Joker

In crime-infested, poverty-stricken early 1980s Gotham, promotional clown and aspiring comedian Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) takes care of his sick mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), who is convinced that her former employer, the wealthy Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), will come to their aid. Arthur, who suffers from a condition that causes him to laugh inappropriately, is similarly hopeful that he will one day appear as a guest on a popular late night show hosted by Murray Franklin (Robert DeNiro). After a series of misfortunes culminates in Arthur taking vengeance on a trio of tormentors, he begins to embrace all of the behaviors that had been alienating him from others.

From flamboyant gangster to giggling prankster to crazed criminal mastermind, the Joker has worn many guises throughout the character’s eighty-year history. This malleability makes a definitive backstory an impossibility, but Todd Phillips’ stab at one does successfully distill much of what makes the character tick. In particular, Joker runs with Alan Moore’s vision of a beleaguered chap driven completely mad by one (horrendously) bad day. However, the film also owes a considerable debt to Martin Scorsese as Arthur blends Travis Bickle’s (Taxi Driver) vigilante righteousness with Rupert Pupkin’s (The King of Comedy) delusional desperation (ironically, DeNiro, who played both parts, seems to occupy roughly the same role Jerry Lewis played in the latter).

For all of the film’s indebtedness, however, Phoenix turns in a singularly remarkable performance. Everything about Arthur radiates sickness: his uber-gaunt appearance and his heavy smoking habit are the physical counterparts to his laughing fits, his lack of social and (tragically, for a would-be comedian) comic awareness, and his general disregard for boundaries. The film does not glamorize him in the least, nor does it glorify him through victimhood. Rather, through Phoenix’s magnetism and lack of inhibition, it reminds us that the Arthurs of the world cannot simply be wished out of existence.

The rest of the film cannot match the power of its central performance, and it often does not seem like it is even trying to. Thomas Wayne (Batman’s famously murdered dad) is uncharitably reduced to a generic One Percenter while Zazie Beetz has a thankless role as a neighbor who catches Arthur’s eye. The film’s gritty, grimy aesthetics almost make viewers forget that Phillips is a comedy director, but the ironic soundtrack (Sinatra, Gary Glitter, and “Send in the Clowns”) serves as a reminder thereof (though Hildur Gudnadottir’s dark, string-heavy score is praiseworthy).

Upon release, Joker engendered a frankly ridiculous amount of backlash that saw the moral panics of old rise anew. Predictably, these fears amounted to naught, but in the process, the ensuing controversy turned an OK film featuring a great performance into a cultural moment, something that the Joker (one version, anyway) would likely find hilarious.