The comic book movie gone dangerous, Joker chronicles how one of fictions great villains descended into murderous madness amidst a rotting city, brought to life with gritty intensity by director Todd Phillips and led by an engrossing, fearless, and fearful Joaquin Phoenix.
"You ask me if I have negative thoughts. All I have...are negative thoughts". Madness is all around us, and to a certain extent, it is also within us. Perhaps it is why stories about the lonely man who gives into his darkest fears and desires resonate so strongly. Taxi Driver, Falling Down, Fight Club...all personify a certain wish fulfilment, a need to roar and gnarl and snap into a violent rage. Most people have a strong capacity in their life to resist the need to do such things. Others do not, and too many times we have seen the devastating aftermath of such mental illness.
Joker falls in league with those films, but there is a catch: where other characters "snap", the Joker, aka Arthur Fleck, "becomes". There is a feeling of destiny at play when it comes to this evolution of disturbed man into "Crown Prince of Crime", a reminder that in the eternal battle between good and evil, everyone has their part to play. Joker chronicles evil rising within an environment - dirty, detached, violent, and without sympathy - conditioned to spread its infection. In a city set to explode, the Joker is the green tipped match.
Set in a 1981 Gotham City that closely resembles the grit and grim garbage-strike days of early 80s New York, Joker stars Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck. Suffering from a mental illness borne from head trauma, and detached from a society become increasingly hostile and unsympathetic, Arthur aspires to become a stand-up comedian while working as a clown for hire. A series of events leads an already mentally fragile Arthur to strip away any illusions of normalcy and embrace the dark, murderous nature of his personality, to become a monster that an underclass of the disenfranchised embraces as a saviour.
Director Todd Phillips (The Hangover) successfully navigates the comic-book move into exciting, new, and (dare it be said) dangerous territory. The world building here is more reality based, Phillips famously avoiding any comic-book source materials to recreate an iconic character into a menacing, tragic, and scary figure. Phillips strips away the veneer of the superhero movie and delivers a film stark in tone and dark in subject. The parallels to a current climate in which masked extremist activists use violence to intimidate and injure their targets are hard to ignore.
At the centre of all of this is the performance from Joaquin Phoenix. A razor thin figure of bone and brooding, menacing air, Phoenix takes to the role of cackling madman with an intense, gritty edge, instilling the tragic humanity into a monstrous, villainous turn that engrosses and frightens with equal measure. Popping pills with abandon and attempting to live a life of normalcy and purpose, Phoenix portrays his Joker as a man who is truly alive when he scrapes away the mask of civility and leaves blood splattered chaos in his wake. In the annals of Joker performances, Joaquin Phoenix proves to be the best yet.
Unshackling any notion of "shared universe" nonsense and embracing the frightening and dangerous nature of its character, Joker is a stunning example of comic-book filmmaking done with tangible grit and fearsome artistry.