“Joker” features and centers
around actor Joaquin Phoenix interpretation of a loner in the year 1981. A
marginalized working class loner named "Arthur Fleck" who earns a struggling existence
as a clown-for-hire holding up adverting signs in the fictional morally fractured
and bankrupt city called Gotham. There is not much to "Arthur's life as even after his work
shift he immediately heads home to be with his ailing mother who
he adores. He feeds her and they watch television regularly together. Particularly, they watch his
favorite variety talk show hosted by “Murray Franklin” (Robert DeNiro). He loves to watch "Murray" and to also take notes as inspiration for his own jokes with the long term hope of one day he will get enough jokes written down to audition as a stand up
comedian one day.
But early on its clear that in spite of "Arthur" being a
very sympathetic decent man who wants to do good - wants to be good, Gotham is largely a city where people interact
with each other with spontaneous displays of kindness to spontaneous displays of cruelty and violent brutality.
And inspite of the pervasive cruelty all around him day after day "Arthur" still tries earnestly to
seek out connections with other people as he walks the streets of Gotham City. He's the internal optimist hoping there is good in other people like him. So, he tires to make friends but also he has to be careful approaching people as his odd outward subdued personality from being on antidepressants and his neurological disorder similar Tourette syndrome that causes him to inadvertently laugh out
loud won’t be misinterpreted as him being rude. Unfortunately they are misinterpreted and often and one day it causes Arthur
to making one bad impulsive decision that brings about a chain reaction of other escalating
events into him becoming the gritty diabolical character we all know as the
number one nemeses to Batman, “THE JOKER”.
REVIEW: What jumped out to me
in the 2:02 minute running time is watching Phoenix’s interpretation of how his Joker came into existence. With him being in almost 99% of every scenes and with him about
50% of the time in extreme camera close ups, I personally think his
performance here should be an actor’s studio training class of just how to slowly, gradually and meticulously descent into madness. Phoenix' doesn’t just quickly transform into Joker, he doesn’t just episodically evolve into Joker, rather he actually seems to have a complete metamorphosis of a change right before your eyes into another biological entity altogether that is dark, sinister and criminal.
Unlike Heath Ledger’s iconic Joker
who was already brilliantly deranged from the film's beginning, Phoenix approaches his Joker similar to someone using a single edge razor blade shaving super thin slivers of a garlic pod for a spaghetti sauce recipe. He carefully reveals very gradually reveals, very subtle reveals the small strands of the monstrous DNA bubbling inside him. For me Phoenix's work here is clearly Best Actor nomination worthy, but it won’t. Largely because of the incredible darkness surrounding his characters
actions and the unanticipated violence in the film that at times was even so shocking
for me that I mumbled………”Wow I did not see that coming”. His work is formidable, powerful
and truly memorable. Its filled with equal parts joyful humanity and acute evil all the while elevating the entire films story every
inch of the way. He was absolutely the perfect actor to take up where Heath Ledger
left it.
WARNING - Joker is at times very tough to watch and
not one inch of it is ever redeeming while watching it, so it is not for all audiences and especially not for any children.
But what it does do for adults is adroitly delve into the same emotional struggles
of the big city loner wanting to do good in a violent way as Robert DeNiro did with his “Travis Bickle” in “Taxi Driver”. It also examines as "Taxi Driver" did with a direct in your face execution the dynamics of American economic class struggles and social divisiveness.
And it does it all with astonishing hypnotic beauty and hypnotic brutality. I
was both fascinated, mesmerized and riveted watching "Joker".
In the 2008 “Batman – The Dark
Knight” there is a scene involving Wayne Manor butler “Alfred Penny” (Michael
Caine) who is having a conversation with the wealthy "Bruce Wayne" (Christian
Bale aka Batman) about Gotham newest criminal called "The Joker". "Wayne" is intellectually perplexed as to understanding what drives the Joker to his life of crime (Heath Ledger). He really doesn't appears to be motivated by the same conventional greed and venal temptations as other Gotham City criminals in the past. "Alfred" approaches "Wayne", by taking a step closer to say.......”Master Wayne, some men are not looking for anything logical like
money; they can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with……..some
men just want to watch the world burn”. Joaquin Phoenix performance is
so compelling and so revealing that it makes "Alfred's" explanation even more relevant and more meaningful in this film. We see "Alfred aka Joker" learn as Heath Ledger Joker executed "that rules won't save you and the only sensible way to live is without rules"....................while watching the world burn.
Director Todd Phillips has
made a challenging reimagining film of a fictional character that felt more real than some fictional superhero movie. His "Joker" is kind, violent,
sad, flawed, tender and psychotic. But it was his choice in lead actor Joaquin Phoenix that creates with craftsman’s like control a new story of the Joker character one that is soft and loving in the beginning to one who is diabolical and evil in the end.
3.75 Stars
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