There is an inescapable question eclipsing the intended impact of Todd Phillips’ Joker. Could you even imagine thinking such a serious film about this clown man needed to exist? Joker, no matter how unconventional an iteration, cannot be divorced from the foundational stakes. This is all idiotic fun. A film about the Joker can be taken seriously, but there is something patently absurd about the mere notion of this character in any context. Joker’s relentless push to conjure some reality to the contrary never produces a rational argument. Instead, it leaves something pretty and grim reverberating with the same question: Could you imagine?
It’s not as though some unforgivably bad film has been made here. Joker has a lovely palette. Joaquin Phoenix hands in his usual committed performance. A couple of eyebrow-arching ideas bob to the surface. These are the standards to which comic book films are held, and usually garner more credit than their mediocre consumability warrants. But the film doesn’t hit on any level beyond its cruelty. There is no substantial satire. It’s not a compelling character piece. Its notions of social good and dissent and the "correct" order of things are hopelessly jumbled. Yet somewhere beyond all of these components there is an existential crisis traceable back to the written page.
Joker will draw a great many comparisons to Taxi Driver as well as The King of Comedy, and the film’s textures are an unmistakable paean to Scorsese’s filthiest New York. Though in the film’s brief stints of clarity it felt more like Nightcrawler: a portrait of a sociopath telling his own hero story. Like, don’t we all believe the weeping violins are for us? Or, there was potential for Joker as some radioactive dye dropped into a broken world to expose the extent of its profound flaws. In these moments, something as compelling as Joker’s visuals began to emerge. Then in an ass-showing monologue delivered at the zero hour, any potential for these readings was punted into outer space.
Phillips and company try to assemble the pieces of Joker’s oft-invoked Very Bad Day and desperately weave it into some passable semblance of reality. In doing so, the audience is left with a series of lousy turns for Arthur Fleck (the chrysalis of our soon-to-be Clown Prince of Crime), and a perverse misunderstanding of mental health crises. Where there is a reasonable argument to say, "hey, my guy, you’re thinking way too hard about this — it’s all make ‘em up!" consider this review’s foundational complaint a full-throated agreement. This is a story about a mentally ill guy in grease paint destined to fight a mentally ill billionaire in a bat costume. Oh, plus the major metropolitan area perpetually at risk because of their slap fights. Pathos? Psychodrama? A parable for these cursed times? Again, with yelling, could you even…
Though Joker is angling for this fight. Phillips not only makes repeated efforts to make his world the “real” world, he insists on inviting in our contemporary world. In doing so, the film demands to be evaluated on those merits. Joker wants to blame a failing social welfare system as part of Arthur’s problems, yet it is more generous with its depiction of the billionaire class than the downtrodden citizens pushing back. Arthur as Joker insists he’s not political, calls for civility, yet mewls that no one gets to decide what’s funny in response to his deliberately vicious non-joke. And in the greatest emblem of this film’s edgelord intellect, as perfectly captured by Glen Weld of NPR:
Arthur suffers one of his many onscreen beatings at the hands (and feet) of a bunch of Wall Street bros on the subway, who taunt him by singing "Send In The Clowns." Nearly in its entirety...we're supposed to buy that a straight finance bro would be off-book on the second and third verses of a Sondheim number?
The problem isn’t this films depiction of Arthur's descent into Joker, which I do not believe was designed to evince sympathy. The controversy is not in the baseless moral panic. The fundamental ill at the center of Joker is it’s no fun. So self-serious, flooded with caricature versions of real-world traumas, it renders itself inert. When we arrive at our pearl-strewn climax in crime alley, Joker insists we acknowledge the table which has been laid. A very serious world where Bruce Wayne — in response to the Joker uprisings of ‘81 where his dumbass dad took him to the movies in a part of town embroiled in protest — uses his inherited billions to fight social ills with extralegal vigilantism while dressed as a bat. The discourse, our cultural relationship with these characters, this sub-average film surrounded by so much bang and clamor; if Joker proves anything, we continue to insist that the joke is on us.
—Monte Monreal
It’s not as though some unforgivably bad film has been made here. Joker has a lovely palette. Joaquin Phoenix hands in his usual committed performance. A couple of eyebrow-arching ideas bob to the surface. These are the standards to which comic book films are held, and usually garner more credit than their mediocre consumability warrants. But the film doesn’t hit on any level beyond its cruelty. There is no substantial satire. It’s not a compelling character piece. Its notions of social good and dissent and the "correct" order of things are hopelessly jumbled. Yet somewhere beyond all of these components there is an existential crisis traceable back to the written page.
Joker will draw a great many comparisons to Taxi Driver as well as The King of Comedy, and the film’s textures are an unmistakable paean to Scorsese’s filthiest New York. Though in the film’s brief stints of clarity it felt more like Nightcrawler: a portrait of a sociopath telling his own hero story. Like, don’t we all believe the weeping violins are for us? Or, there was potential for Joker as some radioactive dye dropped into a broken world to expose the extent of its profound flaws. In these moments, something as compelling as Joker’s visuals began to emerge. Then in an ass-showing monologue delivered at the zero hour, any potential for these readings was punted into outer space.
Phillips and company try to assemble the pieces of Joker’s oft-invoked Very Bad Day and desperately weave it into some passable semblance of reality. In doing so, the audience is left with a series of lousy turns for Arthur Fleck (the chrysalis of our soon-to-be Clown Prince of Crime), and a perverse misunderstanding of mental health crises. Where there is a reasonable argument to say, "hey, my guy, you’re thinking way too hard about this — it’s all make ‘em up!" consider this review’s foundational complaint a full-throated agreement. This is a story about a mentally ill guy in grease paint destined to fight a mentally ill billionaire in a bat costume. Oh, plus the major metropolitan area perpetually at risk because of their slap fights. Pathos? Psychodrama? A parable for these cursed times? Again, with yelling, could you even…
Though Joker is angling for this fight. Phillips not only makes repeated efforts to make his world the “real” world, he insists on inviting in our contemporary world. In doing so, the film demands to be evaluated on those merits. Joker wants to blame a failing social welfare system as part of Arthur’s problems, yet it is more generous with its depiction of the billionaire class than the downtrodden citizens pushing back. Arthur as Joker insists he’s not political, calls for civility, yet mewls that no one gets to decide what’s funny in response to his deliberately vicious non-joke. And in the greatest emblem of this film’s edgelord intellect, as perfectly captured by Glen Weld of NPR:
Arthur suffers one of his many onscreen beatings at the hands (and feet) of a bunch of Wall Street bros on the subway, who taunt him by singing "Send In The Clowns." Nearly in its entirety...we're supposed to buy that a straight finance bro would be off-book on the second and third verses of a Sondheim number?
The problem isn’t this films depiction of Arthur's descent into Joker, which I do not believe was designed to evince sympathy. The controversy is not in the baseless moral panic. The fundamental ill at the center of Joker is it’s no fun. So self-serious, flooded with caricature versions of real-world traumas, it renders itself inert. When we arrive at our pearl-strewn climax in crime alley, Joker insists we acknowledge the table which has been laid. A very serious world where Bruce Wayne — in response to the Joker uprisings of ‘81 where his dumbass dad took him to the movies in a part of town embroiled in protest — uses his inherited billions to fight social ills with extralegal vigilantism while dressed as a bat. The discourse, our cultural relationship with these characters, this sub-average film surrounded by so much bang and clamor; if Joker proves anything, we continue to insist that the joke is on us.
—Monte Monreal
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