“What did you think of Joker?”
“Sick,” I said. “Sickest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“So it’s a bad movie?”
That’s a question to which I struggle to find a straightforward answer.
It depends what you mean by bad.
Technically on almost every level Joker is a great film.
Todd Phillips’ nuanced direction, Joaquin Phoenix’s mesmerising acting, Hildur Guðnadóttir haunting score, Jeff Groth’s compelling editing, Lawrence Sher’s sublime cinematography, Scott Silver and Todd Phillips’ taut script – Joker boasts an all-star cast that compliment each other so well that the creation of such hypnotic art seems inevitable.
It also seems inevitable that at least one of these craftsmen will claim a well-deserved Oscar win.
But just because a film is artistically flawless doesn’t mean you have to like it. And my visceral gut response to Joker was hatred and disgust.
I felt compelled every five minutes throughout the film to leave the cinema.
Every inclination to leave growing stronger than the one preceding it. It was only the fact that my urge to leave was so strong that I decided to stay.
It seems contradictory to say I hated Joker and then in the same breath discuss what I loved about the film. But great films have the power to be extremely contradictory, dividing not only movie-goers as a crowd but movie-goers as individuals.
My revulsion towards Joker is a moral one. But we’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s first talk about what I loved about the film.
When Heath Ledger played the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight back in 2008, no one believed the performance could ever be topped.
Personally Ledger’s performance is still my favourite, but Phoenix’s Joker, Arthur Fleck, is on-par with Ledger’s. They are two entirely different performances, so to compare them is to do both a disservice.
Suffice to say, Joaquin Phoenix delivers a masterclass in acting.
If I had to single out just one aspect of Phoenix’s performance that enraptured me it would be his physicality.
One moment his limbs are playing gracefully in the air like the vaudeville clowns of old, the next he’s running full pelt down the street with clown shoes skewering his gait, and then he’s dancing in the most trance-inducing way, swaying to the beat of his spiralling derangement.
Joaquin’s physicality gives life to Joker, but this masterful reign of expression sits alongside the actor’s equally impressive command of method acting techniques.
Every flicker in his eyes, every crack in the voice, every hesitation before a violent act makes it impossible not to sympathise with this character.
This is where the feeling of sickness and moral dilemma comes in for me.
Although the Joker’s character arc is a downward spiral into hell, we the moviegoer go through an uncomfortable spectrum of closely knit emotions.
The opening of the film induced in me an unbearable feeling of heartbreak. This swiftly gave way to strong feelings of sympathy. Then sympathy and empathy bleeds into pity. Pity transitions slowly into feelings of revulsion, which ebb and flow until the breathless conclusion.
Aside from Phoenix and Phillips, the grand hero in making these emotions so keenly felt is Guðnadóttir, whose score begins a single string and mounts through every atrocity, every hardship delivered against Joker, like Wagner’s Tristan chord, to an all-consuming orchestra of chest-tightening anguish.
There is a message and social critique at the heart of Joker.
I don’t have a problem with the heavy-handedness of the message, but rather my issue is with how such a message might be interpreted by the young and disassociated.
One of the pivotal points in Joker is when Arthur’s mental health funding is cut. Seven different kinds of medication and dismally ineffective counselling sessions are barely holding him together, but overnight the little support he does have is taken away, yanked out beneath him like a rug that he was already teetering on, which starts a vicious chain reaction in which Joker finally begins to rebel against every injustice done against him.
I’ve seen the state of mental health services in my own country. I’ve seen what happens when those most desperately in need of help are abandoned by the state. It is devastating.
If Joker manages to stoke a serious discussion of how best to improve the mental health services, I believe it has triumphed not only as a work of art, but as a catalyst of social change too. An applaudable aim, but my concern is that Joker could give credence to a victimisation culture that more and more of the dispossessed subscribe to every day.
There is a chasm between the narrative I left the cinema with and the narrative others left the cinema with.
Many cheered when Arthur began to get his vengeance. And I did too. Until the violence became more senseless, more out of proportion to the injustice he felt.
Where I see Joker as a cry for more comprehensive mental health aid, others, those who have lived at the bottom rung of society, felt the sting of having the shit kicked in their face day after day, might see the film as glorifying nihilistic violence, imbuing anarchic destruction as the only pursuit that harbours meaning.
We need a different story.
Those who sympathise, empathise, and see themselves in Arthur should not be persuaded that there is power in playing the victim.
We need to positively empower the disaffected, the neglected, the addicted, the abandoned, the broken, and give them a story that makes them a force for good in the world. And I cannot imagine any real-life Arthur Fleck leaving Joker with that message, that feeling of empowerment, that ambition to flourish in the face of adversity.
I must applaud Phillips and the whole ensemble for finally producing a comic book movie that speaks to the darkness that many feel enshrouded in.
I predict more deep psychological character studies of both heroes and villains to come, though I cannot imagine many matching up to the emotional power of Joker. The team have set the bar high. But I cannot help but think we don’t need another anti-hero.
As an artistic exercise, making one sympathise so thoroughly with a villain like Joker is tremendous. The true terror, the one that really has the power to keep many awake at night, is recognising the capacity for evil in one’s own heart. Good can come of being so self-aware. I just fear that many will miss this interpretation of Joker and take away a message that will do more detriment to society – the message that, when life gives you lemons, it’s time to make Gotham burn.
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