Joker

A superb performance from Joaquin Phoenix and a mesmeric score from Hildur Guðnadóttir coupled with some fantastic cinematography (from Phillips’ regular collaborator Lawrence Sher) bringing the grimy, gritty urban setting of Gotham to life in glorious, clown-hued technicolour. But beyond these, admittedly large parts of the film, there is something that doesn’t quite chime with Joker.

The Joker is such an iconic character in the DC/Batman world and giving this character, with his immensely wide range of portrayals in the comics books, his own origin story is interesting to say the least. It is, though, not a happy beginning, whatever Arthur may be called by his mother. The realism in this film takes the new ground broken by Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and brings it another step closer to real life, warts and all. The depiction of the mental health issues and instability in Arthur as he begins/continues his downward spiral towards who he is to become is devastating at times but always seems tethered to the real and hardly veers towards the fantastic.

There are a few mis-steps along the way but these are minor quibbles in what is a competently put together film. It just didn’t take my breath away and I’m not sure why. It’s not that I didn’t like it, because I did enjoy watching it, but I also can’t quite put my finger on why it didn’t wholly blow me away. Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as the damaged Arthur Fleck is astounding, and it is a complete performance. His transformation into Arthur is fully committed with his emaciated features and incredibly awkward physical performance portraying this increasingly alone person did amaze me and he should definitely be there or there abouts come award season.

I’m never usually one to pick up on a score but Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score had me excited and emotionally invested throughout the film. Continuing in the trend of the superb and much missed Jóhann Jóhannsson’s style and utilising stirring strings and underlying percussion really adds emotion and impetus to the required scenes. But this isn’t an in-your-face film but subtly slides in under your skin as each piece of support and stability that Arthur has fades and disappears, and with each piece going missing another bit of the Joker is revealed in character and style.

The parallel’s between Todd Phillips’ world that he has created for Joker and the current political climate are stark and hard to miss: The wealthy elite doing and getting away with what they like, public services being cut and dismantled for the sake of saving money (and increasing profits somewhere down the line no doubt), the lower classes expected to know their places and be happy with what little they have and what littler they are inevitably going to receive.

Rampant capitalism in the real world is only a few steps away from a reality that could take us into a world of intense civil unrest and it would only take a flash point akin to the plot of Joker to ignite it all. You can feel it in the growing populism and ever entrenched tribal viewpoints (left/right, the best/the worst). Nuance has been jettisoned, the middle ground no longer exists or doesn’t get heard any more. But is it any wonder when the rich make the systems that work for them, to enable themselves to get even richer and they can then buy their way into anything and pay/lobby to have systems changed in their favour? And the rest of us have to accept that, live and abide by their rules and/or suffer. Most likely suffer.

So, I can see why the media are worried about the influence of Joker and why there have been articles written about the negative aspects and effects of this film. The media: Usually owned by multi-billionaires who are quite happy to set the agenda in whichever nation their media hubs reside in, to push the envelope to sway opinion to get the populace to do their bidding (as is very much evident in Britain at the moment). Joker takes its inspiration from a different place: Arthur, albeit delusional, is moved to protect himself from the entitled, he seeks to find where his help can come from and when the option of help is removed from him he takes matters into his own hands and finds his own solution.

But Joker’s depiction of the male, incel-style inhabitant doesn’t ring as true to this world as it might. The effects of the hoovering up of money by the mega-rich affects us all, man and woman, leaving everyone else fighting for the scraps. So, the almost entirely male-centric uprising of Joker isn’t something that I see as coming to pass. This isn’t a one gender issue and I don’t think that Joker highlighted that enough, unless it was intentional to specifically further the threat as that is more commonly known and something that viewers can latch onto. The trouble is Arthur doesn’t see woman as the problem like the incel ideology. He isn’t being denied anything specifically by the opposite gender and his issue is with the wealthy and the system. Society, in its bended-knee towards the rich, has brought about this ire in Arthur. Slowly removing the safety nets that were in place and the casual disregard and violent contempt of Thomas Wayne towards this troubled man is brought back to him with interest.

Joker is an interesting film released at an interesting time. It has to be lauded for the central performance alongside the visual style and. of course, the impressive score. But beyond that I’m left struggling to pick anything else that stood out to me.