Brace for impact, keep your sanity intact and prepare to dive deep into the murky demented world of the Joker.
Did we need a grim, hauntingly immersive Joker origin movie? Why so serious?
Wasn’t it infinitely alluring that we never knew what made the Joker a psychotic, deranged criminal? The Joker is the most enigmatic Batman villain ever because of this delicious crazed air of mystery. Why touch an unexplained story thread that works the way it is?
But there is a catch, a puzzling last scene that could change your perception of the story.
Joker story
Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is a single man, having previously undergone psychiatric treatment, surviving with his ill mother in a ruinous apartment, trying to laugh out a living as a banner-twirling roadside clown.
Fleck wants to be an established stand-up comedian, he is a huge fan of talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), but it is a rough road ahead. When Fleck is fired from his job, things start getting out of hand – way, way out of hand.
Director-Actor symphony
To their credit, director & co-writer Todd Phillips and lead actor Phoenix keep us guessing and glued through the first hour of Joker, choking us in the blues and despair of surviving in bleak urban conditions, the utter hostility of living in a disintegrating city.
Things start getting unrelentingly gloomy in the second half. The violence is unforgivably gruesome as Fleck swirls and dances into a slow spiral of downfall.
Phoenix and Phillips have conjured a Joker of our scariest nightmares, and boy, it is not a pleasant feeling at all.
Getting the audience up close into the Joker’s insane mind is an arguably unnecessary cinematic burst.
Joaquin Phoenix is terrific, this is the performance of a lifetime. Watch out for the laugh and the back story to it. His superlative menacing portrayal helps the director skip over the movie’s irregularities and the ‘whatever’ final act.
Hits and missesÂ
Plugging in the Batman origin story to this forbidding tale has its hits and misses.
The underplayed scene between Fleck and a young Bruce Wayne is eerie. The Thomas Wayne ‘father’ tease is a masterstroke. The pivotal now-too-familiar Wayne family murders could have been avoided.
The clipped narrative mode may make it hard for the general audience to comprehend some parts, especially the scenes involving Fleck’s love interest Sophie Dumond (Zazie Beetz).
The underlying tribute to another director-actor pair, Martin Scorsese & Robert De Niro, is a touch of brilliance.
The Dark Knight rulesÂ
For the record, The Dark Knight remains the best comic book movie ever made. Nolan’s interpretation has a sense of gravity and control, sorely missing in Joker.
Dangerous takeÂ
That the Joker is made out to be a patron saint of unprivileged urban people taking to murder, madness and destruction is a dangerous screenplay take.
I have often heard people unreasonably mention how glorifying crime in movies can influence the audience to indulge in criminal acts. Well, by the end credits that previously illogical reasoning scarily fit Joker.
The negativity and mashed up madness stayed with me while gingerly driving home from the cinema hall, that’s not a good feeling to have after watching a comic book-based dark drama.
Joker reviewÂ
One may either love, hate or doubt the evil allure of Joker, but it is too damn hard to look away.
Here is a dark, dubious, genre-defining hell-hole drama that I can’t make up my mind whether to detest or recommend. I shook my head in disagreement several times during the screening at the sheer atrocity and cruelty of it all.
Go only if you have the nerve to take in the dreary details of a sick mind. If you do go, try to laugh it all away later. I suspect you might not succeed.
