WHO’S LAUGHING NOW IN THE LATEST FROM THE CROWN PRINCE OF CRIME?
JOKER IS LESS A COMIC BOOK FLICK, MORE A DEVASTATING STUDY OF A DISTURBED MIND.
IN SCRIPTWRITING CLASS, my teacher told me that a great villain never believes themselves to be the villain. By that measure, Arthur Fleck of Joker will be remembered as one of the greatest villains of our generation.
But the brilliant trick that director Todd Phillips and his co-writer Scott Silver pull is convincing the audience for
about two-thirds of the film that the man who transforms
into one of the greatest comic book villains ever is actually a misunderstood hero. Since the Joker has always been an unreliable narrator of his own past, there
have been many variations on the character in different versions of the Batman lore – a gangster in Tim Burton’s Batman, a brilliant anarchist in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight and even an alter ego of Bruce Wayne in comic book series Batman: Two Faces. But Joker is the first film to focus on the villain alone. Naturally, the result is
the most sympathetic version of the Joker myth yet.
Set in the early 1980s, Joker presents a Gotham City long before the existence of superheroes. Crime is prevalent, a garbage strike is stinking up the city and there is much discontent brewing among the working class. Arthur Fleck is a clown-for-hire and aspiring standup comedian whose dream of bringing joy to people makes him the wrong man in the wrong time. His kind nature is constantly worn down by a world that is less than understanding of his crumbling mental state. The
film is anchored by a brilliant, Golden Globe-winning
performance from Joaquin Phoenix, who balances madness with humanity in devastating ways.
Influenced by Martin Scorsese’s films Taxi Driver and King of Comedy (the latter is also about a mentally unhinged stand-up comedian), Joker is a deep dive into a disturbed mind. There is no hero in Phillips’ Gotham City. Even Batman’s father Thomas Wayne, usually portrayed as a philanthropist billionaire, is an egotistic one-percenter in this amoral world.
But Joker didn’t win the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival just because it’s great Scorsese fan
fiction, or a comic book film with real world sensibilities;
it’s a cautionary tale warning us that an unjust system is more fearsome than the villains it creates. Just as Dark Knight did a decade earlier, Joker has opened up new possibilities for the comic book movie.
ARTHUR FLECK OF JOKER WILL LIKELY BE REMEMBERED AS ONE OF THE GREATEST VILLAINS OF OUR GENERATION