Joker: Really? We’re Doing This Again?

I don’t think a controversy surrounding a movie has ever taken the wind out of my sails faster than Joker. Making an origin movie about one of the 20^th Century’s most iconic villains that doesn’t involve his main nemesis in any shape or form was a bold move, and marketing it as a mid-budget character study even bolder. But once buzz from the festival circuit claimed that releasing it would be socially irresponsible since this version of The Joker was going to become a potential new idol for angry white dudes and possibly even inspire the next mass shooting, the Internet immediately took sides and made it the latest battleground in the culture war. It also didn’t help that director Todd Philips added fuel to the fire by claiming the outrage was all about “SJWs” and “woke culture” being too sensitive. Granted, there’s been a ton of positive praise to counterbalance all the negative backlash, and this is far from the first comic book movie to bank on topicality to drum up hype, but I’m willing to go in as neutral as possible and judge Joker on its own merits, even if all the noise surrounding it makes it hard.

Before there was Joker, there was Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a man who’s been turned into society’s chamber pot. He’s on seven different medications for a myriad of psychological issues, has random fits of uncontrollable laughter, is stuck looking after his ailing mother (Frances Conroy), strives to make it as a stand-up comedian and daydreams of meeting his favorite late-night talk show host (Robert DeNiro) despite barely being able to hold on to his day job as a party clown. Meanwhile, Gotham City is rotting from the inside out, restless civilians have it out for billionaire turned politician Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), compounding the already mounting tensions that threaten to break Arthur’s already fragile mind.

Joker has a couple fatal flaws, but the biggest is baked into the very idea behind its inception: The Joker isn’t supposed to make sense. He’s an agent of chaos who sometimes has a wrongheaded point to make about human nature and society (which we live in), but more often than not is just doing it for laughs. Both The Dark Knight and The Killing Joke (which this movie cribs from just as much as it cribs from Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy) understood this when he gave multiple contradictory explanations to his origin. Joker toys with this unreliable narrator framing by having us question whether certain plot points were real or figments of his imagination. Much of the controversy stems from concerns that Arthur will come across as sympathetic. But he’s not. He’s pitiful. The great irony is that he desires to make people laugh, even if his sense of humor doesn’t stem from our basic understanding of comedy, but can’t stand being the butt of the joke. (Spoilers: the joke is life.)

On this level, Joaquin Phoenix works miracles as the melancholy sad sack Arthur, prowling helplessly through a decaying Gotham, a loving replica of the grimy streets of late 70’s-early 80’s New York that Scorsese’s early menagerie of anti-heroes calls home. Having transformed his body into a taut skin canvas pulled over a wiry skeleton and dancing through the streets to a symphony that only he can hear, Phoenix gives us a more alien take on the clown prince of crime, one whose confidence seems to grow the more things fall apart around him. It’s an incredibly humorless and mean-spirited portrayal, but considering this is from the guy who brought us The Hangover trilogy and War Dogs, that should come as no surprise.

Of course, Arthur’s forever war with society (which we live in) isn’t completely unjustified. Much of the disparity that pushes him over the edge is due to the societal inequalities that plague us to this day: the rich hoarding all the wealth and power for themselves and leaving the lower class to suffer while making them think they’re to blame for their predicament. Things don’t get bloody until Gotham cuts social service funds and Arthur’s medication and counseling is severed. And he’s not the only one reacting violently. At one point, Arthur becomes an unexpected vigilante hero when he shoots three bullying Wall Street brokers in self-defense, an army of angry protesters don clown masks in opposition to Thomas Wayne, a billionaire running for mayor on an “Only I can fix this since I have all the money” campaign. With all these factors, compounded by an identity crisis brought upon by discovery of a past relationship between Thomas Wayne and Arthur’s mother, how could someone not go crazy?

I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but the most frustrating thing about the movie is that for all it has to say about hypocrisy and society (which we live in), it doesn’t have as much to offer as it thinks it does. And for as much as it wanted me to pity the Joker, that thematic emptiness left me feeling hollow by the time he fully embraces the darkness. Say what you will about Walter White, Travis Bickle or Rupert Pupkin, at least I felt something for them. It all comes to a head in the final 20 minutes where it goes exactly where most of the pearl clutchers were hoping it wouldn’t go: Joker gives a monologue reinstating the movie’s main themes and ranting about our broken society (which we live in), then leaves the backdoor open in a way that breaks its promise of being a stand-alone feature just in case the fans clamor for Phoenix to be in the next iteration of Batman.

Bottom line, Joker is a sick joke that messes up the punchline. Perhaps it’ll be impossible to have a nuanced discussion about it until the dust has settled and its legacy is more firmly cemented in a couple years, but for all the hemming and hawing about this being the next step in the evolution of the superhero genre or the movie your parents don’t want you to see, it wasn’t nearly shocking or transgressive enough to warrant all the outrage. I don’t know, maybe I’m just not scared of clowns.

 6/10