Movie Review: Joker Movie "The Dark Antihero Story"
"Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?" - Joker
Setting a new box office record for October, Joker delivered. The Warner Bros. film raked in $96 million domestically and $151 million overseas for a global start of at least $247 million. How could a Joker movie without Batman possibly work? 2019's Joker, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix, answers that question with a simple twist on the classic villain: by making the Joker an accidental antihero who you feel the pain he is going through and ultimately having an understanding on the uproar at Gotham. P.S. I didn't take my daughter to watch this film. It is rated R film.
Joker doesn't need Batman because this time, he's the hero – the villains of this movie are poverty and neglected. Yes, we live in a society, which Joker exposed – a society that stinks. Arthur Fleck's (Joker) unfortunate situation is all too believable. A clown-for-hire by day, Fleck cares for his sick mother in their rundown apartment and tries to flirt with his neighbor down the hall. He doesn't know his father, but he has plenty of surrogates – from the co-worker who gives him a gun with which to protect himself, to late-night TV host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), from whom Fleck fantasizes about fatherly hugs and sayings like "I'd give all this up to have a son like you."
But all in all, Arthur Fleck is not well. Although he functions somewhat normally thanks to his medication, the would-be comedian who writes jokes in a notebook filled with scribbled-on nudity pictures but has never told one on a stage, is no stranger to four white walls and a straitjacket. He meets with a social worker, but he suspects she doesn't listen to anything he says. Add to the mix a neurological condition, or maybe an early-life head injury that causes him to burst into painfully uncontrollable laughter, usually at the worst possible times. This is a version of Joker we've never seen before. There have been origin stories, but rarely have the details of his life, from his real name to his immediate family members, been so laid out.
But Phoenix's Joker brings something that no previous version has had: humanity. You feel for him. Arthur turned Joker isn't merely an insane obsession for Batman or a naturalistic force of chaos. He's a man who was born with the deck stacked against him, shoved endlessly toward an inevitable explosion of violent self-acceptance. Fleck is absolutely a bad guy, but even as he embraces his new persona (Joker) and the death toll rises, you might find yourself rooting for him regardless. After watching this film, Joaquin Phoenix's Joker is guaranteed to put a (nervous) smile on your face. I believe a huge factor is because Joaquin Phoenix embraces Joker to the fullest and delivers! Going to more in-depth, darker, and more disturbing places than any comic book movie to date, Joker isn't just an origin story, it's a superhero – or should that be a supervillain?
It was difficult to imagine a Joker without Batman because the Jokers we've grown to love over the years all existed as THE villain to Bruce Wayne. Joker succeeds because it transforms the villain into the populist antihero we need him to be now. It might make you uncomfortable, and have you talking about it after the movie ends; but doesn't all great films do? No one can compare to Heath Ledger's Joker performance, but I wouldn't compare them two at all. Joaquin Phoenix's Joker rendition is on a whole different level. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.