Review: Joker

What kind of clown are you? The crying-on-the-inside kind, I guess.

Joker is a great movie. Flawed but great. Its many great qualities include excellent direction (Todd Phillips) a sharp screenplay (Phillips and Silver) and the performance of a lifetime by a starved Jouaqin Phoenix in the title role. (He'll probably be robbed of a Best Actor Oscar because his character's such a loathsome creep.) Yes, it's brutal, ultraviolent movie. Yes, yes, it pushes some un-PC buttons and stirs the pot on contemporary fears. Yes, yes, yes—shut up! I don't have a problem with any of that. I love this f**king movie. Even so, I have to admit it's flawed. There's a hole in its heart. (I'll get back to which chamber is missing.)

The following will be as thick with spoilers as Caesar Romero's mustache was caked with greasepaint on the cheesy Batman TV show. Gentle reader, you have been warned. 

The year seems to be 1981. The setting is New York C—sorry, Gotham City. The Joker starts off as Arthur Fleck, a wannabe standup comic paying the bills as a party clown temp. (He's a lousy comic and a bad clown.) Fleck lives with his bedridden, schizophrenic mother, who keeps writing Thomas Wayne (Bruce Wayne's billionaire dad) for help. Sometime before this movie, Fleck went insane in the membrane, and now periodically sees an indifferent social worker. Sad, yeah. But his bleak life has a few bright spots. He hits it off with a pretty neighbor, who seems to lack an inner creep detector. He idolizes a Johnny Carson-esque talk show host named Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Sweet. But, despite what the Bible tells you, darkness kicks light's ass.

One sad day, Fleck is attacked by black urban thugs who smack him with an EVERYTHING MUST GO sign he's spinning outside a failed store. Back at the temp agency, a fellow clown gives Fleck a 38-special for self-defense purposes. He's promptly attacked by three white yuppies on the subway. Fleck blows them away, natch. Instant clown karma! Right on!

Fleck's attack makes him an urban legend in Gotham City. He spawns a mass movement of disaffected white po' folks who put on clown makeup and hold up signs saying "KILL THE RICH." Talk about making a difference! But Fleck's brief moment of triumph is spoiled when the gun falls out of his baggy pocket while he's entertaining sick kids at a hospital. Fleck gets fired like the stupid clown he is. To make matters worse, he discovers sad truths and untruths about his mom and crosses the final line into madness. Mental illness takes many forms. In Fleck's case, he morphs into the Joker and starts killing everyone who looks at him crosseyed. He kills his mom, his real or imaginary girlfriend, the gun-running clown, Thomas Wayne, and the social worker. The end.

As Joker origins stories go, this beats the hell out of being dropped in a vat of toxic waste.

The only problem with Phillips' Joker origin story is the fact that it's a Joker origin story. His film creates a logical basis for the Joker: a cause-and-effect sequence. The Joker's irrationality has a rational explanation! Childhood abuse + bad mom + corrupt urban society = Joker. It's just that simple.

Phillips' Joker never decides to be the Joker. He never takes a conscious step into the dark side. There's no agency, no choice, no decision. A trauma here, a trauma there, voila! The Joker is born. Society’s what's made him the way he is, I tells you. It’s society’s fault. 

As great as this movie is, I have to call bullshit.

Not every abused kid who grew up to be a shitty standup comic turns into a killer clown. Not every kid who watched his parents get shot and was traumatized by bats grew up to be the Batman.

And that’s the heartless flaw.

Additional conflicted thoughts that don't fit a neat linear narrative.