It is also not a film about a mentally ill person. Arthur Fleck may believe himself to be mentally ill but his behavior is about an unhappy person not a depressed person. And while he may be psychotic there is no diagnosis, just a belief that his anti-social behavior is again not his fault but the fault of something outside him.
It is also not a violent film. Well, that's not exactly right. The violence in this film is palpable but very little of it is viewed on screen. There are all sorts of violence from gaslighting to verbal abuse to stalking to acts of physical violence. But most of it is left off screen, left to our imaginations, where it is so much more powerful. Joker is the sort of film where you feel the effects of the violence and it hurts. But you see little of it. There is little blood in the film. But when it is there it has a real power that so many much more violence films lack.
Now lets talk about what it is. It is a signal of how our mainstream movies are adapting to the new normal. We are now at the point where “comic book movies” get to do what comic books have been doing for a while now. They are telling diverse stories and moving away from being one genre. For a while we saw all comic book movies the same, and many still do see it that way, we’ve been moving away from that for a while. Now a so called “comic book movie” can be of any genre and be targeted towards any audience and not have to be the formula tent pole movie. While graphic novels have been doing this for a long time, it is only recently we’ve held the movies based on them in a more limited view. The other side of this is that any movie of any genre can find an audience by tying in comic book themes which may expand an audience. It is very easy to see this film be made without being about the comic book character of the title. But more people will see it because of that.
Writer/director Phillips does two things at once. He remains true to the character which has inspired this story a fan would love and filling it with the sort of references fanboys love. It is more than that. He imbues it with the sort of meaning that those devoted to these stories want to feel to see their passions reflected to them. At the same time he tells a story any audience, even one which was somehow ignorant of who the Joker is, can not only understand but truly resonate for. One of the most successful aspects of this film is how it succeeds at both. Again I would argue there were precursors to this in the comic book film oeuvre, but this one takes it to the next level.
Joker tells a difficult, challenging, and powerful story. Any film which has us follow a villain has this difficulty since we are so used to identifying with the central character. This isn’t Maleficent or Wicked, a revisionist take which puts us on the side of the villainous character. In Joker Arthur Fleck is menacing from the beginning. Yes he is a complicated character and there are parts of his story which are tragic, but his actions, his way of viewing the world, none of it is set there to have us sympathize with him. Instead we are to be scared of him and how he reacts the world, shitty or not, is to him and to many others. We are to see how dangerous and destructive these sorts of behaviors and ways of rationalizing things are. For example, films often give audiences a kind of pay off when we see bad characters do bad things and then something bad happens to them. We then cheer or feel a sense of satisfaction that the world is a good place because people who do bad get their comeuppance. Joker avoids that. We see people be shitty to Fleck but then we see him lash out at them and we don't feel that sort of satisfaction we usually get. Instead we are shaken, horrified. We see just how scary it is to see those evil impulses acted on. This is something we often don't get in films, something that makes this so much more than what we would expect.
Both Phillips and Phoenix do this difficult story telling masterfully. This will be one of Phoenix’s career defining roles, and it is well deserved the role itself is inherently challenging without the added pressure of the role being one played famously before. Both Nicholson and Ledger won praise for their portrayals so that is baggage Phoenix has to overcome. He does this by creating a whole different character who manages to be as authentic a portrayal as an other that is onscreen. As I have argued it's a character that is challenging in many ways but perhaps most so in how much he pushes the audience away from him. Phillips frames his story of a dangerous man and how he builds himself to be as dangerous as he can be in a way that hasn’t been told before. Previous Jokers have had the good guys to play off of, to have their evil underlined. Here Phillips and Phoenix don't have that and they have to make us scared of him on their own. It is quite brilliant.
Joker is one of those films in which all the pieces come together beautifully. It is a challenging movie but it is a deeply satisfying one. It will be hard for many who want their films to be wrapped up in a nice ending which gives us comfort that things are left in a good place. This one doesn't do that. It makes us fear the world a bit more. It is the sort of film people make up their minds out about before they see it. You should try to avoid doing that. Because Joker is the kind of film which can surprise you and movie you in ways you wouldn’t expect.
Joker
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Zazie Beets, Robert De Niro, Francis Conroy, Brett Cullen
Director: Todd Phillips
Writers: Scott Silver, Todd Phillips
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