Does anyone even care what I think about this movie?
It’s been out for a week and a half.
It’s ancient history.
Does anyone who hasn’t seen it by now really want to see it?
Does anyone who did see it even remember it?
The central attraction of the film, and far and away the best thing about it, is the lead
performance by Joaquin Phoenix.
As Arthur Fleck, the soon-to-be-Joker, Phoenix is by turns meek and pathetic, explosively
violent, chillingly detached, and sneeringly caustic.
Of all the actors of his generation, Phoenix comes the closest to recreating the sense
of danger and unpredictability that made Robert Mitchum so compelling, and Joker makes mostly
very good use of that quality.
And Phoenix’s physicality in the role, which has been roundly and rightly praised, will
go down as his most indelible contribution in the surprisingly crowded lineage of live-action
Jokers.
The movie is essentially a solo act.
Arthur is the focus of the story, he’s in every scene, he’s the only character given
any sort of significant development.
And Phoenix’s performance works, so on that level the movie as a whole works.
But the movie still has problems.
And Phoenix performance has a few problems, too, that echo larger problems in the film.
So let’s talk about what else works, then let’s talk about the problems.
Other than Phoenix himself, the best thing the movie has going for it is its production
design.
In this way — and perhaps only this way — Joker resembles Tim Burton’s Batman,
which takes place in a darkly atmospheric Gotham City of which Roger Ebert wrote, “It’s
a shame something more memorable doesn’t happen there.”
The Gotham created by director Todd Phillips, cinematographer Lawrence Sher, production
designer Mark Friedberg, and art director Laura Ballinger, among others, is reminiscent
of the city we see on the page in David Mazzuchelli’s Batman: Year One, and of the New York City
of 1970s cinema, seen in the films of Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin, and Gordon Parks.
It lacks the catwalks and flying buttresses and ornate stone facades of the Gotham of
Burton and his production designer Anton Furst.
The Gotham of Joker is drab, dirty, neglected.
Its version of Arkham Asylum is not the forbidding castle rising up behind black iron gates,
but rather an ordinary looking state hospital with a dull gray concrete exterior and pale
yellow tiles lining the walls of the interior.
All of this works very well for the film, which at its core is about a troubled man
who falls through the cracks of a society that is controlled by people no longer interested
in caring for him.
Joker’s Gotham City is a place where mental health facilities close down due to lack of
funding.
Joker’s Gotham City is a place where people ride in subway cars lit by flickering lights
and covered inside and out with graffiti.
Joker’s Gotham City is a place where the greatest threat isn’t organized crime or
police corruption or outlandish cartoon supervillains, but the casual indifference of the rich to
the plight of the poor.
I’ve never seen a mainstream superhero film (or superhero adjacent film, as it’s probably
more accurate to call Joker) with a setting quite like it.
And that’s a good thing.
In fact, there are several important ways that Joker sets itself apart from most other
superhero films, all very much to its benefit.
The film is only two hours.
The film is a standalone work with a beginning, middle, and end.
It doesn’t feel like it’s setting up a franchise, and even though it leaves a few
loose ends, at its conclusion it doesn’t feel like it’s teasing a sequel.
It’s not packed with loud, overlong action sequences, and there’s no obvious CGI.
I adore the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
There hasn’t been one I haven’t at least liked, and a handful of them I have absolutely
loved.
But there are other ways to tell superhero stories in movies and I’m grateful to Joker,
Todd Phillips and his fellow creators, and Warner Bros. for reminding us all of that.
Of course, that’s not all Joker reminded me of.
And here’s where we start to transition from the stuff that worked to the stuff that
didn’t so much.
Because for better and for worse, this is a film that wears its inspirations — and
there are many — right there on its cranberry sleeve.
The two most obvious sources for the look, tone, and certain character and story elements
of Joker are Taxi Driver and King of Comedy.
Martin Scorsese was initially set to be a co-producer on the film before he left to
focus on directing The Irishman, so Joker’s similarities to two of his best films isn’t
terribly unexpected.
And there is a certain logic to making a Joker film influenced by Taxi Driver and King of
Comedy, because the protagonists of those films have some Jokerish qualities.
Travis Bickle is a loner who has lost faith in society and decided that violence is the
only way to respond to a decaying, crime-ridden city.
Rupert Pupkin is a social outcast and aspiring stand-up comedian with an unhealthy fixation
on a popular talk show host.
Mix those two together, sprinkle in a pinch of Fight Club’s Tyler Durden, and you’ve
got something resembling Arthur Fleck.
But while borrowing from such films gives Joker a promising starting point, it doesn’t
really go anywhere all that interesting or original from there.
This is a film trapped in a no-win situation — two no-win situations, actually, one caused
by its handling of its influences, the other by its premise, which I’ll get to in a moment.
When Joker leans in to its influences and strongly evokes Taxi Driver or King of Comedy,
it mostly works.
It’s entertaining and interesting.
And tapping Robert DeNiro, who portrayed both of this Joker’s primary cinematic ancestors,
Bickle and Pupkin, to play the talk show host is one clever piece of stunt casting and worth
a tip of the cap.
But when it strays too far from those influences, it starts making missteps.
The material of its own the film brings along to set itself apart from its inspirations
isn’t nearly as compelling as what it’s mimicking, which leaves Joker feeling shallow
and derivative, like a well executed, closely observed imitation of better films.
Even the stylistic flourish of using the 1970s Saul Bass version of the Warner Bros. logo
feels appropriated.
As I alluded to earlier, this problem shows up in Joaquin Phoenix’s performance.
It’s not that Phoenix is bad here — far from it.
But he’s given great performances in lots of movies, and most of his best moments in
Joker only serve to remind me of his work in, say, The Master or You Were Never Really
Here, both of which are far superior films.
As good as Phoenix is here, and he’s very good, if I’m thinking of other, better movies
while I’m watching him in this movie, that’s probably not a good sign.
The second no-win scenario Joker finds itself stuck in has to do with its status as a prequel.
I’m not someone who thinks all prequels are bad, or that they should never be made.
But setting a story as a prequel can place it behind certain obstacles, and those obstacles
have to be overcome in order for the film to work.
Joker’s problem is that it relates itself to the larger Batman mythos in such a way
that it doesn’t quite work whether it clears those obstacles or not.
This is not a Batman movie.
It connects itself to Batman’s story in ways that are unmistakable — it’s set
in Gotham City, Arthur becomes the Joker, Thomas Wayne is an important supporting character
— but because of its tone, style, character-driven story, and avoidance of most superhero story
tropes, it avoids feeling like a prequel most of the time.
That’s good.
Unfortunately, that means the few times when it does get prequelish are all the more discordant.
Oh, hey, Joker’s mom used to work for Thomas Wayne!
Small world!
And there’s a scene where future Joker Arthur encounters young Bruce Wayne!
How foreshadowy!
When Joker reminds us that it’s a Batman prequel, that yes, Arthur is that Joker, it
feels like even more of a simulacrum than it does otherwise.
It also invites us to imagine a future in this world, where little Bruce Wayne has grown
up to become Batman, and this version of the Joker is his arch-nemesis, and that future
just doesn’t interest me.
As much as I appreciate Phoenix’s performance and the other things this film does well,
I think the Joker is still a character who works best without a firmly established backstory.
One of the smartest choices made by Christopher Nolan and his creative team in The Dark Knight
was to strip their version of the Joker of any reliable personal history.
He doesn’t even have a version of the classic “dropped into a vat of chemicals” comic
book origin.
He just shows up and he is who he is.
What made him this way and why he does the things he does are questions left unanswered,
and the film is smart enough to know it’s better that way.
The Joker of The Dark Knight is a mystery, an inexplicable, elemental presence.
Lay out his origin story, explain how he got to be the way that he is, and he becomes just
another guy.
This is a key part of the success of Taxi Driver, too, by the way, a part which Joker
unfortunately didn’t borrow along with everything else it takes from that film.
Taxi Driver is not an origin story for Travis Bickle.
Bickle steps out of the fog at the start of that film and he simply is.
He does have a character arc — a steeply descending character arc, more of a character
inclined plane, really — but the film doesn’t offer any explanation for why he is the way
he is or how he got that way.
Joker — the film and the character — are ultimately diminished by the film’s status
as Batman backstory.
And yet, without those connections to Batman, I don’t think it would be nearly as interesting
of a film.
Because if Arthur isn’t the Joker, if little Bruce Wayne isn’t destined to become Batman,
if this isn’t a genre-busting reimagining of the world of one of our most popular superheroes,
then it’s just the story of a mentally ill man who snaps and turns to violence that feels
plagiarized from other, better films, propped up by its production design and a strong lead
performance.
So the film is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn’t.
Those aren’t the only problems I had with the film.
There isn’t much of a plot, which is fine in principle — I like that it’s a meandering
character study — but what plot it does have relies heavily on cheats and contrivances
to move forward.
For example, early in the film one of Arthur’s co-workers gives him a gun, no strings attached,
“pay me back for it later.”
He and Arthur don’t seem to be that close or even particularly friendly with each other.
Arthur doesn’t ask for a gun or say he’d like to have a gun.
This guy just gives Arthur the gun.
He’s the gun fairy.
Another example, Arthur visits Arkham and gets a look at the medical file of his mother,
who was once a patient there, and lucky for him it’s one of those super comprehensive
movie medical files that contains not only a record of the treatment she received but
an exhaustive personal history, newspaper clippings, records of things totally unrelated
to her medical history, and all sorts of other stuff that shouldn’t be there but that Arthur
needs to know so the story can move forward.
In a better movie, I probably wouldn’t even notice stuff like this, or if I did notice
I wouldn’t care.
Watching this movie, I did notice, and I cared at least enough to mention it here.
Most of the negative buzz circulating prior to the movie’s release had to do with the
fear that it would be an apology for white male violence, or some sort of incel call-to-arms.
I think whether you take that from this movie or not depends on what you bring along with
you.
Personally, I don’t think Joker comes across like that.
Yes, Arthur is a troubled loner who turns to violence against a community that has mistreated
and abandoned him, and yes we are invited to sympathize with Arthur to a point, but
I never felt the movie was trying to justify his violent actions.
There are plenty of cues, in the music, in the framing of particular shots, letting us
know that we’re not supposed to be on Arthur’s side when he’s committing murder, or stalking
an attractive neighbor, or reveling in the city-wide violence he eventually inspires.
My biggest problem with the film’s politics, to the extent that it consciously has them,
is how those politics are ultimately given voice through Arthur.
For most of the movie, Arthur doesn’t seem interested or even aware of the political
ramifications of his actions.
He isn’t trying to start a social movement.
The victims of his violence are people he knows or who represent threats to him.
He even says at one point, “I don’t believe in anything.”
But shortly after he says that, he delivers a speech about how Gotham’s wealthy elite,
represented by Thomas Wayne, have abandoned the poor and the mentally ill, and that any
society that neglects and mistreats its least fortunate citizens deserves what it gets,
namely people like him and the death and mayhem they cause.
It sure sounds like he believes in something then.
Some have objected to the film’s depiction of mental illness, and I see their point.
One of the most obvious ways to interpret Joker is as a cautionary tale of what happens
when we cut funding to mental health services and leave the people who depend on those services
to fend for themselves.
And while “we should help people with mental illnesses rather than stigmatizing and abandoning
them” is a well intentioned and sadly very necessary message, it would be better for
that message to be delivered in a way that doesn’t come across as a threat.
“Help people with mental illness because it’s the compassionate, humane, and right
thing to do,” instead of “Help people with mental illness, or else.”
I’ve spent way more time discussing the negatives of the movie than the positives,
so before I wrap up let me mention a few more things about it I appreciated.
The supporting performances are good — I already mentioned DeNiro as talk show host
Murray Franklin, there’s also Frances Conroy as Arthur’s mother, and Zazie Beetz as Arthur’s
neighbor Sophie, they’re all excellent.
Brett Cullen plays Thomas Wayne, and it’s a very different Thomas Wayne than we’ve
ever seen before.
He’s not the saintly patriarch and benefactor of so many bittersweet Batman flashbacks — he’s
kind of a dick, an out of touch elitist who disparages and dismisses the impoverished
citizens of Gotham, blaming them for their own problems while simultaneously presenting
himself as the only one who can help them.
Were it not for the fact that he also seems intelligent, competent, and legitimately wealthy,
he might come across as an analogue for Donald Trump.
It’s a drastic departure from how Thomas Wayne is typically depicted, but I like it,
it works for this story.
But can I get a live-action Thomas Wayne with some goddamn hair over his lip?
I’ll fight somebody over this.
His mustache should be universal canon.
It should be a linked source in every version of Batman.
And yet, Tim Burton’s Batman, Batman Begins, Gotham, now Joker, all clean-shaven Thomas
Waynes — will somebody please make a movie where Thomas Wayne has a mustache?!
Will somebody please make a good movie where Thomas Wayne has a mustache?
Anyway, back to the matter at hand.
I liked Joker.
Even with the shortcomings I’ve discussed here, I didn’t think it was a bad movie.
But I found it to be a far more interesting film to think about and talk about than to
actually watch, and that means that I can’t say it was a great movie, either.
More than anything, it made me want to watch Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, and The Dark
Knight again.
Those are all great films that people will still be talking about years from now.
Joker, on the other hand, in spite of the hype that surrounded and nearly consumed it
before its release, feels destined to be mostly forgotten.
It feels like I’m the last person still talking about it already.
SNL spoofed it over the weekend, so that’s pretty much the death rattle of its cultural
relevance right there, ain’t it?
That’s just as well, really; Joker is a fascinating, frustrating, sometimes admirable,
ultimately failed experiment, but the kind of experiment I hope Warner Bros. and other
studios that have invested in superhero films will see fit to repeat, with some adjustments,
in the future.