Joker Review

What does it take for someone to become a villain? Does it take a lifetime of abuse or simply one bad day for them to snap? This is the question Todd Phillips attempts to answer in his foray into the superhero genre.

Gotham is a crime-ridden, rat-infested hellhole. There’s a huge divide between the rich and poor. One of these poor citizens is Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a clown who aspires to be a stand-up comedian. He is also on a cocktail of medication. After an incident on a subway train Arthur explores his dark side just as the city becomes crazier.

The Joker is one of the most iconic villains in pop culture. He is the type of character writers and actors love to sink their teeth into because he is so open to interpretation. He has been a trickster, a flamboyant gangster, an anarchist, and a sadist. But there was a risk with making a film solely based on the character because one of the appeals of The Joker is the mystery of who he was and what motivated him. Phillips gave himself a titanic task.

The closest comic book fans have gotten to a Joker origins story was Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke. In the flashbacks The Joker was shown to be a failing stand-up comedian who out of desperation agrees to do a job for the mob. This job leads to the man becoming The Joker. The graphic novel was so influential that a part of the story was used in the Tim Burton Batman film and Heath Ledger read it when he cast in The Dark Knight. And the graphic novel was an influence on Joker – mainly the fact that The Joker was a bad comedian who lived in poverty, cared for a sick relative, and basically stomped over by society. This drives him to take retribution.

The other comic-book major influence on Joker was Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One. In Miller’s classic story Gotham was shown to be a corrupt whirlpool of sin. The public institutions were corrupted and crime was so rampant that a 13-year-old girl tried to prostitute herself to Bruce Wayne. Miller’s aim was to write a Batman story as realistically as possible. Joker aimed to show its Gotham to be a hellish place where it was economically depressed, the buildings were rundown, and the youth ran amok. The world created in Joker would serve as a solid template if Warner Brothers ever make a live-action Batman: Year One film.

However, Joker was not really a film about the Joker, it was a backdoor route to make a Scorsese-style dark drama. Phillips was known for making comedy films like Old School and The Hangover. But his films became darker. This happened with The Hangover series that were more grizzly films and his previous film, War Dogs, used the Goodfellas template. Martin Scorsese was attracted to produced Joker but left because of his schedule. Yet his influence was still present.

Joker was basically like Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, which just happened to feature some comic book character names. Those were films about social outcasts who end taking drastic action so they can take control of their lives. Joker didn’t even change the setting – Gotham was basically New York from the ’70s/’80s. Joker shares a lot with The King of Comedy because the lead characters were comedians who wanted recognition, becomes obsessed with TV personality, and goes into flights of fancy. These fantasy sequences give the film ambiguity because it’s felt unclear regarding what’s true or false.

Phillips does embrace the look of films like Taxi Driver and The Warrior and Joker does open with the old Warner Brothers logo, giving the film an almost Kubrickian feeling. If The Joker has to be a backdoor way to get these types of films again then I’ll take it.

Joker has divided audiences and critics. Some have claimed it to be a masterpiece with a lot to say, others claim it was a nasty piece of work with nothing to say. I subscript more to the former interpretation. Joker was a character study about someone who already had a hard life, mental health issues and constantly getting kicked. It was a great role for Phoenix to play who was basically a Travis Bickle figure – a sick man trapped in a sick world.

Despite the setting Joker has some more modern themes. The divide and discontent between rich and poor is timely considering events like the Occupy Movement and the anti-‘elite’ sentiment that’s being used by populist politicians. The Joker ends up being a symbol because of his crimes and the media amplifies this. Criminals have idolised like this before – John Dillinger and Jacques Mesrine became Robin Hood figures and the killing of Mark Duggan sparked the 2011 riots in England. Yet these were people where a class divide was used to justify their criminality.

The hero worship critique also extends to Arthur. He enjoyed the work of Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), a popular comedian and TV presenter. Early in the film Arthur has a fantasy that Murray picks him out from the audience and pretty much calls Arthur his son. But this item gets shattered when Murray mocks Arthur and his mental illness on his show – making Arthur a viral hit.

Joker does show that there is room for experimentation in the superhero genre and serious R-rated films. It works as a throwback to gritty ’70s cinema and has a bit to say for itself.