‘I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realise, it’s a comedy.’
Love them or hate them, it feels like everybody is starting to cool off a little on superhero movies. Sure, the box office says otherwise, but there is a feeling that now is the time to evolve before Marvel and DC movies become just another fad. Joker is the first step in that evolution and it is quite the departure…
Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is not a well man. Severely mentally ill and completely socially isolated, Fleck exists on the very outskirts of society until circumstance and fate conspire to thrust him into the public eye.
Ever since Christopher Nolan rebooted Batman, there has been a clamour for superhero movies to be ever darker, ever grittier, culminating in the joyless and grey Zack Snyder movies. Joker is punch to the gut compared to everything in the DC roster, a wake up call, a realisation that ‘darkness’ isn’t dictated by colour scheme alone. For this is a properly dark movie. This is Taxi Driver for the social media generation.
With Joker, director Todd Phillips (yes the same guy who directed The Hangover trilogy) has achieved the impossible. A genuinely realistic superhero movie. Arthur Fleck’s dissent into full breakdown is all too familiar in a world beset by cuts to mental health services and mass shootings on a daily basis. You can only kick a dog so many times before it bites back, and Fleck is the symbol of the marginalised, the lonely, the disaffected. That isn’t to say he’s a sympathetic character. In truth, it is difficult to forge a solid opinion on Fleck, partly because Phoenix’s astonishing performance ensures that Fleck remains ambiguous and partly because Joker manages to capture the complexities that define all of us. The God and the Devil rage inside everyone but so seldom do we see this dichotomy captured on film.
Having said that, I’m not sure if I actively enjoyed this movie. It is so jarring, so grotesque that it is difficult to sit through at times. The Joker’s manic laughter that always leads to strained tears and savage violence rang in my head well after the film had finished. This is a film with substance. A film that stays with you.
Ultimately, I will need a few more days to process Joker, and there can be no higher praise for what is essentially a film about a cartoon baddy. Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix have taken a dying artform and injected it with a decadent, predatory violence. This is a turning point. Now, let’s never watch an Avengers movie again.