With one of the first lines being “I hope that my death makes more sense than my life,” Joker, directed by Todd Phillips, captures the audiences’ attention from the beginning.
The movie takes place in the 1970’s, depicting the era disturbingly realistically. Instead of hippie pants and peace signs, Arkham is portrayed with an unimaginable crime rate and a cigarette being lit every second of the movie.
Numerous award-winner Joaquin Phoenix takes the stage as Arthur Fleck, whose day job is none other than a clown for hire. Fleck lives with his physically and mentally ill mother and aspires to be a stand-up comedian.
In the opening scenes, we watch him force a smile onto his face, be mugged by a group of teenagers, and then brutally attacked by said teens. It’s not until he is given a gun by a co-worker and shoots three college students on a subway that we see a shift in character, creating the infamous Joker.
The physical manipulation Phoenix had to put himself through for Joker proves dedication and determination to breathe the life back into the character after Jared Leto’s adaptation in Suicide Squad. For the entirety of the movie, his character is sickly malnourished and frail. Phoenix builds upon this physical weakness with the mental instability and gradually, develops an eerie character growth that almost makes us root for the insane Arthur Fleck.
Every time the Joker mantle is taken on, there is a new twist. Heath Ledger presented more of the iconic, chaotic evil persona. Jared Leto took on the gangster version displayed in 1940’s comic. Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker pulls inspiration from the comic “Batman: The Killing Joke”, making it his own.
The movie challenges the phrase “the hero writes the story” by presenting Joker as not only the antagonist but also the protagonist, tossing around the idea that good and bad are subjective depending on whose side one is on.
Expectedly the movie is graphic. The main weapon is a gun and when it’s used, the blood splatter is hard to miss. However, it is not as dark as I prepared myself for. The trailers advertised a thriller and Joker was far from anything that would raise goosebumps. I was expecting a man who had hit his breaking point and murdered blindly, slaughtering everyone at every corner. What I got was man who did hit a breaking point, but killed with a twisted reasoning.
The movie showed what happens when the lower, working-class is pushed to their limit. When people are tired of being forgotten, they make a way for themselves to be remembered. Coming off the Marvel, action-packed high, Joker did appear slow and drawn out. But comparing Joker to a movie like End Game or Far From Home would be comparing apples to oranges. This is not an action-packed movie. It goes back to the slow and tedious style of an origin story and frankly, it’s refreshing. Joker is a graphic, twisted, psychologically analytical movie that settles the question of who exactly is Joker. I give this movie four stars out of five.