Director: Todd Phillips
Runtime: 2 hours and two minutes
I was not enthusiastic about a ‘Joker’ origins movie when it was first announced. The Joker character works as a mysterious maniac with no background, he is just a comic book villain after all. Not that I believed it shouldn’t be attempted, but like most prequels, the more you peel at the layers of something the more that its initial premise loses its appeal. In trying to expand something you just end up shrinking it. I still think that’s true in most cases, but Joker manages to be better than it has any right to, and bigger than the sum of its parts.
In short, Joker is set in a downtrodden 1981 version of Gotham City, where we follow Arthur Fleck, a mentally ill man who works as an amusement clown and lives with his sick mother. A series of unfortunate events lead Arthur down a dark path towards the villain we all know from the Batman lore.
Before I get onto Joaquin Phoenix’s tremendous but disturbing portrayal of the Joker, I must applaud the overall look and feel of the movie’s setting. Gotham has generally been painted as a dark and gothic city, this was especially the case in the early Tim Burton movies and the recent Arkham games. But none of them have the dour and oppressive feel of the Gotham we see in Joker, it’s a character within itself, which is a rare achievement for any setting in any entertainment medium. And unlike previous interpretations of the fictional city, a lot of the scenes are shot during the day. Along with the exemplary cinematography, it creates a grimy but realistic locale.
The Joker has had several onscreen interpretations over the last five decades, all borrowing from each other in one way or another, and all are memorable for the most part. Whether it’s Jack Nicholson’s overrated but comically manic portrayal to Heath Ledger’s calculating and imposing turn in ‘The Dark Knight’. Without sounding contrarian, the Joker is a nuanced character but one with little depth and many years of written material for performers to draw from. So, it’s no surprise to find Joaquin Phoenix do justice to the titular character.
But he manages to bring a human element to the role, while Arthur Fleck is a bit of a weirdo and crazy at face value, he is still a seriously damaged man that’s been let down by society. He never receives any post, has no friends, he is openly talked down to and he conjures up things in his own head that don’t exist. His violent actions later in the movie can’t be justified, but the journey to those moments are understandable within the context of the movie.
There are scenes of graphic and raw violence, I would not say they are particularly distasteful, it’s just the context of what they mean within the story that might upset some people. I have seen far more gratuitous violence in worse movies.
Arthur fleck is the focus of most of the movie, so the supporting characters are few and far between, the only one with much impact on the plot is Robert De Niro as Murray Franklin. He’s a talk show host that Arthur admires, and becomes a prominent figure in the last third of the movie.
The movie’s connection to the overall Batman lore was my favourite aspect to the experience, and to be honest, it was only this connection that really kept me interested in the narrative. We have appearances by Bruce Wayne (albeit as a young child), Alfred and Thomas Wayne, who has a small but important role within the plot. Without these connections you are kind of left with a bunch of expertly performed scenes that have no real story to drive forward.
Despite being riveted for most of the run time, it did leave me with a feeling of emptiness. And I think that’s because the movie has several messages that it’s trying to put across without having the conviction of sticking to one. To its defence, the messages are powerful, especially when it tackles the subject of class value.
I would recommend going to see Joker, even if you aren’t a fan of the IP, it’s a rare mainstream movie that’s character driven. I walked into the theatre with low expectations and came out pleasingly surprised, but I don’t think it’s the masterpiece others have claimed it to be. It borrows too much from other people’s work, and its message is a bit muddled. Before finishing I want to mention the respectable two hour run time, which never once felt like it was wasting my time, which so many contemporary movies seem to do these days.
Verdict: 4/5
