Warner Bros.
Review by Curt Holman
Contemporary superhero movies tend to come with so many Easter eggs and references to character histories that even comics fans can feel burdened by all the footnoting.
Todd Phillips’ Joker turns a spotlight on Batman’s famous archnemesis but breaks the superhero formula by having its primary touchstones be not comic books, but two Robert DeNiro movies directed by Martin Scorsese. Batman references definitely abound, but Joker is primarily concerned with serving as a pastiche of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, deliberately echoing those films’ visions of vigilante antiheroes, obsessed fans-turned-stalkers and New York City at its filthiest.
Phillips, who directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay, has an intriguing jumping-off point and an exhaustingly committed leading man in Joaquin Phoenix. A flawed but often compelling movie, Joker has become, fairly or not, a flashpoint for a host of contemporary controversies, including whether its depiction of the main character could incite violence in the film’s most toxic fans.
Not that Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is an admirable or even appealing character. A formal mental patient and aspiring stand-up comic working as a birthday clown, he’s one of life’s victims. The film;s Gotham City resembles New York of the 1970s (a background detail actually dates the story to 1981), rife with crime, porno theaters and garbage in the streets thanks to a sanitation strike.
When he’s not wearing a green-wigged clown suit and being abused by passersby, Arthur cares for his frail mother (Frances Conroy), who has a fixation on zillionaire turned politician Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen). Arthur longs to appear on the late-night talk show of his idol, Murray Franklin (DeNiro, in a role similar to the one Jerry Lewis played in The King of Comedy). He’d like to flirt with the single mom (Zazie Beets) who lives down the hall, but he’s awkward in his own skin, prone to Tourette’s-like fits of uncontrollable laughter. He also faces the loss of his city-provided medication and therapy due to budget cuts.
Phoenix reportedly lost 50 pounds for the role and gives Arthur the emotional rawness of an open wound and the angular body language of a marionette controlled by a twitchy puppeteer. Joker gives him such a long leash, and seems to want to capture so much of Phoenix’s intensity, that the film feels repetitive to the point of padding: There seem to be countless shots of Arthur trudging down scummy sidewalks, dragging portentously on cigarettes or, once the worm turns, dancing with abandon. Would that the film itself were as lean as Phoenix.
Beset one night by hateful Wall Streeters, Arthur inadvertently emerges as a vigilante (reminiscent of real-life “subway shooter” Bernhard Goetz). The public seizes on the detail of a guy dressed as a clown killing rich jerks and, before Arthur even knows it, makes him a symbol of class warfare, with sinister clown masks substituting for Anonymous/V for Vendetta masks. Joker‘s politics are pretty vague, but it seems to view protest movements like Occupy Wall Street as not that different from criminals rioting in the streets.
Arthur tries to unravel his mother’s secrets while seeming to unravel himself. We learn early on that he’s prone to daydreams and delusions, so not everything presented in the film can be taken at face value. As Arthur turns to violence, he becomes increasingly confident, menacing and even weirdly graceful, and the film’s best moments have a nervy unpredictability.
Arthur also starts adapting more of the familiar look of the Clown Prince of Crime – but don’t expect Smilex gas or lethal joy buzzers. He’s a Joker but may not be the Joker. At times, the film even seems about to turn into a fun-house mirror distortion of Batman’s own origin, with a vigilante combatting social ills. But that’s one of many ideas that Joker flirts with without following through.
There are precedents for Joker as an antihero movie, drawing on elements of Taxi Driver, the Death Wish series and even the Punisher movies. But it’s closer to the kind of revenge horror film about a madman who lashes out against those who wronged him. Phillips and Phoenix certainly empathize with Arthur’s plight and use his extreme behavior in the service of a dark, R-rated story, but they also present him as a sick individual consumed by his own demons. If anything, Joker offers a sharper critique of violence than action films like, say, John Wick (while being more wearying and self-important than any entry in the Wick series).
At one point, a TV producer says of the self-styled Joker, “The audience will go crazy if we put this guy on,” which feels like a prophetic self-critique. At a time when mass shootings are terrifyingly common the United States and the political system seems paralyzed, helpless to offer anything more than thoughts and prayers, a film that has any possibility of appealing to potentially violent audiences should invite some extra scrutiny, no matter what the filmmakers intended. The Joker may be fictional, but madness is real.
Joker. C+. Directed by Todd Phillips. Stars Joaquin Phoenix. Rated R. In theaters Oct. 4.