Many have been burned by prematurely declaring the best film of the year to be something released before the Christmas season, when Hollywood studios roll out their most prestigious offerings hunting for snobbish art awards alongside the infantile blockbusters designed to squeeze as much money as possible from parents of children on holiday. In 2019, however, this didn't seem likely to be the case. In early autumn of that year, the most successful film—taking into account both critics writing panegyrics calling it a 'powerful work of art' and the much more exacting financial criteria at the box office—was declared in the form of Joker, directed by Todd Phillips. Although one could have guessed as much a year ago, when the trailer alone sparked hysteria among Batman comic fans—one of the most influential fandoms in today's entertainment industry—things really heated up only when Joker triumphed at the Venice Film Festival, winning the prestigious Golden Lion and automatically triggering speculation about an Oscar sweep. Warner Bros. left nothing to chance and launched a skilful propaganda campaign, joined by the usual hand-wringers among the bien-pensant social commentators who, before even seeing Joker, demanded it be banned because this film about the origins of the most famous comic-book villain of all time supposedly amounts to a manifesto for 'incels', the white heterosexual 'toxic male' subculture whose members might have identified with the fictional villain and seek to repeat his bloody crimes in real life. The US military took these claims seriously enough to issue an official advisory to its personnel—the same people expected to successfully defend the world from Russians, Chinese, and an alien invasion—on how best to hide in a cinema auditorium in case one of the 'incels' felt an irresistible urge to spill blood right there in the theatre. Thanks to all this, Joker became yet another example of how negative publicity can be just as useful as positive, with audiences flocking to cinemas and making the film a record-breaker across a whole range of commercial categories.
Joker largely came about as a kind of reaction to Warner Bros. and DC Comics' attempt to compete with Marvel's cinematic output—an attempt that ultimately ended with the same results as independent candidates competing with Democrats and Republicans at US presidential elections. Unlike many losers who try to get a different outcome by repeating the same thing, Warner tried something new, and it is precisely to that we owe the existence of Joker as perhaps the most atypical superhero film in recent memory. Phillips's film, which serves as an 'origin story' for Batman's main enemy, was conceived from the outset as a kind of experiment. Not only are films exploring the past of iconic villains quite rare, but it is even rarer that they are conceived as stand-alone features not directly tied to a franchise and not intended to spawn sequels and spin-offs. Phillips managed to push the project through Warner's offices mainly thanks to a relatively low budget, which allowed somewhat greater creative freedom—including, for today's superhero films, the unusually strict censor's R-rating. Still, most important of all was the chance to interpret the genesis of the Joker in a rather original way.
The plot, as suggested by the Warner logo of the period, takes place in 1981 in Gotham City. Although earlier Batman films taught us that the fictional metropolis was never a particularly happy place, the period corresponds with a dark period of New York City's history—the real-life model for Gotham. The city is reeling from economic crisis, stagflation, rising unemployment, a pandemic of crime, and the collapse of public services, including a garbage collectors' strike that has left uncollected rubbish stinking up the streets. One inhabitant of this dystopia is Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a man living with his elderly, ill mother (Frances Conroy) and trying to support them both as a street clown. Fleck suffers from a neurological disorder that causes him to laugh uncontrollably, along with psychiatric problems that once landed him in a mental institution and now require him to visit a psychiatrist—all of which leads to mockery and humiliation from his workmates. Fleck's only comfort is television, above all a popular talk show whose host, Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), he sees as his role model and inspiration for his so-far unsuccessful career as a stand-up comic. Although for a moment it seems things might take a turn for the better when he meets a nice neighbour, Sophie Dumond (Zazie Beetz), with whom he starts going out, fate cruelly toys with Fleck. After losing his job because a gun—given to him by a colleague for personal protection—accidentally falls out during a gig at a children's hospital, Fleck ends up attacking three young, drunk, arrogant Wall Street hotshots in the subway, setting off a chain of bloody events that will not only push Fleck towards homicidal madness but also plunge the city into apocalyptic social unrest.
The main reason cited for Joker's embrace by snobbish critics is Joaquin Phoenix's masterful performance—the actor's skill and the intensity he brings to roles are already legendary. Phoenix, entrusted by the screenplay to carry the entire film on his shoulders, brilliantly delivers, creating a character who successfully takes the audience on an emotional rollercoaster, making them sympathise with Fleck as a victim of abuse, mental illness, and social neglect, while equally fearing his potential for murderous insanity once he finally transforms into the Joker. Phoenix can boast that with this performance he has surpassed, or at least matched, all previous Jokers—from Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight to the now already caricatural Jack Nicholson in the three-decade-old Batman, not to mention Jared Leto in the disaster called Suicide Squad.
Yet, far more important than Phoenix for this film is Phillips's rather bold and partly successfully executed idea to use the classic comic as a template for a kind of remake of Scorsese's Taxi Driver. There are numerous similarities between the two films, above all in the portrayal of the American megalopolis as a breeding ground of poverty, crime, violence, and despair—raised by inept bureaucrats, heartless economic establishments, and lying politicians. Phillips adds an explicitly political dimension to all this, leaning on Nolan, who in The Dark Knight Rises introduced the motif of supervillains exploiting justified social rebellion against 'the 1%'. But here it goes even further, repeating these salon leftists have been repeating for decades—according to which today's world began its downward spiral the moment Thatcher and Reagan started dismantling the welfare state in the early 1980s. Joker's descent into madness is thus accelerated by neoliberal 'austerity policies' that cut funding for his psychiatric visits and medication that had more or less controlled his condition. And, of course, the main villains are no longer criminal masterminds but pillars of society, so even Thomas Wayne, the ill-fated father of Batman (played by Brett Cullen), is no longer a benevolent philanthropist but an arrogant Trump-like monster who spouts populist slogans while insulting the city's poor. In his film, Phillips suggests that the Waynes and their ilk deserve, if not the guillotine, then at least a thorough squeezing via high taxes to fund rubbish collectors, doctors, social workers, and programmes that could treat and prevent real-life figures like Fleck from becoming monsters.
Phillips had a good idea but didn't develop it optimally in the screenplay. This applies first and foremost to the ambiguous and insufficiently explained nature of Fleck's mental condition. The screenplay tries to patch over the resulting holes with some once interesting and intriguing solutions that have become 'threadbare' after two decades of intensive use. It doesn't help that Joker veers into the waters of even more worn-out Hollywood clichés about childhood trauma as the source of all mental afflictions. Phillips's Joker also suffers from pacing problems, with much of the film feeling stretched, and some of the best scenes—like the one in the television studio (which Phillips, incidentally, 'borrowed' from Miller's famous comic The Dark Knight)—arrive amid far slower and less engaging scenes that precede and follow it. Among the latter is the rather drawn-out apocalyptic finale, with which Phillips seems to want to remind viewers they are watching part of a mega-popular media franchise, not a deadly serious social drama. Joker is thus in some ways a disappointment, but thanks to its originality and a rather inspired Phoenix, it can also pass as a mildly pleasant surprise by today's Hollywood standards.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
(Note: The text in the original version is available here.)
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