Yeah, it’s a flimsy conceit—multitudes in Gotham adopting clown dress to line up with a populist revolt against those of means, spurred on by a subway murder of three young Wall Street guys. Sure Todd Phillips’ Joker contains clumsy social commentary, facile plot advances, and is as dark and unsettling as a moonless, starless night on a rowboat at sea.
Have no fear. Joaquin is here. Fresh on the heels of the sadly underseen You Were Never Really Here, Joaquin Phoenix does an about-face from all the weight gained in that compelling film. In Joker, he’s skin and bones, looking nearly as gaunt as Cristian Bale in The Machinist. And Is it me or does Phoenix seem to channel the rousing Iggy Pop circa 1980 in his preening, distorted dances? His masterful squirming, both physically and psychically, pepper a performance that, quite frankly, is unlike any other I have witnessed in six decades of film watching.
Phoenix gets to the core of his character Arthur Fleck’s mental illness with a finesse and an acumen that is often breathtaking. At first blush, it’s more than a little startling to witness the approach Phoenix takes. Sporting an involuntary laugh, ostensibly a result of a neurological condition, he forces the viewer to at once have a lusty if nervous laugh on his affliction and simultaneously, er, approach an uneasy empathy with it. When have we seen a screen crazy guy reveal himself this starkly? Or this chillingly waggish?
As Arthur tries to keep it together taking care of his unstable mom, or advancing a “career” as a would-be stand-up comic while all the while making ends meet with commercial clown gigs, he comes across as a sincere innocent who, despite juggling “seven different medications” (they’re soon taken away via government belt-tightening) manages to largely keep himself out of trouble.
Until, after becoming the victim of vandalism while doing a sidewalk, placard holding “going-out-of-business” clown gig (“It’s getting crazy out there,” he states), Arthur’s given a soon-to-be tragic gift.
A co-worker fellow clown gives him a gun to protect him from further incidents. Not a good idea. Arthur’s new toy first goes off in his mother’s apartment, piercing a hole in the wall. Arthur covers the incident up by raising the TV volume and yelling out to his mom in the next room that it was “only a program on television.” Later, the gun proves to be his employment downfall when it accidentally falls out of his clown outfit and onto the floor of the hospital where he is entertaining a room full of ill children.
Then there is the blustery TV talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert DeNiro in yet another role he can do with his eyes closed), nicely named after the legendary local New York TV host Joe Franklin (who was by the way much more down to earth than the character here.) Arthur’s mom really likes Murray and Arthur cuddles into a mutual Murray-watch with her, setting off an Arthur fantasy where he is called onstage by the unctuous Murray. That this turns out to be prescient is less a matter Phillips lifting riffs from Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, and more about his tying a bow around his film’s insistence on going over the top in bringing its mytho-political themes full circle. I figure let him have his fun as long as he doesn’t think we’re going to take this stuff seriously—at least this isn’t another Hangover sequel.
If it’s taken me this long to acknowledge Joker is a DC production, it’s because it sure as hell doesn’t feel like one—except maybe until its closing scenes where it does sort of revert to the exaggerated, large-scale excess that plagues most of the DC films.
Give Joker kudos for choosing to skirt away from many comic book movie cliches, despite often falling into its own set of hackneyed choices. There’s a distillation of an often unforgettable horror fairy tale here that transcends flaws that were probably inevitable in such a project. But let’s not forget that picturing this film with anyone other than Phoenix in the tile role is not a particularly pretty sight. Better to explain away the film’s many shortcomings with the welcome news that no matter what goes wrong, Phoenix manages to save it. And then some.
Joaquin saves the day in a performance for the ages. 4 stars (out of 5)