Film Review: Joker
It is irrefutable that we are living in an era dominated by superhero films. Whether that is for good or for evil depends on who you ask. I, and many others, relish in this age of spectacle and superpowers, with the groundbreaking MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) providing us with a seemingly endless stream of films with a fascinating over-arching narrative.
There are others, however, who resent this new titan of the box office. Acclaimed director – and producer of Joker – Martin Scorsese, recently described this new wave of superhero films as more like a ‘theme park’ than cinema. This is a fair judgement, with many of the more recent ventures into the genre being criticised for their dependence on special effects and big action set pieces. However, it seems like things might be changing with the recent release of Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Philips. Scorsese’s involvement in the film, despite his reservations about the genre, just goes to show that this is not a typical comic book film, it has its own identity separate from the bright flashing lights of the mainstream.
At the time of writing, Joker has broken the record for the biggest October box office weekend with an opening gross of $96 million. This is hardly surprising, given the massive amount of hype and expectation that has been steadily building since a 36-second screen test was released online in September 2018, showing Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck and hinting at his transformation into the twisted Batman villain The Joker.
This came as a shock to many, seeing as a fresh adaption of the character was seen in 2016’s Suicide Squad. Jared Leto brought a modern, tattooed spin to the classic DC Comics character which left a sour taste in fans’ mouths. Both the film and Leto’s performance were met with poor reviews and a disappointing box office, perhaps encouraging Warner Bros to take the character in a new direction.
Joker not only marks a new direction for the character, but for the slate of DC films as a whole. Since 2013’s Man of Steel, DC has been attempting its own cinematic universe, as pioneered by the MCU. This, however, met with limited success. Attempts at Avengers-style team-up films flopped both critically and commercially and Todd Philips recognised the need for change. After the success of 2017’s Wonder Woman, which separated itself from the previous films in the franchise, the studio decided to reign in the ‘shared’ aspect of its shared cinematic universe and started to focus on stand-alone films, leaning more on the individual characters than their identity as a group. This is no more prevalent than in Joker, which takes place in a completely different universe to all the previous DC films and so stands alone in its own world.
With a budget of $55 million and featuring involvement from names such as Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, Joker was clearly going to be a change of pace from what audiences have come to expect from the comic-book movie genre. It premiered at the Venice International Film Festival where it received an eight-minute standing ovation and also screened at the Toronto Film Festival where it won the Golden Lion award. This early critical praise, and the year-long wait raised my, and many other viewers’, expectations.
Thankfully, these expectations were met and surpassed with one of the most emotionally affecting films I have ever seen. The film follows Arthur Fleck, a man struggling with mental health, a sick mother and poverty in a 1981 Gotham City. He has a dream of becoming a stand-up comedian but has a condition causing him to laugh uncontrollably for seemingly no reason, making this dream of his seemingly impossible. Throughout the film, we see Arthur’s descent as he faces hardship after hardship, leading him down a path towards insanity.
This film has been commended on its portrayal of mental health issues . I can attest to Joaquin Phoenix’s performance of a man on the edge. He plays the character of Arthur Fleck with a sometimes uncomfortable amount of sincerity and commitment, fully convincing me that I was indeed watching someone suffering from the same afflictions. Joker is definitely not for the faint of heart, not because it is gory or violent, but because of Phoenix’s eerie and sometimes disturbing performance as someone with severe problems. Allegedly Phoenix often walked off set during shooting as he lost control and needed to compose himself, a fact I was not surprised to learn after seeing his remarkable performance.
It is not only Phoenix’s depiction of this unhinged character that sold Joker for me: it is the world in which he lives and suffers. Gotham City had always been reminiscent of New York City in cinematic adaptions, and none more than this. Joker takes place in a city in chaos, with the poverty-stricken populus angry at the uncaring elites ruling over them. The film carries this theme strongly, not only through the narrative but through the visual storytelling. The scenes that take place in the heart of the city feel tense and unnerving, simply because of the excellent mise en scene, which captures these feelings of danger and resentment and communicates them visually to the audience.
The film has also been credited for holding a mirror to society and criticizing the 1%. While I do feel like it was often predictable in this regard, rarely showing a fresh take on this popular narrative theme, the way it depicts the immediate human effect on one person who has already been dealt a terrible hand is so excellently done that it is hard to fault for its slight lack of originality.
Critics have claimed that Joker will change the slate of superhero and comic book films forever, providing a completely fresh take on source material that many have felt to be growing stale. While I do agree that this style of film is something virtually unheard of in the comic book movie scene, I think that it is far enough removed from what we’ve been exposed to to be its own thing entirely. While, yes, it used characters and places from the Batman comics, it didn’t feature any indication that it took place in a world any different to ours. Philips could have replaced Gotham City with New York and Thomas Wayne for Donald Trump and the film would be more or less the same. So while I do agree that Joker was a breath of fresh air for comic book fans, I would have liked to see it take place in the world already established in the comics, rather than in a thinly disguised version of our own world. This is not a criticism of the film, just an observation at the fact that, to gain its overwhelming critical response, it was necessary for Joker to almost completely separate itself from the source material. I feel like there is enough potential to create a grounded, character-driven narrative that takes place within the mythology established over the past 80 years of comics that would merit an attempt, especially with the talented writing and acting that went into Joker.
Overall, I would recommend Joker to anyone looking for a film that will stick with you days after leaving the cinema and hope that it shows people the potential of the comic-book genre outside of world-ending threats and flashy special effects.
4.5 stars
