Joker: The Pageantry of A Tragic Opera

A Film Review

Cast

 Joaquin Phoenix …Arthur Fleck
 Robert De Niro …Murray Franklin
 Zazie Beetz …Sophie Dumond
 Frances Conroy …Penny Fleck
 Brett Cullen …Thomas Wayne

There was a mistake made about Joker leading up to its October release. It was described as a comic book movie but it was, in this opinion piece, nowhere near to any depiction of what is considered a comic book movie. It would be wrong to simplify this like that for it was so much more. It was layered in emotions. It was layered in the study of human foibles. It carried more significant meanings and interpretations of what makes us fragile. It raises that very question, what event or events that will break the human mind?

Such is the case on this film interpretation of Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck as a down-on-your-luck low rent comic and performance clown. You would think that somewhere in a person’s life, they perhaps would have selected a profession worthy of mastering but Arthur Fleck’s decision process has a lot to be questioned. Arthur Fleck is a troubled man. His home life is saddled with him being the caregiver for his ailing mother. This is exacerbated even more so as Arthur is locked into some clinical therapy session that is about to be discontinued due to budget cuts. Adding to Arthur’s list of dilemmas is the uncontrollable laughter that he emits due to a medical condition. You here this uncontrolled laughter coming from him after he gets beaten up. It’s the very definition of haunting.

And in that very moment, you get the sense that this feels like some sad tragic opera similar to a more famous tragic opera, Pagliacci. Both involve a clown as the main protagonist and both lives are surrounded by misfortune. The cinematography for Joker is excellent by the way. It looks and feels like New York in the seventies. Seeing all of those older model cars added to the authenticity of the film that placed you squarely into this world of Gotham City. The look of Gotham City was one of the characters in this film. The subway cars had that grimy feel to it. The bleakness of the apartment hallways has just about the right level of darkness to make you feel claustrophobic. Todd Phillips may have directed this film but Martin Scorsese’s wizardry was all over this film. Even Arkham hospital itself felt old and dingy. There was even an interior scene at the hospital that looked so familiar to a scene from the TV series, Gotham, where Bruce is waiting in the corridor after Alfred is injured and Selena stops by to check on him and Bruce exchanges some heated words at Selena.

Arthur Fleck is not the Joker as yet. He is just an ordinary man whose circumstances have been pushed and pushed and PUSHED to the very brink of any person’s boundaries of understanding. When his sign is stolen by neighborhood kids and subsequently struck by the sign where it is destroyed, his employer penalizes him for not returning the sign. His therapist seems to just placate him with her canned responses and he responds by saying “All I have is negative thoughts.” She seems to not listen and only wants to inform him that the program is ending. And as each downward turn in Arthur Fleck’s life erodes away another layer of who he is, you witness the decline of his humanity as he takes another step into the warm embrace of psychopathic rage.

Robert De Niro plays Murray Franklin, a late-night talk show host who has a mean streak in him. The only thing similar to him and the late Johnny Carson is the curtains to his show. Murray Franklin is a small mean man. He punches the little people by making them feel smaller. Murray feeds Arthur’s delusions as Arthur interprets his one-time notoriety as a prelude to fame and success. It’s slowly revealed that Arthur is suffering from delusions of grandeur. He’s living in a world where he’s a good stand-up comic. He’s living in a world where he is the boyfriend of a woman down the hall from him. He’s living in a world where Murray Franklin adores him. This bomb is slowly counting down to disaster and it explodes in a subway.

While on the subway, three Wall Street types are haranguing a woman and that causes Arthur to have an uncontrollable laugh episode. This, of course, turns the attention of the Wall Street gang to Arthur. The focus is now on Arthur and they proceed to beat him up but instead of it being a long drawn out beat down, Arthur turns the tables on them and produces a gun and kills two of the three men. The third escapes the train with Arthur in pursuit. He’s killed at the bottom of the stair. In this situation, you have to ask yourself, was Arthur in the right or was he wrong? Do we justify the argument of the self-defense posture? Is Arthur the emaciated rib cage bearing mad-man antihero?

Thomas Wayne played effectively by Brett Cullen, is a Trump-Esque billionaire type personality. His life is outside the world of the average person. He lives above the fray and he doesn’t let you forget it. His confrontation with Arthur is noteworthy as Arthur’s rage reminded me of a brief moment from another film. It was electric and charged and you didn’t see Phoenix, you saw someone else. And once again we see Arthur on the other side of a beat down by Wayne. This encounter was precipitated by letters his mother had written about an alleged affair with Wayne. Arthur is spiraling further into a chasm of madness.

We are watching nervously for that proverbial straw that will push Arthur Fleck over that cliff. That straw is revealed when Arthur finds the truth about his lineage. He’s not the bastard child of a billionaire. His mother was suffering from a host of psychotic disorders. His abuse as a child was also included in this potpourri of callous and vindictive upbringing. His life was nothing but pain and lies. He wants nothing more than do to harm to himself.

Somewhere between him and two minutes later, that notion is gone. He lashes out by killing his mother. When two of his former co-workers arrive to check on him, he kills the one who gave him the gun and spares the other one. On the scale of one to ten, the level of violence is a four and a half. Five people are shot and killed, with three being killed at one time and one was stabbed to death. The stabbing was perhaps the goriest but it wasn’t graphic gory. The film wasn’t glorifying the violence. It wasn’t violence for violence's sake. John Wick: Chapter 3 violence was over the top but nobody is complaining about that.

Arthur is invited to the Murray Franklin show and it is there where the Joker is fully born. He is introduced as the Joker. He comes out and sits in the chair for a talkfest. It is there where he confesses to killing the Wall Street trio and the audience reacts. He is pushed and pushed and PUSHED again, culminating into him shooting Murray Franklin on a live broadcast. I don’t know if this was planned or was a happy accident but there appeared to be a homage to Heath Ledger. In the scene with Arthur being under arrest and was being driven to the police station, it was eerily reminiscent of Heath Ledger’s performance in a similar scene.

The police car is T-boned by an ambulance and clown revelers pull Arthur from the back of the car and lay him on top of the cruiser. Arthur wakes up to an adoring crowd and it is there that Arthur Fleck takes his final step into the abyss of madness. All hail, the rise of the Joker.

Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 stars