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Joker came out at exactly the right time to give the comic book genre the medicine it so badly needed. Hark back to October 2019 and we’d just had a blockbuster year of Marvel releases - Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and Spiderman Far From Home. Whilst I do believe that Captain Marvel aside the other two are probably some of the best Marvel content we’ve had in a while, they lacked a certain level of humanity. These were flashy heroes jetting around with the latest technology or the greatest superpowers - they weren’t grounded enough. Joker is a stark (pardon the pun) contrast to that, fuelled by an incredible Joaquin Phoenix performance we see one of the greatest comic book movies of all time.
The Joker is a character we all know well, the perennial villain, crown prince of chaos and Batman’s arch nemesis. We have seen some wonderful iterations of the infamous character over the years, from Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ to the voice of Mark Hamill in numerous animated shows. Obviously, the greatest of them all came from the late Heath Ledger in ‘The Dark Knight’ - which is in my opinion one of the greatest performances in one of the greatest films of all time. Here, we see the Joker’s origin story, how a man can become so twisted that he becomes the ultimate villain.
It is important to note that this has been labelled as a stand-alone film, which is for the best, although I can certainly see them cashing in and making a sequel. Regardless, we are introduced to Arthur Fleck, a literal clown that is neglected and shunned by society for his conditions and mannerisms. Also because he’s downright creepy guy. Arthur is living in 80s Gotham, in squalid conditions caring for his mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), who is a tired old woman that used to be in the employ of a certain Thomas Wayne. Penny has been writing letters to Wayne, begging him to help them out of their predicament, but when Arthur opens one of the letters and reads it he learns something disturbing that will push him over the edge.
It isn’t just Arthur that will be pushed over the edge, the lower classes of Gotham join him, taking a part in wild protests and riots on the streets of the fictional city. It is a message of the class structure of society, not just in a fictional world but here, today, and what happens when the more privileged fail to act in the greater interests of the much larger and poorer working classes. The rich, as epitomised by Thomas Wayne, are ignorant of the troubles of everyday people - content to play politics and make unfulfilled promises all the while contributing from the pain and misfortune regular people go through everyday of their lives.
Arthur’s way out of these troubles is comedy, he’s always dreamt of being a comedian and watches the celebrity comic Murray Franklin’s (Robert De Niro) show with his mother all the time. He aspires to be like Murray but theres a slight problem - he’s just not that funny. Everyone around him knows it, his mother even says “don’t you have to be funny to be a comedian” and when Arthur goes on stage to perform at the comedy club he suffers badly from his condition - uncontrollable and spontaneous laughter. His one shining light in all this is neighbour Sophie Dumond (Zazie Beetz) who is the object of all Arthur’s affection. Despite this, and even because of this, Arthur is clearly in need of help, not the kind of therapy you see in the film mind - he’s depressed, psychotic and suicidal - a maniac to all that see him on the street and disregard him as the bottom of the barrel trash. Take a moment to think about yourself and your own life, how often have you seen a person on the subway or the tube home looking in a real bad state. They’ve lost all hope in life. How often do you go over and check if they’re alright? The answer for most, myself included, will be zero. Mental health is one of the most important things, we need to check out for each other because it only takes one pattern of events and you see somebody like the Joker come out in all of us.
These themes are masterfully presented to us by Todd Phillips, who echoes classic Scorsese like ‘Taxi Driver’ or ‘The King of Comedy’ in every shot. This is a marked contrast to his classic ‘Hangover’ trilogy, which is one of the best comedy trilogies out there. Here, he takes a turn for the serious and whilst it feels like a Scorsese movie, he was originally supposed to direct, Phillips makes sure that this is most certainly his own work. It is almost arthouse at times, something that you could never say for any comic book film prior, and Phillips revels in the greens and reds that have become so embedded in the Joker’s character. In each shot Phillips echoes the decrepitude Arthur and Gotham finds itself in, almost making the constraints of an impoverished life beautiful.
Joaquin Phoenix fully deserved his Oscar win for this immense display, the award had been a long time coming for him given his exceptional performances in Gladiator, Her, The Master and Walk the Line to name but a few. Phoenix went to extreme levels to portray Arthur, losing 52lbs for the role, and it shows, he is gut-wrenchingly skinny. The hard work paid off though because as he dances, laughs maniacally, cries and commits numerous atrocities we see him as a man, a human being that you ultimately pity despite the knowledge of what he has done. Phoenix gives a performance which moulds the Joker in his own right, away from the glory of Ledger which many have compared it to. Whereas Ledger’s Joker was a clever, maniac with no sense of human emotions, Phoenix is the same maniac with every ounce of emotion you could possibly have in his body. De Niro and Beetz are also both great, its always nice to see Robert De Niro - in particular in such a well suited role, and Beetz is undoubtedly on the path to stardom. However, this is the Joaquin Phoenix show in every sense, nobody deserved that Oscar more than him.
The Joker is undoubtedly one of the greatest comic book films of all time, on par with Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and a few of the Marvel collection. It is not a perfect film, the last ten minutes you are just asking them to pick an ending and ultimately they choose the wrong one, however, it is so much better than anything else the genre has to offer at current that it can get away with that. Guided by Phillips and featuring some beautiful cinematography and some of the greatest acting of the past decade from Joaquin Phoenix, this is not your typical action-packed blockbuster, but rather a study of a man in need of help and the situation that put him there. It sucks that since then we have not received a single comic book film near this kind of quality, but, that’s life.
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