur’s attackers as “animals”.

It’s amazing that a film critic for The New Yorker would be unable to tell the difference between a racist movie and one that depicts racism.

Arthur reveres talk show comedian Murray Franklin, a nod to the 1983 Scorsese classic The King of Comedy. Yet even Murray is cruel to Arthur, broadcasting, on national television, secretly filmed footage of Arthur bombing at a comedy club, using the amateur’s ineptitude to highlight his own talent. We all know people who have surreptitiously filmed or taken iPhone snaps of strangers in public and mocked them on social media. When we dehumanise people in such a way, Phillips is saying, it’s a race to the bottom.

• Read more:  Joker  secures biggest October box office opening of all time

When he finally meets Murray Franklin in person, Arthur asks if he knows what it’s like out on Gotham’s streets, how cruel people are to one another on a day-to-day basis; this is the heart of Joker. We are all at fault. Take the scene in which Arthur’s workmate, who is of restricted growth, can’t reach the lock to open a door and escape a grisly murder scene. When I saw the movie, the audience laughed.

There’s been a great deal of controversy around that fact that, once he’s transformed into Joker, Arthur dances in the street to convicted paedophile Gary Glitter’s ‘Rock & Roll Part 2’. While the track doesn’t have the same connotations in the States – until recently, sports teams regularly walked out to the former pop star’s tunes – it’s still a bold move. If you think it seems gratuitous, or just juvenile button-pushing, consider the role that the scene plays in the narrative, sign-posting that society has reached the point of no return, where there’s no right and wrong and all bets are off. By now, Arthur’s been pushed so far that we’re almost on his side.

It’s a haunting, indelible scene, intoxicating and repugnant all at once – and part of the message behind this powerful, important film. The critical backlash, combined with its record-breaking box office numbers, is almost like performance art: the so-called ‘experts’ telling the masses that they don’t know what’s good for them.

You can dismiss Joker as “nihilistic pornography” (plenty have) but, like the divisive Kids 24 years before it, this is a compelling wake-up call that implores us to be kind to one another day-to-day.

Joker is in cinemas now

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Joker Is One Unpleasant Note Played Louder and Louder

Editor’s Note: David Edelstein wrote his initial assessment of Joker at the Toronto Film Festival. This is his full review.

Groundbreaking works are often dangerous, flouting aesthetic and moral norms, forcing you to see the world from angles you’d rather not, through the eyes of people you’d flee. But not all dangerous works are groundbreaking. Not even most of them. Not even many. More often, they’re just sleazy and opportunistic, shocking only in the degree of their violence and not because they show the world from a radical perspective. Consider Joker , the R-rated DC Comics installment that prompted an eight-minute standing ovation after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival . Oh, those Italians — they do love operatic celebrations of psychosis. I can see why people are gobsmacked. The movie has a distinctively scuzzy look — harlequin hues plus urban rot — along with a tour-de-force performance by Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, the pitifully undefended party clown who will one day be Batman’s most feared nemesis. Its director, Todd Phillips, has playfully referred to Joker as “bonkers,” but he’s giving himself too much credit. Righteous vigilantism has long been the dominant mode in modern crime sagas; the main difference here is that the vigilante wears makeup and has a grating laugh. Joker is an attempt to elevate nerdy revenge to the plane of myth, which is scary on a lot of different levels.

Although this is an “origin” story, Phoenix’s Arthur is a volatile party clown well before he adopts that fabled moniker. But oh, does he mean well. The problem is that from birth, the fates have cast him as a victim, more sinned against than sinning. What a litany of injuries: In the first scene, a group of teens steals the sign he carries for an everything must go sale and bashes it across his face when he gives chase, after which his boss accuses him of stealing the sign and deducts the cost from Arthur’s wages. An attractive single mother (Zazie Beetz) in his run-down apartment building can barely keep from grimacing in the face of his greasy leering. Social services are being cut, presumably to put money in the pockets of Gotham City’s wealthy — among them Thomas Wayne, father of Bruce — which means Arthur no longer has easy access to therapy or meds, which means he could provoke still more scummy thugs with his Tourette’s-like tendency to break into laughter in moments of stress. Sure enough, he’s attacked on the subway, this time by drunken Wall Street guys who happen to work for Wayne. Then a popular talk-show host (Robert De Niro) cruelly ridicules his attempt to be a stand-up comic at an open-mic event. The underclass, the overlords, the bosses, the government, celebrities, his fellow plebes, his overbearing, sickly mother (Frances Conroy) — everyone knocks him down and down again. Is it any wonder that this bereft, belittled man sees only two possibilities: suicide or supervillainy? In the end, you have to admire Arthur for his self-actualization. It sure beats impotence — or nonexistence, which is the ultimate impotence.

Actually, you don’t just admire Joker. The parade of insults is so repetitive and finally so tedious that you root for his alter ego’s emergence. Kill someone, Arthur! Anyone! Liberate our eyes from those underlit interiors with their pools of red, green, and yellow and from those rusted-out, graffiti-ridden subways and back alleys that conjure up the hell that was New York City in the 1980s. The movie wears its influences like a squirting flower: Arthur is a melding of two Martin Scorsese protagonists, The King of Comedy ’s Rupert Pupkin and Taxi Driver ’s Travis Bickle (hence the gimmick casting of De Niro), and a cousin to Charles Bronson’s Death Wish vigilante. At no point are we troubled by the people Arthur kills — they’re “free-range rude,” in the words of Hannibal Lecter, another psycho transformed by his author into an existential hero after an origin story in which some Nazis forced him to eat his little sister.

Joker is the ultimate Joaquin Phoenix role, which is not necessarily a compliment, though not a disparagement, either. He’s the best unhinged movie actor in the world. Phoenix never seems happier — or at least more at home — than when miserably lost in a character’s mind, his features registering every short-circuiting synapse. There’s music in his head, now flowing, now spasmodic, and when Arthur throws up his arms and twirls or does a little soft shoe, it’s as if he’s freeing himself from the oppression of acting sane. Take that, normalcy! When he finally makes an appearance on De Niro’s talk show with his clown face and orange suit, he refuses to connect with the host’s rhythms, and you flash on Phoenix’s nutso act with David Letterman, when he stopped the world and made it squirm.

The downside to the performance is the downside to the movie: It’s one note played louder and louder. The other actors offer no relief. De Niro is ill-suited to a part that calls for showbiz savvy, Beetz functions as a male projection, and Brett Cullen’s Thomas Wayne would lose a charisma contest to Mike Bloomberg. Conroy has a lyrical moment or two as Arthur’s mom, but she’s so obviously off her rocker that she functions as yet another antagonist to Arthur. The movie comes to life visually — this time evoking The French Connection — when the greasepainted Arthur flees detectives by losing himself on a subway packed with protesters dressed as clowns, but I began to dread the inevitable outcome: that Arthur will be recognized as a Clown God in the circus of horrors we call urban life.

As Time ’s Stephanie Zacharek put it , the film is less an exploration of a modern pathology than a symptom of it. It’s an anthem for incels. It brings to mind Stephen Metcalf’s incisive 2012 essay in Slate after a disturbed man opened fire in a theater showing The Dark Knight Rises. Metcalf didn’t blame the movie, exactly. But he did trace a connection between civil massacres and characters like Joker. The young men who had committed such acts believed “they had been grossly undervalued by the world—so much so, their lives had become one long psychic injury.” Metcalf suggests these men are drawn to supervillains, with their “charismatic malevolence” and ability to put modern technology to “creatively annihilative” uses, because it allows them to aggrandize themselves as Mephistophelean. Building on Hannah Arendt’s famous assessment of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who represented “the banality of evil,” Metcalf argued the best way to discourage incidents like the one in that theater (which have become way more frequent in the meantime) is to “divest evil of its grandiosity or mythic resonance by completely banalizing it.” In other words, make them look like the loser schmucks they are.

Although Phillips and the screenwriters sought to make Joker more realistic than its DC Comics predecessors, it exalts its protagonist and gives him the origin story of his dreams, in which killing is a just — and artful — response to a malevolently indifferent society. Arthur/Joker might be repulsive, but in a topsy-turvy universe, repulsive is attractive. I’m not arguing that Joker will inspire killings (it might, but so might a lot of other things), only that it panders to selfish, small-minded feelings of resentment. Also it’s profoundly boring — a one-joke movie.

*A version of this article appears in the September 30, 2019, issue of  New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

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Review by Brian Eggert October 4, 2019

Miserable and nihilistic, Joker rethinks the iconic Batman villain in terms of a darkly realistic origin story of a murderer. Director Todd Phillips constructs a new version of the Joker whose emergence is preceded by textbook warning signs, including child abuse, an unstable family life, antisocial behavior, and various neuroses. It’s an unusual approach for a character whose chaotic behavior often proves entertaining only because Batman’s order balances it. The character, named Arthur Fleck and played in an uncanny performance by Joaquin Phoenix, lives in a seedier, punishing version of Gotham City, where he feels persecuted by society at large. Following the trajectory of another cinematic psycho, Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver (1976), Arthur finally lashes out at the world that has ignored and abused him, becoming a more disturbed and lower-stakes version of the legendary DC Comics villain. The film might be a wreckless an d angry statement about the world today, capable, although not intentionally so, of inciting incels to violence. It might be nothing more than a bleak character study in the footsteps of Christopher Nolan’s  Dark Knight  trilogy, commanded by an impressive performance and incredible formal craftsmanship, in which case it’s a bold piece of studio filmmaking. But Joker ’s desperate need for subversiveness results in a confused portrait of a deranged bad guy, even as it strives for ambiguity. The film leaves the audience to question whether they should cheer for or feel disturbed by its central character. But it’s less a genuinely transgressive approach than one closely modeled on the work of Martin Scorsese, and thus more an exercise in homage than rebellion. Even so, that won’t stop people from aggrandizing it.

Late in the film, the camera glances up at a movie theater marquee—one of the few not showcasing a porno with the name of a Billy Wilder film—advertising Brian De Palma’s Blow Out and Peter Medak’s Zorro: The Gay Blade , dating the film to 1981. The setting is Gotham, whose real-life counterpart has always been New York, which in that same year had a garbage strike, over 2,000 homicides, and over 5,000 rapes. Accordingly, Gotham’s streets are littered with garbage, rampant crime, and newscasters warn of an increasing “super rat” problem (don’t bother inquiring because the film never explains). “Is it just me,” Arthur says, “or is it getting crazier out there?” Cinephiles will recognize the milieu, the urban sprawl of Scorsese’s elusive Taxi Driver ,   where human scum festers and the only source of brightness exists in the delusions of the protagonist. Along with several nods and even lines of dialogue pulled from The King of Comedy (1983), Phillips draws from Scorsese’s wellspring of New York stories about psychopaths who, upon being rejected by the world and those they admire, lash out in criminal ways that gain them the attention they need. But unlike De Palma, whose Blow Out   paid homage by advancing the cinematic language developed by Alfred Hitchcock, Phillips’ brand of reverence uses his inspiration like carbon paper instead of a launchpad. Joker copies Scorsese’s aesthetic and themes, but it does not progress them. 

Indeed, Phillips doesn’t shy away from citing his sources onscreen, and so Joker plays like the product of a talented filmmaker who spent his youth watching and rewatching Scorsese’s body of work. “Someday,” he said to himself, “I’m going to make a movie like that .” And that’s just what Phillips has done, without elevating what Scorsese was trying to say in his grittier 1970s and 1980s output. To be fair, Phillips has made an excellent piece of homage; it’s beautifully shot by d.p. Lawrence Sher, and the period details are nothing short of convincing. But Phillips folds themes from Scorsese into an established intellectual property for a pastiche taffy of cute references and respectful nods. It feels no more thoughtful or ambiguous than Phillips’ previous work, a series of films about immature men caught in a perpetual state of arrested development, from Old School (2003) to three Hangover movies. Lowbrow comedies have been his bread and butter since 2000’s Road Trip , but after producing last year’s A Star is Born and earning some clout with Warner Bros., Phillips has set his sights on something more ambitious. He seems to want to deepen established characters and give them some human dimension, something even darker than The Dark Knight (2008). However, all he’s done is demystify the myth; he’s turned an insane agent of chaos into John Wayne Gacy’s Pogo the Clown.  

Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck lives in a grungy apartment with his mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), who he cares for and dotes upon. He works a thankless job as a clown, aspires to become a stand-up comedian, and occasionally stalks his neighbor (Zazie Beetz), with whom he’s infatuated. But the world has nothing except a long coil of excrement to pinch off on Arthur’s face. Within the first half-hour of Joker , Arthur receives not one but two violent beatings, loses his job, and endures no end of insults and rejections. The second beating, which takes place after a coworker has given him a firearm, results in Arthur shooting down three rich assholes employed by Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen). Curiously enough, Arthur’s mother often refers to her glory days long ago as an employee of Gotham’s wealthiest patron, who is also a mayoral candidate. “Those of us who have made something of our lives,” Wayne says on live television, “will always look at those who haven’t and see nothing but clowns.” It’s a remark that incites outrage among the lower classes and builds Arthur, the anonymous clown killer, into a figurehead. After Arthur commits murder (in a sequence recalling The French Connection , again demonstrating Phillips’ affection for New York cinema of the 1970s), an act for which he has no regret, he inadvertently incites a movement, wherein the rich become targets for the repressed and dejected masses—all of whom don clown masks in honor of their perceived liberator. 

The screenplay by Phillips and Scott Silver leaves a meandering breadcrumb trail to Arthur’s mental state. He was institutionalized and now sees a social worker (Sharon Washington) about his mental health. He takes seven prescriptions to keep himself sane. He has a neurological disorder that causes him to laugh-cry when under pressure, resulting in pained cackles and burps that announce themselves like Tourette’s syndrome tics. The specifics of Arthur’s mental condition prove less significant than how they are portrayed. If Joker has little to say outside of reactionary social politics and Scorsese-brand aesthetics, it’s an astounding vehicle for Phoenix’s talent. The actor somehow makes the film urgently compelling, and his body is so wincingly skinny—a quality that Phillips seems to savor in those shots where Phoenix raises his arms to reveal a sunken stomach, protruding ribs, and virtually no muscle mass. The transformation is incredible, and Phoenix’s ability to inhabit a character gives way to scenes of scary, internalized emotion on Arthur’s face—a lightning storm of conflicting expressions, from tears to riotous laughter, all about to burst from the inside of Arthur’s skeletal frame. 

As the film carries on, Arthur’s history and psyche become more critical to the plot, which relies on a series of eye-rolling twists to propel Arthur over sanity’s edge. In a clumsy, Fight Club -esque moment, one character is revealed to be a figment of Arthur’s imagination, and therein, a sign of his growing insanity. He later discovers that his lineage is not what he thought it to be. Catalyst after wretched catalyst builds until, with about 20 minutes left in its two-hour runtime, Joker turns what has become a miserablist experience into a revenge story propelled by insanity. After all, Arthur’s few moments of violence have earned him media attention and followers, including crowds of clown-masked devotees willing to overwhelm, and presumably kill, a cop (Shea Whigham) who accidentally shoots a civilian. Finally, Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), the host of a late-night talk show and Arthur’s idol, invites Arthur onto his program to be humiliated—after some video of Arthur’s embarrassing stand-up footage turns him into a laughing stock. It’s the last-ditch moment for Arthur to become Joker, and it’s the most ill-conceived scene in the film. 

In a way, Joker being modeled after a crazed mass murderer is scarier because it follows the logic of a school shooter or someone with a sniper rifle in a bell tower. In another way, it’s lazier, as though Phillips couldn’t conceive of an intelligent person who transforms into an unhinged supervillain. Instead, Arthur behaves like a disgruntled, lonely person who tells an obvious window-into-my-soul joke: “What do you get when you cross a crazy person with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?” The punchline is an act of public violence, a moment that, when seen by the deserted and unhinged, will feel cathartic. Dramatically, Phillips has engineered our empathy for Arthur. We find him at once worthy of our pity and yet his actions are detestable, making his final outburst an insane, murderous victory over those who wronged him. It’s a moment that is exhilarating and maybe even irresponsible. At the same time, the material leaves illogical leaps between the character as Phillips has made him and the requirements of a major motion picture about a famous intellectual property. Why, for instance, would a crowd of hundreds suddenly don masks and praise a madman who performs a violent act? A few handfuls of disturbed individuals devoted to a cult leader, that is believable. But hundreds of masked people suddenly driven to worship Joker like a god? It might seem implausible, except when you consider that people today worship a man with an orange mask and absurd hair despite his crimes (and so perhaps it’s not so unreasonable). 

The controversy surrounding Joker —the worry that the film will incite real-life followers reminiscent of James Holmes—feels over-estimated, if not engineered as a promotional device to manufacture interest. Then again, people will doubtless cling to a film that dramatizes a “Kill the Rich” movement, not because Joker commands them to but because people can be insane. To be sure, certain aspects of the film exist as a mirror of American culture; however, Phillips jams that mirror in our face with an unsubtle hand. By the time Arthur first dons full Joker garb and dances down a long stairway, which before he only ascended at the end of each day as a symbol of his Sisyphus-like slog through life, Phillips resorts to an odd musical queue: Gary Glitters’ “Hey” song, music often played at sporting events. It’s a moment that feels obvious and pandering, just as his Scorsese references are—everything from De Niro’s presence to the recurring image of pantomimed gunshots to the temple from Taxi Driver . Joker might be an entirely thankless and dramatically unrewarding experience without Phoenix’s presence, whose sheer talent allows the viewer to endure the proceedings, smiling through the pain as its main character does, if only for the pleasure of watching this actor do his thing with unwavering commitment. The rest is just poking and prodding to garner a reaction, and mistaking such provocations for having something profound or meaningful to say.   

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Love it or hate it, the Joker movie presents a tempting fantasy

It’s a persecution complex turned into a wish-fulfillment power trip.

By Tasha Robinson

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Todd Phillips’ standalone supervillain origin story Joker is arriving in theaters amid so much controversy and concern about the potential for copycat violence that the debate has largely overwhelmed the film itself. It’s been fascinating to watch the discussion around the movie shift from “Do we really need another Joker story so soon after Suicide Squad ?” to “Is Joker full of dangerous ideas that will spur its worst fans to murder?” The initial worries around Joker assumed the movie would be unnecessary, its impact negligible. The current questions ascribe it with too much importance, as if it might incite full-blown anarchy just by existing.

As usual in a case where people leap to extremes, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Joker may make some people who feel marginalized feel more seen and more powerful, and they may act out in response. There are some ugly, self-serving messages in the movie, which is incongruously bent on creating sympathy for Batman’s worst enemy and one of DC Comics’ most notoriously callous mass murderers and atrocity architects. But love it or hate it, the film does spin up a tempting fantasy of persecution and relief, of embracing nihilism as a means of complete escape from a terrible world.

It’s a self-pitying fantasy, certainly. Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver follow in the footsteps of Joel Schumacher’s 1993 drama Falling Down in portraying the world as a cartoonishly dark and uncaring place, an almost comically vile carnival where the protagonist can’t find a hint of comfort or relief. In a thoroughly immersed performance that’s being seen as a guaranteed awards-season attention magnet, Joaquin Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a part-time rent-a-clown working for a seedy talent agency full of exaggerated grotesques. Arthur is mentally ill and coping via meds and court-ordered therapy, which don’t offer comfort or represent caring. He’s devoted to his sick mother Penny (Frances Conroy), who’s encouraged him to see himself as a joyous light in the world, bringing laughter to the people.

The problem is that he isn’t particularly funny. He’s painfully awkward, the kind of twitchy, social incompetence people shy away from in public because his erratic behavior feels like it could turn dangerous — or at least uncomfortable for them. It’s easy for viewers to empathize with his desire to be loved, without necessarily loving him. When he says he feels invisible, it’s clear why: he’s the kind of person people look away from on the street, out of apathy or active discomfort.

That tension between sympathy and revulsion is one of the most honest things about Joker , which mostly goes out of its way to make the world awful. While working as a sign-twirler, Arthur is randomly beaten by a handful of kids, who steal his sign and then break it over his head. His boss not only doesn’t believe his story, he demands Arthur pay for the missing sign. The dramatic ironies and injustices compound throughout the film, until it’s clear that Arthur isn’t paranoid, the world really is out to get him. And then he takes violent, irrevocable action.

For much of its runtime, Joker is a consciously ugly film, visually and emotionally. Arthur starts with close to nothing, and loses it all incrementally, in ways designed to hurt empathetic viewers. Phillips and cinematographer Lawrence Sher (who also DP’d for all three of Phillips’ Hangover movies) give the film a sickeningly grungy, underlit, David Fincher-esque look, especially in Arthur’s squalid home. Everything about the storytelling — the ominous, booming score; the gritty darkness; the invasive sound design — is designed to be oppressive, and to push the audience toward Arthur’s point of view as the primary victim of all the oppression. It’s hypnotic just how horrifying Arthur’s existence is, just as Phoenix’s performance is hypnotic as he spirals from fragile hope into increasingly outsized and confident acts of destruction.

And then he escapes it all, by learning not to care — not about how or whether other people see him, not about whether he hurts or frightens or kills them, not about whether his final-act manifesto makes any sort of coherent sense. The important part of Arthur’s story — and the cause for so much of the concern around Joker — is that when he embraces his most nihilistic and destructive impulses, he suddenly earns the praise and attention he’s been lacking. That may not fully motivate him, but it’s meant as a message for the segment of the audience that feels closest to Arthur, those who feel most unseen and unloved: plenty of people agree with you that the world is unfair and ugly, and if you did something about it, they’d back your play.  

Like Falling Down — and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver , which Phillips openly emulates and references —  Joker suggests that when the leading man loses his mind, it’s an understandable, even natural reaction to an equally mad world. Viewers who aren’t already inclined to see humanity as a seething cesspit may not resonate with that level of cynicism. But to viewers who feel as abused and overlooked as Arthur Fleck, or even who harbor smaller, more rational resentments about society, Joker is a deliberate and fine-tuned provocation and promise: you aren’t alone, the people you hate really are awful, and it would be okay to act against them in any way you want .

Phillips has made it clear that he doesn’t believe Joker is anything as small and dismissible as a mere comic-book movie. But while his film is grimmer and more harrowing than anything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s offering up a fantasy just as clearly as any superhero wish-fulfillment power trip: the fantasy of being a hero to some, of going from powerlessness to power, of being feared and beloved at the same time. Phillips delivers that message in a self-congratulatory way, largely by setting the film in a world where Arthur has no choice but violence, and no escape but madness. He’s portrayed as a kind of dark truth-teller because he’s learned that the world is a joke and nothing matters.

That’s a fairly adolescent outlook, which Phillips embraces in the same persecution-complex spirit that recently led him to complain that he had to make Joker because the world is now too sensitive and woke for his previous brand of destructive-bro comedy. But Joker would probably be raising much less social concern if it wasn’t such a technically compelling movie, if its final moments weren’t so outsized and joyous and purposefully insane.

Because Joker does play — not just to its most put-upon, angry, repressed viewers — but to the entire audience’s darkest hearts. It shows someone suffering when he lets society have its way with him, and freed when he has his way with society. It shows him weeping alone when he plays by the rules, and dancing wildly in public when he decides to break those rules. The story hurts and harms him, but Phillips suggests in the end that everything he went through was necessary to bring him the power and recognition he deserves. It’s a tempting fantasy, crafted with utter conviction.

Many critics and early viewers have responded to Joker with loathing, because that fantasy is so selfish and solipsistic. By dismissing the world as imbalanced at best, outright malicious at worst, Phillips is enabling his viewers’ worst and most destructive impulses. “I just don’t want to feel so bad anymore,” Arthur says plaintively at one point. He’s a relatable kind of villain, harmless and sad — not an Everyman, but an audience avatar for the downtrodden. And then he models a way to not be harmless anymore. That doesn’t necessarily make Joker a call to action, or an invitation to real-life violence. But it does represent a horrifying form of invitation — not just a call to sympathize with the devil, but a full-blown justification for the hell he creates.

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“Joker” 2019 Film: Scene Analysis Essay (Movie Review)

• Shot 1: The camera captures the Wayne family: Thomas, his wife, and son. The long-shot frame with the center on Bruce Wayne is implemented. Such a frame choice expresses the idea of the hidden comparison between Arthur and Bruce. Bot of the character lost everything they had. Arthur killed his parents, Bruce, in order to see revenge done for all the violence he got from Thomas. The calmness of Bruce being surrounded by the dead bodies of his parents shows that the young boy understands the central “joke” Arthur mentions. Cut to:

• Shot 2: The following big closeup frame depicts the emotions of Arthur during the dialogue with his psychiatrist. The previous frame is supposed to be the images his cognition generated. Arthur finds the horrifying death of the Wayne spouses funny, saying to the psychiatrist: “You would not get it” (Top 10 Joker (2019) Moments). By implementing such a reverse-angle shot, the director shows the insanity of Arthur, whose mind is distorted, lacking the mere concept of empathy and love. However, this closeup expresses not only the insanity of the main character but also his deep suffering in associating himself with the lost child. The combination of shots shows that there is a direct correlation between Bruce’s and Arthur’s suffering. The main character wanted someone to experience his pain. This is the reason to kill Bruce’s parents, which proves his insanity of Arthur. Cut to:

• Shot 3: The last long-shot frame of this scene depicts the loneliness of the Arthurs’ insanity. Others will never understand the irony of his life. Only merciless violence can be a suitable punishment for the world which rejected Arthur. That is why his steps are in the blood, conveying the idea that the character made his choice to destroy the world, which was cruel to him. The world which cannot accept his joke should cease to exist.

Works Cited

“Top 10 Joker (2019) Moments.” YouTube , uploaded by WatchMojo.com, 2019.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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THE MOVIE CULTURE

Joker Movie Review & Summary: Conflicting Cinema At Its Finest

Joker is finest acting of Joaquin Phoenix one will ever witness on screen. Its horrifying, pitiful and so unsettlingly dark and brooding. It disgusts you while making one feel bad.

Joker Movie Cast

• Joaquin Phoenix as Joker
• Robert De Niro as Murray Franklin
• Zazie Beetz as Sophie Dumond
• Francis Conroy as Penny Fleck

Joker Movie Plot

Joker Revolves around Arthur Fleck and how society rejects him time and again. He goes from trying to fit in to becoming an outcast against defying odds and through violent means.

Joker Movie Review

Joker 2019 is a genuinely sensational film by Todd Phillips. It is a tragic film where Joaquín Phoenix depicts Arthur Fleck, a harassed, bullied, disappointed, wiped out man who turns into Joker, a brutal, violent and boundless character. This film portrays the domain image of society, where mankind can’t comprehend humanity and can makes an individual so weak that he/she can go to the deepest and darkest place of their consciousness to enable them to feel as a piece of society. (Sounds insane right?) That’s what a Joker film should emanate. The character portrayed by Joaquin is torn and tortured by the society to such an extent that it can cause you to acknowledge the brutal character of joker to be correct and in the right all through the film. You can’t deny the way that none other than Joaquín would had made this role this heart-breaking and dehumanizing. Hence, even after more than a year, the movie is referenced widely worldwide.

Certainly, Joker was to be nominated for the academy, as the character and story features the reasonableness of the world. The film appears to be a suspenseful thrill ride where you can see a few characters from DC Comics presented in absolutely startling and horrendous setting. The existence of a comedian who conveys a chuckling disorder gets destroyed by a local area, family companion and afterward goes up to be a savage character looking for solace in violence.

Joker And His Fantasy

Joker seeks after a fantasy about making crowd snicker however in his own specific manner in front of an audience. Leaving a phase separated he likewise needs to manage his mom who at that point uncovers the character of his dad, for which Arthur executes her as well and discovers to be a son of some rich guy by the name of Thomas Wayne. The film at first appears considerate yet later it becomes high-octane by including some terrific scenes like Joaquin getting harassed, shootout in train, his heart whelming dance moves, his fierce appearance, powerful blood smirks, the train riots and the most exhilarating climax stage scene with Murray.

There are immense conversations on acting of Joaquin Phoenix as he is a particularly brilliant entertainer and has numerous accolades and grants on his name. His body transformation is fabulous as it seems like he just took out a big chunk of himself. It is truly difficult to bring fake laughs and Arthur Fleck does it rigorously while additionally having a laughing disorder. The character sets out a solid picture of society and there are likewise numerous inquiries emerging from a crowd of people side. For eg: Can a Joker murder anybody with no main explanation? Is it important to be so violent every time? but whatever might be the appropriate responses, the developments in the film will make you pity the character and justify his actions to some extent.

Joker Movie: Todd Phillip’s best work yet

Todd Phillips has shown this screenplay extraordinarily where he acknowledges the real world and it isn’t pretentious like living in bogus denounced society. Judging by his previous track record, I surmise he picked Joaquin as Joker who is astounding for his visual acting and articulations. Todd has coordinated such films previously where he has consistently been bashed for his climax scenarios which you can find in Joker as well while he executes Murray and how it escalates from that point and ultimately ties in the demise of Batman’s parents

The dialogues in film appears to be more quoteworthy. There are numerous catchy lines in films relating with a typical working-class individualistic condition. For example, when he says I Thought My Life Is Comedy but It’s Tragedy and I Just Hope My Death Makes More Cents Than My Life. The one-to-one interchanges between different characters, especially Joker and Murray portray a societal commentary like no other.

The person has to go from various situation as life seems difficult. Either it be rich brag or poor fellow, but your actions decide where you I’ll stand further. A Joker depicts the actually meaning as it terms. People despise watching Joker but the face behind the mask has gone through many catastrophic situations which the movie highlights thoroughly.

Joker Movie Critical reception

Joker stands at 68% on Rotten Tomatoes with the consensus being, “Joker gives its infamous central character a chillingly plausible origin story that serves as a brilliant showcase for its star — and a dark evolution for comics-inspired cinema.” Its Metascore is at 59 with Mixed or average reviews based on 60 Critic Reviews.

The Movie Culture Synopsis

Joker is a cold, haunting feature by Todd Phillips which presents Joaquin in his best form yet. It makes you sympathize and then makes you feel bad for sympathizing, all while tying in some prominent moments in DC universe .

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Joker: reviews and analysis of the year’s most controversial comic book movie

The stand-alone R-rated origin story for Batman’s nemesis, starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips, won awards and praise while also igniting a firestorm of controversy.

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Joker , a stand-alone origin story for Batman’s psychotic arch-nemesis, was already one of the most-reviled and most-defended movies of 2019 weeks before its October 3 release. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by the Hangover trilogy’s Todd Phillips, Joker was deemed dangerous by its most vocal critics, akin to an incel training manual. To some of the character’s and movie’s fans, those critical reviews and negative reactions were just another example of social justice warrior overreach .

Still, the movie garnered plaudits, with largely middling-to-positive reviews , and it won the prestigious Golden Lion , the Venice Film Festival’s top prize.

Before the movie was released, Joker’s studio Warner Bros. and family members of those killed in the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, mass shooting were in conversation over the possible danger the movie poses to moviegoers. Others worried about the character’s most toxic fans threatening audiences on opening weekend.

But its opening weekend was relatively calm. The movie broke records, becoming the biggest October opening of all time at $93.5 million. Joker now boasts the fourth biggest opening for an R-rated film in history. And its strong showing suggests more gritty stand-alone movies about comic book villains are likely to loom in the future.

Joker is the most-nominated film at this year’s Oscars. It shouldn’t win Best Picture.

Our roundtable discusses the Oscar chances for Todd Phillips’s take on the origin of the notorious villain.

Did Joker deserve all the discourse?

Todd Phillips’s gritty supervillain origin story might be irresponsible. It also might just be boring.

Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy are two sides of a story that Joker doesn’t get

Todd Phillips’s movie pays homage to the unsettling classics, but misses their point.

Why Joker is unlikely to inspire real-world violence, explained by an expert

The movie sparked worry that its antisocial violence might speak to extremists. Radicalization expert Robert Evans tells us why that probably won’t happen.

Joker is presumably laughing all the way to the bank after a record-breaking opening weekend

It’s now the biggest October opening of all time.

Joker has toxic fans. Does that mean it shouldn’t exist?

The new movie is exposing some of the toughest questions about art.

The fight over Joker and the new movie’s “dangerous” message, explained

Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is the subject of a furious debate. The movie hasn’t even been released yet.

The Joker never needed an origin story, but especially not this one

Joker aims to give the infamous supervillain a shocking stand-alone backstory. It’s not nearly as edgy as it thinks.

The Joker’s final trailer reveals how society created the Joker

It’s time to send in the clowns.

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The Twin Geeks

Joker: a review for a society.

Joker is a standalone origin story of Batman’s most infamous villain. It’s about how a guy becomes the Joker. Arthur Fleck is a deeply flawed man suffering from a condition where he can’t control his reactions. He feels too deeply, reacts too strongly, laughs at inappropriate times. Consecutive tragedies befall him and he enters a downward spiral mentally. Some conflicts, escalation, blah blah blah, and BAM! he becomes a supervillain. I think. Maybe?

The film patterns itself clearly after classic Martin Scorsese films, such as Taxi Driver  (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982) but never in a million years hits those highs. This is a film that gives as much as you give. Your expectations and desires for the film are going to directly impact your enjoyment of it. The sins of the film might seem unavoidable to some, while the beauty of it may seem all-encompassing to others. The truth, in most dichotomies like this, is somewhere in the middle. If you are open-minded to alternative depictions of famous cartoon characters, if you want superhero movies but want them different and with more artistic flair than a homogeneous Marvel film, or you want to see a fantastic lead performance: watch this film. Even if you don’t love it, it’s worth seeing under those considerations. If you’re not a fan of common dime store cynicism with mediocre dialogue, predictable plot twists, and a large disregard for an iconic character, don’t watch this film. If you are on both sides of what I just said, think about which aspects you value more and that will tell you what you will think about the film.

It would be easy to misread the previews for Joker . The media chose a story based on the tone of marketing that is not necessarily reinforced by the end product.  The film actually leans mostly left, but I get the feeling this sort of controversy was intentional. The cynic inside me thinks getting everybody talking about this film in any capacity was better than selling its reality.

The worst part of the film is the script. This might be one of the best I’ve seen with such a bad script. Talent goes a long way, but most lines delivered in this film are clearly half-baked platitudes borrowed from other films or what the writers thought people sounded like. They almost never feel human on the page, and the plot itself never takes profoundly interesting turns. The plot is focused on Arthur’s decay, and everything that surrounds him is done poorly. The love interest feels nonexistent in the worst possible way, while everybody else in this film just feels ugly. This film doesn’t want you to like anybody, everybody’s awful and tries to tell you the world is awful. The redeeming people inside the world don’t see the redemption. Like Arthur, everything breaks apart.

It would help if the film felt compelled to do something with its political edge, but the most meaningful commentary in the film regarding mental health. Otherwise, the class issues and societal problems within are just trite and so out of place (for the most part), even Arthur doesn’t seem particularly involved with the politics at play. He has clear contempt for rich people, but he doesn’t like political statements beyond serving his own ego. This is appropriate for the Joker character, but it doesn’t create a cohesive set of values for the film to preach. So we see people being terrible. Every single person. Some more justifiable, some sympathetic, some clearly worse than Arthur himself, but nobody’s clean. There’s no moral center, and perhaps that’s an inherent problem to basing an entire film on a murderer.

The director Todd Phillips is probably an above-average director and nothing beyond that. He makes every scene visually interesting and competent for the most part, but with the kind of critical goals this film wants to have, he just doesn’t deliver. The camera never does anything inventive or meaningful. Pretty and competent are as good as it gets here. There’s terrible CGI for specific moments that definitely needed practical effects. This is inexcusable.

Yet, I liked the film. It was fun! Structurally, the film actually follows through by the end. The pacing of the first two-thirds is a core issue, but the climax is strong. Pretentious ambiguity aside, the audience is on the edge of their seat by the time things start ramping up and that’s essential to walking away happy.

The costume design for Joker is great. Joker and Arthur are both visually identifiable which is important for the film to have its own identity. If Arthur resembled a previous Joker too much this film would be constantly compared to those versions. This Joker is only slightly reminiscent of Heath Ledger’s portrayal in The Dark Knight (2008), but the makeup and color of his suit are completely unique.

Arthur as a singular character and the film’s approach to reinventing the Joker as a protagonist are commendable. I think this criticism of the film will be most misplaced. This Joker is true to the spirit of the character despite the vast departures. Arthur’s mental illness and traumas feel like the best core for the film and while he may not be pulling out laughing fish any time soon, the writers cared about how to depict him.

They didn’t care as much as Joaquin Phoenix did. Nobody cared as much as him. Joaquin is the best part of the film, without debate. He sells the Joker, he sells Arthur. His unique brand is particularly inspired and every scene he’s in he tries to elevate what’s on the page. He’s worked out his laugh to be the best laugh I’ve ever heard for the Joker; every laugh he performs in this film is different and meant for a different context. I don’t mean to get too analytical just yet, but there’s only one time in the film where Arthur laughs genuinely, and so examining how Joaquin performs each of the countless laughs he goes through is remarkable.

Another easy example of Joaquin’s performance is in his flamboyance. A very easy and predictable arc for him to be sure. Arthur is meek at the start and becomes stronger and more vigorous as the film goes on and he becomes the Joker. The Joker is fearless, and Joaquin chooses to show this form of terrifying psychosis by being more and more evocative and putting more confidence in his effeminate speech patterns. He dances with pure joy when he commits to these depraved acts. If I could personally describe my thoughts on the Joker: he’s an artist trying to be a criminal. This Joker shows that in spades. This sort of performance to me meant Joaquin tried exceptionally hard, especially considering that his lines are never profoundly meaningful and the character never does anything particularly captivating. The most captivated we ever get is when we see Joaquin perform in highly tragic scenes.

The good outweighs the bad. It was viewed in good faith and I received a good return because of that. We cannot dismiss the artistic merits of the film. I like the Joker as a character. I like him murdering rich people, I like him being eternal rivals with Batman, I like him just goofing off and whacking people with a boxing glove. He scratches a different itch than Batman. The dark humor the Joker provides is a chaser to the dark stoicism Batman can’t escape. Joker has that dark humor; it is filled with that darkness.

The film is best seen with a group or in a filled theater. I found audience reactions fascinating to what they thought was funny or sad, or both. I almost felt like Arthur himself, curious and alien among the audience to see what morbid moments they’d laugh at next and what moments of horror actually affected them. Maybe that’s what the media was trying to warn me about.

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After seeing this, it’s like I’ve seen only a quarter of the whole story. I need to see more. I want to see Joker in prison going through counseling and meeting Harley Quinn or continuing his Joker movement, getting rid of Thomas Wayne and maybe introducing the grown up version of Bruce Wayne which we saw in the movie. Love this movie and now i can t wait to watch joker 2. And i think Joaquin’s performance has Oscar written all over it.

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‘Joker’: What to Read About the Divisive New Film

The movie earned roughly a quarter of a billion dollars its opening weekend. It also earned some polarized reviews and an F.B.I. warning. Here’s what people are saying.

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By Jennifer Vineyard

Is “Joker” a definitive movie of our time? Is it incel propaganda ? Might it even be dangerous ? The film arrived in theaters last week accompanied by F.B.I. warnings about the threat of related gun violence, but by Monday its international box office had already reached about a quarter of a billion dollars. Meanwhile, the debates over its politics and artistic merit raged on. Here are some of the many reviews, interviews and features that have been prompted by this dark and divisive movie.

‘Joker’ Review: Are You Kidding Me? [ The New York Times ]

“To be worth arguing about, a movie must first of all be interesting,” A.O. Scott writes in his review for The Times. “It must have, if not a coherent point of view, at least a worked-out, thought-provoking set of themes, some kind of imaginative contact with the world as we know it. ‘Joker,’ an empty, foggy exercise in secondhand style and second-rate philosophizing, has none of that. Besotted with the notion of its own audacity — as if willful unpleasantness were a form of artistic courage — the film turns out to be afraid of its own shadow, or at least of the faintest shadow of any actual relevance.”

‘“Joker” Is a Viewing Experience of Rare, Numbing Emptiness’ [ The New Yorker ]

“What results is more than the strenuous effort to contrive a story with resonant incidents and alluring details,” Richard Brody writes in his review. “‘Joker’ reflects political cowardice on the part of a filmmaker, and perhaps of a studio, in emptying out the specifics of the city’s modern history and current American politics so that the movie can be released as mere entertainment to viewers who are exasperated with the idea of movies being discussed in political terms — i.e., to Republicans.”

‘Brilliant and Unforgettable, “Joker” Borders on Genius’ [ Observer ]

“Even if you hate it, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before — like waking up next to a poisonous snake nestled on your blanket, poised and ready to strike,” writes Rex Reed. And although he admits to having mixed feelings, he adds, “I think it’s the best film about the psychological effect of violence as pop art since Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange.’”

‘“I [Expletive] Love My Life”: Joaquin Phoenix on Joker, Why River Is His Rosebud, His Rooney Research, and His “Prenatal” Gift for Dark Characters’ [ Vanity Fair ]

Actor Joaquin Phoenix anticipated a mixed reaction to the film’s moral ambiguity. “It’s a difficult film,” he acknowledges. “We want the simple answers, we want to vilify people. It allows us to feel good if we can identify that as evil. ‘Well, I’m not racist ‘cause I don’t have a Confederate flag or go with this protest.’ It allows us to feel that way, but that’s not healthy because we’re not really examining our inherent racism that most white people have, certainly. Or whatever it may be.” The movie isn’t a “call to action,” he insists, but “a call to self-reflection to society.”

‘“Joker” Director Todd Phillips Rebuffs Criticism of Dark Tone: “We Didn’t Make the Movie to Push Buttons”’ [ The Wrap ]

The director Todd Phillips explains his motivation to make the film — “a way to sneak a real movie in the studio system under the guise of a comic book film” — and expresses his surprise at the reaction. “What’s outstanding to me in this discourse in this movie is how easily the far left can sound like the far right when it suits their agenda. It’s really been eye opening for me.”

‘What’s the Panic Over “Joker” Really About?’ [ The New York Times Magazine ]

Dan Brooks writes that the panic about “Joker” is really a panic about moral ambiguity: “Legitimate movies are about complicated protagonists who combine good and bad qualities; superhero movies are about two guys, one good and one evil. By combining them into a single guy, won’t this movie cause dummies to think the Joker is good? To ask the question is to argue that nuance is dangerous. By fretting over Arthur Fleck’s sympathetic qualities, progressive-minded critics are demanding the same sort of bright line between good and evil that makes comic-book movies so boring.”

‘Variety Critics Debate “Joker”’ [ Variety ]

Two critics — Peter Debruge and Owen Gleiberman — debate the nuances on both sides of the argument. Debruge is rankled by “Joker” “because it takes a fictive pop-culture icon and reinvents him as a cruelly misunderstood incel underdog.” (He does concede it would be a “big mistake to banish toxic white men from the movies,” though.) Gleiberman counters that critics are treating a movie “as if it were a two-hour advertisement for the toxic white male,” “a violation of the New Woke Rules,” adding: “But they’re trying to wish away something that can’t be wished away.”

‘The Joker Is Simply a Clown Who Loves Crime’ [ The Outline ]

Alex Nichols, after debunking a popular misconception about the 2012 Aurora shooter James Holmes (“he was not outwardly Jokerlike and did not tell police that he was the Joker after the shooting”), questions the repeated refrain that “violent media breeds violent behavior.” “It’s odd to hear this refrain from liberals, given that Donald Trump and the N.R.A. routinely blame video games and violent movies for mass shootings in order to steer the debate away from gun control,” Nichols writes. “But this idea has been a mainstay of both parties for decades.”

‘“Joker” — A Political Parable for Our Times’ [ CNN ]

“This isn’t the first time Phillips’ and Trump’s worlds have collided,” Jeff Yang notes. “Imagine Fleck as Trump,” he suggests. “Phillips may not have intended for his film to be a political parable — or maybe he did — but it’s hard to imagine a darker ending for our real-world horror-comedy than that.”

“Commentary: How “Joker” Mirrors Our Fascination With Monsters, Now in the Trump Years” [ Chicago Tribune ]

Christopher Borreli connects Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker to “S.N.L.” sketches and likens the film to a sketch “written the morning after the 2016 presidential election, when journalism seemed intent on understanding why so many Americans turned to a man they didn’t fully understand.” This, he writes, is why the Joker is all motives: “mental illness, bad jobs, alienation, misunderstandings, nihilism, devious co-workers, social-service cutbacks.” The Joker is what happens “when our social contract is shattered and no one — not politicians, not the rich (who are targeted in film) — are held accountable to anyone anymore.”

Jokers at Every Turn at Comic Con, but They Were on Their Best Behavior [ The New York Times ]

Cosplay Jokers at New York Comic Con discuss the methods behind their “madness,” including Mei Velasco who “girl-ified” her Heath Ledger Joker while her husband dressed up as Harley Quinn. She also weighed in on the latest film Joker: “I feel like what he’s trying to say is that our society looks like it’s going toward that way, so this is like a warning. It’s like, ‘Hello, everybody, wake up!’”

Why the ‘Joker’ Movie Was a Risk Warner Bros. Wanted to Take [ The New York Times ]

“‘Joker’ got its start in 2016,” report Brooks Barnes and Nicole Sperling, “when Todd Phillips, who had directed men-behaving-badly comedies for Warner Bros. like ‘The Hangover’ and ‘Old School,’ told Greg Silverman, then the studio’s president of creative development and production, that he had a wild idea. Mr. Phillips wanted to make a gritty character study of the Joker in the mold of ‘Taxi Driver,’ dispensing with the cartoon, buildings-imploding fantasy of most superhero movies and placing the story more squarely in the real world.”

Getting the Joker’s Laugh Just Right [ The New York Times ]

It’s not easy to develop paroxysms of laughter, as Steve Knopper discovered during this examination of how actors have voiced the Joker over the decades. “It was rare that someone would come in to do the Joker voice for more than 20 minutes who didn’t end up bathed in sweat,” director Andrea Romano said. “It requires a tremendous amount of energy.”

The Jokers, Ranked [ The New York Times ]

Who laughed best? From Lego cacklers to “Suicide Squad” scene-stealers, the various Jokers are appraised for their theatricality and psychopathy. Only one can achieve the distinction of being, as Jason Bailey notes, “truly, a Joker for our time.”

How Well Do You Know the Joker’s Laugh? [ The New York Times ]

Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, Mark Hamill, Jared Leto and now Joaquin Phoenix have all cracked up as the Joker, but which of them is which? Take this quick quiz to laugh along with them.

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Essays on writing, reading, and life

Joker (2019) Film Review – Should You See It?

October 17, 2019 By Ben McEvoy

“What did you think of Joker?”

“Sick,” I said. “Sickest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“So it’s a bad movie?”

That’s a question to which I struggle to find a straightforward answer.

It depends what you mean by bad .  

Technically on almost every level Joker is a great film.

Todd Phillips’ nuanced direction, Joaquin Phoenix’s mesmerising acting, Hildur Guðnadóttir haunting score, Jeff Groth’s compelling editing, Lawrence Sher’s sublime cinematography, Scott Silver and Todd Phillips’ taut script – Joker boasts an all-star cast that compliment each other so well that the creation of such hypnotic art seems inevitable.

It also seems inevitable that at least one of these craftsmen will claim a well-deserved Oscar win.  

But just because a film is artistically flawless doesn’t mean you have to like it. And my visceral gut response to Joker was hatred and disgust.

I felt compelled every five minutes throughout the film to leave the cinema.

Every inclination to leave growing stronger than the one preceding it. It was only the fact that my urge to leave was so strong that I decided to stay.  

It seems contradictory to say I hated Joker and then in the same breath discuss what I loved about the film. But great films have the power to be extremely contradictory, dividing not only movie-goers as a crowd but movie-goers as individuals.

My revulsion towards Joker is a moral one. But we’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s first talk about what I loved about the film.

When Heath Ledger played the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight back in 2008, no one believed the performance could ever be topped.

Personally Ledger’s performance is still my favourite, but Phoenix’s Joker, Arthur Fleck, is on-par with Ledger’s. They are two entirely different performances, so to compare them is to do both a disservice.

Suffice to say, Joaquin Phoenix delivers a masterclass in acting.

If I had to single out just one aspect of Phoenix’s performance that enraptured me it would be his physicality .

One moment his limbs are playing gracefully in the air like the vaudeville clowns of old, the next he’s running full pelt down the street with clown shoes skewering his gait, and then he’s dancing in the most trance-inducing way, swaying to the beat of his spiralling derangement.

Joaquin’s physicality gives life to Joker, but this masterful reign of expression sits alongside the actor’s equally impressive command of method acting techniques.

Every flicker in his eyes, every crack in the voice, every hesitation before a violent act makes it impossible not to sympathise with this character.  

This is where the feeling of sickness and moral dilemma comes in for me.

Although the Joker’s character arc is a downward spiral into hell, we the moviegoer go through an uncomfortable spectrum of closely knit emotions.

The opening of the film induced in me an unbearable feeling of heartbreak. This swiftly gave way to strong feelings of sympathy. Then sympathy and empathy bleeds into pity. Pity transitions slowly into feelings of revulsion, which ebb and flow until the breathless conclusion.

Aside from Phoenix and Phillips, the grand hero in making these emotions so keenly felt is Guðnadóttir, whose score begins a single string and mounts through every atrocity, every hardship delivered against Joker, like Wagner’s Tristan chord, to an all-consuming orchestra of chest-tightening anguish.  

There is a message and social critique at the heart of Joker.

I don’t have a problem with the heavy-handedness of the message, but rather my issue is with how such a message might be interpreted by the young and disassociated.

One of the pivotal points in Joker is when Arthur’s mental health funding is cut. Seven different kinds of medication and dismally ineffective counselling sessions are barely holding him together, but overnight the little support he does have is taken away, yanked out beneath him like a rug that he was already teetering on, which starts a vicious chain reaction in which Joker finally begins to rebel against every injustice done against him.

I’ve seen the state of mental health services in my own country. I’ve seen what happens when those most desperately in need of help are abandoned by the state. It is devastating.

If Joker manages to stoke a serious discussion of how best to improve the mental health services, I believe it has triumphed not only as a work of art, but as a catalyst of social change too. An applaudable aim, but my concern is that Joker could give credence to a victimisation culture that more and more of the dispossessed subscribe to every day.

There is a chasm between the narrative I left the cinema with and the narrative others left the cinema with.

Many cheered when Arthur began to get his vengeance. And I did too. Until the violence became more senseless, more out of proportion to the injustice he felt.

Where I see Joker as a cry for more comprehensive mental health aid, others, those who have lived at the bottom rung of society, felt the sting of having the shit kicked in their face day after day, might see the film as glorifying nihilistic violence, imbuing anarchic destruction as the only pursuit that harbours meaning.

We need a different story.

Those who sympathise, empathise, and see themselves in Arthur should not be persuaded that there is power in playing the victim.

We need to positively empower the disaffected, the neglected, the addicted, the abandoned, the broken, and give them a story that makes them a force for good in the world. And I cannot imagine any real-life Arthur Fleck leaving Joker with that message, that feeling of empowerment, that ambition to flourish in the face of adversity.  

I must applaud Phillips and the whole ensemble for finally producing a comic book movie that speaks to the darkness that many feel enshrouded in.

I predict more deep psychological character studies of both heroes and villains to come, though I cannot imagine many matching up to the emotional power of Joker. The team have set the bar high. But I cannot help but think we don’t need another anti-hero.

As an artistic exercise, making one sympathise so thoroughly with a villain like Joker is tremendous. The true terror, the one that really has the power to keep many awake at night, is recognising the capacity for evil in one’s own heart. Good can come of being so self-aware. I just fear that many will miss this interpretation of Joker and take away a message that will do more detriment to society – the message that, when life gives you lemons, it’s time to make Gotham burn.  

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Joker Movie Review

A lot of us watched the DC production film ‘Joker.’ The film was great as it depicts a mentally unstable man who was failed by the system and left to fend for himself. The film gets some things right like how the mental health system works and how if people who are mentally ill are left untreated, their health deteriorates. But what can we diagnose the character Joker with, and how accurate is the film on mental health? 

Watching Joker go on, his mental health comes into question since the purpose of the film was to give an origin story to why Joker became the murderous, cold-blooded man he is today. Schizophrenia, a mental illness that affects a person’s ability to think, behave or feel clearly, it is also accompanied by delusion and a lack of motivation to be productive. But Joker does not fit this description of schizophrenia, he is motivated by his dream of being a comedian, he is also quite manipulative, and he does not express any sign of being delusional so, he cannot be diagnosed with schizophrenia. 

Bipolar disorder is a disorder that according to DSM-5, it is associated with episodes of mood swings of depressive low to manic highs making people who suffer from the disorder impulsive. Joker is not impulsive, and, in the film, he expresses excellent self-control and only acting when others are not watching and when he just did not care anymore, a sign of proper awareness. So, we cannot diagnose him with bipolar disorder since he does not fall into the DSM-5 criteria. 

An antisocial personality disorder is a disorder whereby the diagnosed has little to no regard for other people. The joker indeed shows a disregard for others even his mum which he strangled to death, but we lack enough information to know when the onset of his disorder started since according to the DSM-5 criteria, the individual must have had symptoms before the age of 15 so it is inconclusive to say he has an antisocial personality disorder. 

We cannot label Joker a psychopath either since a psychopath is not necessarily sick, but they are just people with a distinct set of ideals from societal norms, Joker is described and seen as sick. Psychopaths are charming and manipulative Joker is far from charming, he makes people uncomfortable. 

All through the film, we are left in the dark about what Joker’s mental illness is and after careful observation of his behaviour, he cannot even be labelled a psychopath. Joker is a film that shows how much information on mental illness our society lacks. When a mass murder is committed, we immediately assume the perpetrator is mentally ill whilst ignoring the fact that mentally ill individuals are more likely to be victims than the other way around. After watching Joker, most people come to conclude that his mental health is to blame for him finally going on a shooting spree because he could not hold it in anymore, which is far from the truth. The Joker cannot be diagnosed because there is nothing to diagnose in the first place except with, pseudobulbar affect, a disorder that makes him laugh and cry uncontrollably and this could be a sign of a brain injury but still, that does not explain his behaviour and his acts of violence. 

The film tries to justify unjustifiable actions by trying to shift sympathy from the victims to the perpetrator. The film pushes for the belief that mental disorders lead to gun violence a stigma our society struggles with. Myths like this create misinformation and fear about the mentally ill which also increases the stigma our society already faces. But there is one thing Joker gets right, and that is, mental health care should not be left unfunded, people need mental help and ignoring them is not the right call.  

In conclusion, the film tried to justify and bring meaning to the Joker’s actions but failed to consider how his behaviour cannot be truly diagnosed without following any of the DSM-5 criteria on what makes up a disorder before it can be correctly diagnosed and labelled appropriately. Calling him a psychopath is simplifying his actions and using mental illness without proper criterion is also simplifying his actions.

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Joker: A Powerful Psychological Drama

The sad story of self-actualization gone wrong..

Posted November 1, 2019 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

I am a psychiatrist — specifically an expert in trauma in adults and children. I'm also a movie lover.

When friends of mine tried to convince me to watch Joker with them, I was hesitant. I was not interested in an action movie solely focused on the bad guy, especially given that I liked Batman.

However, a few minutes into the movie I realized what I had got myself into. Joker is not an action movie, it is a sad psychological drama, depicting the suffering of a man who was wronged, and got it wrong.

Beginning: A Sad Child and a Man Lost in Chaos

Arthur is deeply sad and confused. His job contradicts his feelings, which he hides behind the makeup. He was beaten up by others, physically and emotionally, all his life. Every day he came home to take care of a mother who was not able to care for him when he was a child. A mother who had raised him in a distorted reality: Things are good although they are terrible. Arthur is deeply confused about his place in the world, what is real, and what is fantasy.

When alone, Arthur is most of the time naked, a clear contrast to his daily life hiding behind a mask. He does not have a sense of identity ; instead, he is empty. He colors his emptiness with makeup, and his deep agony with a fake smile drawn on his face. Then, are the terribly untimely, annoying, and agonizing laughter attacks.

Agony, Fake Smiles, and Crazy Laughter

Joaquin Phoenix does a great job of portraying Aruthr’s deep agony and inviting the viewer inside the chaos of his shattering mind. That makes this movie hard and painful to watch. Every time Arthur tries to step outside of his inner painful world and connect with others, even as a clown, or a stand-up comedian, his unpredictable laughter attacks claw him back into the pain within.

The laughter is perceived as a disease, maybe a tic, or a neurological condition. A psychoanalyst , though, could have a different interpretation: a defense mechanism . We later learn that Arthur was severely abused and neglected during childhood , leading him to hardwired suffering and developing a sense of a ruthless and sad universe.

In the state hospital, flashbacks to Arthur’s mother’s interview with a psychiatrist reveal that his delusional mother had totally ignored Arthur’s pain during his childhood, and always thought he was a happy child. Parents not only form a large part of our perception of the universe, but also that of ourselves.

Little Arthur was terribly confused: I am very sad, suffering physical and mental pain, but Mom says I am happy, and probably expects me to be happy. This leads to a duality of Arthur’s character: The inside and outside worlds do not, and will not, match.

This all may explain his choice of a job where he looks happy to others and tries to make them happy while suffering deep inside. And the crazy laughter: an overflow of the reactive defense, a scream of happiness that satisfies Mom, and simultaneously repels her and others. It protects Arthur from the outside world, as it pulls him back into his inner abyss, curling into himself. The laughter blocks every attempt of connecting with the outside world, which is perceived by his inner child as deceitful and brutal, even if looking nice on the surface. The laughter protects him from the world he perceives.

What Is Real and What Is Not?

Between his and his mother’s delusions, it is impossible for Arthur to determine reality from fantasy. Per the mother, he is the son of a famous man and the result of a glorified secret romance. It is at the state hospital that the beautiful fantasy world, his reality, is shattered.

He learns that his mother is psychotic , he was adopted, and was seriously abused and neglected by mother’s boyfriend. This confusion about what he can or cannot rely on, and what is going to hurt him, creates tremendous vulnerability, anger , and sadness. Next is killing, in order to become.

The Becoming

The revelation at the hospital is a moment of awakening, not only to the facts but also of the childhood programming. He becomes a man, in a very sad way.

Boys learn how to be a man from male figures, mostly the father. Here, the man—mom’s boyfriend—was brutal and abusive, and that is what Arthur becomes: He identifies with the aggressor. The other option, Thomas Wayne, is not an option anymore, as he now knows Wayne is not his father.

He becomes the violent ruthless man, the father, while still fulfilling mother’s wish: a smiling clown. He kills his mother, his anchor in the unreal, the beautiful fantasy world, the big lie. Then he launches into killing his anchors of hope in the real world: the lady next door he likes, his fantasies for a nurturing relationship he never had, potentially a family; his friend and colleague, a symbol of a career ; and Murray Franklin, another praised father figure, the connection between Arthur and his mother, between Arthur and his career ambition, and a presentation of goodness. Joker kills what he cannot have, and cannot be, and disconnects.

Arthur becomes not who he was born to be, but who he was raised to be — a victim of parents’ wishes and actions who is dead and hurting inside, with a big fake smile for the outside world and the mother. It is natural for him to hurt and kill, because to him, the world is an evil lie, and he shares himself with this world: dead inside, and tormented.

Joker is a hard movie to watch.

Arash Javanbakht, M.D., serves as the director of the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic (STARC) at Wayne State University.

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Joker review – the most disappointing film of the year

Why so serious? Todd Phillips’ solemn but shallow supervillain origins movie has a strong performance by Joaquin Phoenix but is weighed down by realist detail and tedious material

T he year’s biggest disappointment has arrived. It emerges with weirdly grownup self-importance from the tulip fever of festival awards season as an upscale spin on an established pop culture brand. Last year we had Luca Guadagnino’s solemn version of Suspiria , and now it’s Joker, from director and co-writer Todd Phillips : a new origin myth for Batman’s most famous supervillain opponent.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a pathetic loser and loner in Gotham City, some time in the early 1980s. Arthur is a former inpatient at a psychiatric facility but is now allowed to live with his elderly mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), in her scuzzy apartment. Poor Arthur has a neurological condition that means he is liable to break into screeching laughter at inopportune moments. He has a crush on his single-mom neighbour Sophie (Zazie Beetz) and pines to be a comedian, hero-worshipping cheesy TV host Murray Franklin ( Robert De Niro ). But he can only get a job as a clown in grinning makeup and floppy-toed shoes twirling an advertising banner outside a store, where he is bullied and beaten up by young thugs passing by. One day, after the humiliation and despair become too much to bear, Arthur gets hold of a gun and discovers that his talent is not for comedy but violence.

Phillips has already directed a film featuring a brilliant unfunny-funny figure with learning difficulties: Alan in The Hangover , played by Zach Galifianakis, that strange dysfunctional figure who mispronounces the noun “retard”. I wonder what Joker would be like with Galifianakis in the lead. Well, the casting of Phoenix indicates more clearly how sexy Joker is supposed to be.

There is great production design by Mark Friedberg, some tremendous period cityscape images by cinematographer Lawrence Sher, and a strong performance by Phoenix, though not his best – it is not as good as his appearance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master . The film holds your attention up until Joker’s terrible revenge bloodbath on the subway early on, perhaps intended to echo the notorious Bernhard Goetz shooting of 1984 – although Phillips prudently makes it a non-racist attack. After this, the film loses your interest, with tedious and forced material about Joker’s supposed triggering of an anti-capitalist, anti-rich movement with protesters dressing as clowns. Joker’s own criminal and serial-killer career bafflingly fizzles.

The film makes reference to movies from around the drama’s era, such as the Death Wish films, The French Connection and maybe even Star Wars , but it’s more obviously a laborious and pointless homage to the Scorsese/De Niro classic The King of Comedy with a bit of Taxi Driver , which means that at various moments it’s a bit like The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, only not as good.

The connection is signalled by the casting of De Niro himself, but it is nonetheless unearned and pedantic, especially compared to Lynne Ramsey’s You Were Never Really Here , also starring Phoenix as a loner living with his mom, which managed the connection more adroitly.

The whole idea of the malign clown should be very relevant. We live in an era of trolling, incels and internet bullying. (The grisly Milo Yiannopoulos described himself as a “supervillain” on his now cancelled Twitter bio.) There’s nothing wrong and everything right with engaging with all of this – and the “copycat” row is a red herring. But, perhaps because online aggression is difficult to dramatise, Phillips understandably wanted his film to be set in a pre-web age. Yet he cheats an anachronistic quasi-YouTube moment into his story when a video of Arthur’s catastrophic attempt at standup comedy somehow emerges. (I wonder if there wasn’t an earlier, contemporary-set draft of the script.)

This Joker’s genesis is determinedly mature and uncartoony, compared to, say, Jack Nicholson’s low-level crook Jack Napier falling into a chemical vat in Tim Burton’s Batman , turning him into the Joker with white skin, green hair and a rictus grin. (The look of DC’s Joker was originally inspired by Conrad Veidt in the 1928 silent classic The Man Who Laughs, a man whose face was disfigured into a grin by his father’s political enemies.)

There is no reason why Phoenix’s elaborately backstoried Joker shouldn’t be as powerful as Heath Ledger’s mysterious, motiveless, originless Joker in The Dark Knight . But at some stage the comic-book world of supervillaindom has to be entered, and Ledger was more powerful because he wasn’t weighed down with all this realist detail and overblown ironic noir grandeur, and he wasn’t forced to carry an entire story on his own. This Joker has just one act in him: the first act. The film somehow manages to be desperately serious and very shallow.

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