Enter the year’s most talked about movie. Please cast the pre-emptive controversy and criticism aside and let yourself sink into the mesmerising muck, melancholy, mayhem and magic that is ‘Joker’.
Set in the late 70s/early 80s, ‘The Hangover’ trilogy director Todd Phillip’s Gotham City is overrun by rioters, rats and rubbish. Reminiscent of New York City’s 1968 garbage strikes and Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s era of urban decay, Gotham has become a dirty and deteriorating slum of skyscrapers. Job opportunities are at an all-time low so crime is at an all-time high, resulting in a fertile albeit fragile breeding ground for desperation, depravity and despair. The rich vs poor divide is cataclysmic too with metaphorical tremors being felt on both sides, and depressed and dependant locals like Arthur Fleck (stunningly and shockingly brought to life by a chameleonic Joaquin Phoenix) are falling through the cracks.
Arthur is a clown-for-hire, trying to sing and dance his troubles away for a meagre amount of money as he works towards his real ambition of being a stand-up comedian. But instead he is pity and pain behind a painted face - a fancy dressed, easy target for vicious street kids and white-collar wankers – and spends most of his time being beaten, bullied, harassed and humiliated.
Despite his predicament, Arthur manages to scrape enough together to give his house-bound mother Penny (Frances Conroy) a TV tray dinner every night as they sit down to watch old black & white movies and ‘Live with Murray Franklin’ (Arthur’s idol-come-enemy variety show host played by Robert De Niro). He, however, doesn’t eat. Cigarettes and medications are his meals, which manifests most in his physicality as well as his malnourished mind.
Arthur needs to be dangerously thin to get these points across, and the first time you see him up close and shirtless is probably the only moment in the movie that you really see the actor, Joaquin, and gasp in acknowledgement at the physical lengths he’s also gone to for this role. His eyes are sunken, his face deeply carved with creases, and his torso taut and twisted around a protruding spine and rows of ribs that look disturbingly close to slicing through the skin.
Brittle body aside, it’s Arthur’s mentally ill mind that is most at risk of breaking, and throughout the course of this 90-minute raging rollercoaster ride of a film, this is exactly what you watch happen. Despite some solid support from the likes of Conroy, De Niro, Zazie Beetz as Arthur’s neighbour and imaginary girlfriend and Brett Cullen as wannabe mayor Thomas Wayne (that’s right, Bruce’s father, and for a while there maybe Arthur’s father!), Joaquin is the bruised and broken beating heart of ‘Joker’. It’s a gritty character study and I can’t think of the last time I’ve seen so much trauma, loneliness, anger and madness so exquisitely and distressing portrayed on the big screen. So many other actors would have overacted the hell out of this role, but Joaquin managed to make Arthur remain raw, realistic and well-rounded even in the most absurd or antagonistic of moments. My heart broke with sadness and pounded with fear simultaneously, bolstered by an astonishingly emotive and suspenseful score by Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir and notable numbers ‘Send In The Clowns’ and ‘That’s Life’ by Frank Sinatra (which become reoccurring anthems for our antihero Arthur).
His gradual transformation into the Joker is breathtaking – and actually quite beautiful – to behold. He’s an unreliable narrator with many moods making up his unpredictable personality, and it’s a melting pot of all of these things that make Arthur so ominous when he chooses to embrace and experiment with his eccentricities. The first factor is his laugh, or rather, his array of laughs. The one that will be forever burnt into my memory is his uncontrollable, eye-watering, choking laugh. It’s a condition described as the result of a brain injury, and is brought on when Arthur is feeling stressed, threatened, upset or angry. It gushes out of him like a tsunami and is clearly painful as he claws at his throat and cups his mouth to try and make it stop. It’s deliberately highly uncomfortable viewing. His other laughs are more manipulative and manageable, ranging from a fake and shrill cackle when pretending to find something funny because everyone else does, to short and gleeful in the ultra-rare moments where he finds something genuinely enjoyable.
Even the ways in which Arthur kills escalates as he gets closer to becoming this version of Joker, depending on who it is getting their gruesome comeuppance. First, it’s retaliation, shooting dead three antagonistic Wall Street workers on a grimy subway (and unintentionally igniting a powerful protest movement against authority and affluence in Gotham). Then when it comes to murdering his mother in her hospital bed, it’s deliberate and representative of the way his relationship towards her has changed after discovering he was adopted, neglected and abused as a child. Arthur tells her he finally knows who he really is and is ready to revel in it, before smothering her with her pillow. It’s intimate, drawn-out, physical and personal (and the first time he kills without his clown costume or make-up on), juxtaposed against the opportunistic, violent and visceral attack on former workmate Randall (who got him the sack), who Arthur unleashes on with scissors before smashing his head repeatedly into his apartment wall. Then finally he kills for attention and fun, shooting Murray Franklin clean through the head on live TV to make a statement, achieve notoriety and get a thrill. He’s leaving a bloody trail of pathological payback and here lies the making of the Joker.
The steep steps he used to limp up to get home he now dances down with confidence and swagger to Gary Glitter’s ‘Rock And Roll Part 2’. The latest Joker costume is a striking look that will hopefully be cosplayed for decades to come. It’s dyed green, greasy hair, blue triangular eye highlights, red lopsided brows, red nose (a homage to the foam nose so synonymous with party clowns), wide red mouth and a paisley green shirt tucked under an orange vest beneath a bold, bright red suit. It’s the loudest Joker outfit yet sported by the saddest clown around, another dichotomy that perfectly matches the tone of the film.
After his on-air anarchy, Joker is hauled away in the back of a police car. His bloodstained face is pressed up gleefully against the glass, make-up melting, as his armed escort cruises through the now burning and chaotic streets of Gotham to the tune of Cream’s ‘White Room’. Joker’s ‘Live with Murray Franklin’ appearance has kicked off an uprising, and the people have taken to the streets in a destructive show of solidarity. Then stood atop the now crushed cop car he was locked up in moments earlier before it was T-boned by a hijacked ambulance, Joker poses for the adoring, cheering crowd, smearing the blood from his mouth across his lips and up his cheeks into a slick and sickening smile. This moment is spine-tingling, goosebump inducing, chilling yet exhilarating, a haunting indication that Arthur’s transformation into the Joker is complete - and it’s magnificent. We’ve gone from Arthur the downtrodden, lethargic loner on the fractured fringes of society, to Joker, a mischievous and murderous messiah for the disillusioned clown-masked masses.
Believe it or not, ‘Joker’ also has brief moments of satisfyingly black humour if you’re worried it’s all too dark and dismal for you. From the gun falling out of Arthur’s pants during a hospital visit to entertain sick kids to his short statured friend Gary not being able to reach the latch to get out of Arthur’s apartment after witnessing Randall’s murder, and the sad but true jokes he tries out at the comedy club where he embarrasses himself. The gags are dad joke decent but just reinforce the obvious tragedy that no matter how hard Arthur tries to be funny, the joke is ultimately always on him – that is until he starts turning the tables. Right up to its ambiguous ending, we’ve watched an unforgettable film often overflowing with empathy too, whether you view Arthur as a victim, vigilante, villain or all three. We’re not necessarily condoning all the crimes committed, but are at least understanding of the harrowing and all too often realistic circumstances that led to them.
'Joker’ is a masterpiece, an instant classic, documenting either the creation of or inspiration for the clown king of crime and chaos we all know and love. It’s bold, bleak, bloody, brutal yet beautiful. The concept is original, the content confronting and the execution artistically risky and rewarding. In a genre saturated with CGI and jam-packed all-star casts, this is a movie that shows the simple power of performance, script, cinematography, score, editing and so much more done not just well, but flawlessly. This better win Todd and Joaquin all the awards. Wow. Just wow. A must-see.
‘Joker’ is in cinemas now!
