Joker: Joaquin Phoenix Gets the Last Laugh

The DC comics movie universe hasn’t had an easy time of it.  While Wonder Woman and Aquaman were hits, too often, attempts to mirror the successes of Marvel’s shared franchises have delivered disjointed and ungainly results.

Which is why it’s so phenomenally refreshing to see filmmakers given the creative freedom to go in the exact opposite direction – which is exactly what’s been achieved with Joker, easily one of the best and most resonating movies of the year.

Director Todd Phillips’ background is largely in comedy, with three Hangover movies, Starsky and Hutch, and Old School among his credits. At first glance that might make him a surprising choice for a film as dark and painful as Joker, but I’m betting that much exposure to comedy makes him ideally suited to have a unique perspective on the frustrations of comedians who can’t quite seem to connect, or overcome their own internal shadows.

Phillips (along with 8 Mile and The Fighter screenwriter Scott Silver) has made an origin story like no other. We don’t have enormous set pieces, or eye-popping CGI. We have a small, intimate portrait of a diminished, marginalized man – a survivor of trauma and alienation, struggling against mental illness, as the environment around him sinks ever deeper into decay.

Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is the kind of professional clown you’d see working at a used car lot – a recipient of more bruises and derision than of audience laughter. He lives with his frail mother, struggles through visits with his social worker, all the while harboring dreams of being a successful comedian.

Judging by the theater marquees, this Gotham is the New York of 1981, back when Times Square was still a squalid mess. A city of rot, the garbage forever left uncollected. Phillips and cinematographer Lawrence Sher (Godzilla: King of the Monsters and The Hangover films) do a remarkable job of evoking the gritty, washed-out vibe of late-seventies, early-eighties New York films - which is no accident, as Joker owes a deep inspirational debt to a pair of Martin Scorsese films of that vintage: Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982). Arthur Fleck is practically a blood relative of Comedy's Rupert Pupkin. 

Holding his lackluster life up against the late night TV comedy luminaries he idolizes, it's no wonder Arthur has had low points where he's not sure if he even exists. Arthur trudges through his life, somehow a magnet for indignities and abuse, slogging home up a vertiginous flight of stairs that makes the one in The Exorcist look like a molehill in comparison. It's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel meets Barfly. 

How much can one soul endure before it starts to crack?  Arthur is broken, but so is the city he lives in. 1981 social services for the mentally ill were too little butter spread across too much bread, and the film does a remarkable job of getting into the skin of a man who's sick, who wants to belong, but who's been essentially abandoned and left to twist in the wind.

Joker is completely and utterly lit from within by Joaquin Phoenix, in one of the most detailed and immersive performances I can remember. His work is simply phenomenal, and reflects a craftsman who's clearly done an enormous amount of preparation. Arthur's laugh, his posture - the way he runs. It's truly convincing and compelling work, and for my money, Phoenix leaps miles ahead of the pack this year. This is by no means a mere villain's origin story. This is a story about trauma and the shadow of adversity, and what that does to someone when their last scrap of dignity has been snatched away from them. Phoenix manages to bestow incredible empathy for Arthur throughout his plight, even as his tethers to reality and sense of self begin to slip free.

Do not take your children to this film. Joker is not a superhero movie. There are moments of shocking violence in Joker's world. With everything that happens in this movie, I was expecting to come away feeling bleak and depressed, and was surprised to see how exhilarated I felt. The craft by both actors and filmmakers is simply that good. The oppressive dread of Gotham/New York powerfully enhanced by a score from Hildur Guðnadóttir (HBO’s Chernobyl).

In addition to Scorsese, Phillips and Silver mine shrewdly from past DC lore, including graphic novel The Killing Joke, by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland, as well as Frank Miller and Klaus Johnson’s opus, The Dark Knight Returns. 

We live in a world where sociopath loners have become more and more disturbingly commonplace. Don't make the mistake of thinking Joker glorifies or romanticizes them. Far from it. But by wrapping trauma, mental health and societal discontent in the thin cloth of comic book familiarity, Phillips has crafted a cautionary tale for our times that never forgets that there's a person behind the mask and makeup. The kind of wounded, broken person we walk past without noticing every day. Joker asks that we not forget them, and that we all do more than simply look away.