Joker (2019) – Review

A comic book villain headlining his own movie is nothing new – just last year we had the somewhat successful Venom movie – and the fact that Batman’s rogue’s gallery is one of the best in all of comicdom, with Joker being the top of the deck, it almost makes this movie seem inevitable. Yet the real question here is, “Was an origin story for the Crown Prince of Crime really necessary?“

The very nature of Joker’s chaotic character is something that defies an easy explanation. Is he simply mad or could his crazed antics be part of some anarchist mission? And is this something audiences have actually been clamouring for?  In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger’s Joker rattled off several origin stories, each of them sounding disturbingly plausible, but that film never tried to nail down which, if any, were true. Now, with writer/director Todd Philips’ Joker, we get a somewhat clouded point “A” to point “B” origin story for this notorious villain, and I’m still left wondering if it was necessary.

Box office receipts not being a proper answer.

Taking place in the early 80s, we are introduced to Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a clown-for-hire sad sack who lives with his mother Penny (Frances Conroy), and through her and a social worker, we learn that Arthur is on a lot of medication and that he suffers from a neurological condition that causes him to burst out laughing uncontrollably. This condition doesn’t seem to deter Arthur from his dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian, even though his mother questions, “How, don’t you have to be funny?” and so he persists with this delusion, one that centers around his idol Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), a late-night talk show host. Things take a turn for the worse when Arthur kills three rich assholes on the subway, who were drunk and harassing him, which not only sends Arthur down a darker path, but it also sparks a social movement against Gotham’s one percent.

Was Arthur a fan of Bernhard Goetz, perhaps?

It’s no secret that this film is basically a love letter to Martin Scorsese, with plot and character elements seemingly lifted whole cloth from Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, and the film’s setting and cinematography by Lawrence Sher does its best to give the audience a feel for that era and those movies but is Travis Bickle a proper role model for the Joker? That Joaquin Phoenix gives us a tour de force performance of a mentally unbalanced man, one who is becoming further unglued by the cruel ugliness of society, is indisputable — his physical transformation is almost as impressive — but what exactly is Todd Phillips trying to say with this character?  Arthur repeatedly states that he’s “not political,” but then he will go on these grandiose monologues about how rich and powerful people like Murray Franklin will step over the downtrodden, which sounds pretty political to me.

Then the film’s second act seems all about Arthur finding out about his mother’s relationship to the Wayne family, a subplot that basically goes nowhere, and then we have this rather bizarre relationship with Sophie (Zazie Beetz), a single mother who lives down the hall from him, that leads to certain revelations that have one assuming that Philips is also a fan of David Fincher.

“You met me at a very strange time in my life.”

One thing should be perfectly clear by now, and that would be that this is not a Batman movie, nor was it ever intended to be, but I wonder if Todd Philips may have been better off just calling this a remake of Taxi Driver and dropping all this Gotham nonsense. This film clearly opens him up to comparison to those Scorsese films — and as good a director Philips is, he is no Scorsese — and comic book fans wondering why we are getting a sympathetic Joker movie and why Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) is such a dick.

Now, I’m not saying that giving the Joker a tragic backstory is a bad thing — that idea is almost a given with the character — but this movie spends about ninety percent of its run-time doing just that, so we don’t get a lot of Joker in our Joker movie. As for the actions of Thomas Wayne in this film, having him a callous rich man, who ridicules the less-fortunate, did rub me the wrong way. Why even bring the Wayne family into this at all? If Phillips wanted a comic book reference, why not go with the Falcone crime family? The shoehorning of Thomas Wayne, young Bruce, and Alfred into this movie will most likely garner much of the hate from comic book fans as it was quite unnecessary, and if edited out, would have barely changed the film’s plot.

Can we say, “Stranger danger?”

Todd Philips was not making an entry into the DC Extended Universe, and Joaquin Phoenix’s stunning portrayal of a mentally ill man exploding into a new persona is a far cry from Jared Leto’s version of the Joker from Suicide Squad, but when the Joker’s closing credits rolled, I was left wondering what was the point of it all? Joker is a well-crafted and superbly acted film, one that deserves to be seen, I just wish it had a little more substance of its own and not so much borrowed elements from other films. Todd Phillips described Joaquin Phoenix’s take on Arthur as, “A guy who is searching for identity who mistakenly becomes a symbol. His goal genuinely is to make people laugh and bring joy to the world.” If only this film had spent a little more time discovering its own identity we could have had something really special.