Joker (2019)

‘Joker’ traces the early years of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), who lives with his mother Penny Fleck (Frances Conway) and is struggling to make a name for himself in the comedy circuit in Gotham while working as a clown who holds signs and dances in children’s hospitals. The film is not action-packed by any means, it is character-led and forms a narrative based on mental illness and spiralling misguided self-identification. Simply put, it’s confused.

The film has been called the best and the worst film of the year, too simple and too complicated, hilarious and terrifying. This is to be expected: Joker is one of the least reliable narrators in pop culture. Fans will know that his backstory is a mystery even to him, illustrated by his ever-changing story about how he got his facial scars. So of course, the story of Joker’s conception is going to be hard to follow. Spoiler alert – the theme of the film is delusion. Explicitly, we see Arthur dealing with the delusional lies of his mother; implicitly, nothing makes sense to him or to us, a sign of his spiralling journey into mania and confusion. Throughout the film, we see Arthur confessing that he was previously institutionalised, and he is not quite sure why. We can choose to believe that most things in the film actually happen, bar the obvious delusions like his relationship with neighbour and single mum Sophie (Zazie Beetz) and original guest appearance on the Murray Franklin Live show, or we can question everything to the point of doubting that he ever even left the asylum. True to Joker’s character, the entire plot could simply be an extended story of “how [he] got these scars”.

Naturally, it’s hard to process such a confused plot. It is a real joke on the audience that there are very few clues to distinguish fact from reality. Honestly, the story of an emerging antihero against society fails. For there to be an antihero, there must be a hero. The inclusion of Batman in ‘Joker’ would be too easy, plus it’s not necessarily a literal superhero that’s missing. Instead, a single kind voice in the world surrounding Arthur would have been a very welcome addition. Gary (Leigh Gill), a colleague, is the closest we get to a friendly face, besides the imaginary beginnings of a relationship, but even this is a stretch. We know that Arthur is able to recognise kindness, just take his early relationship with his mother, so it’s not satisfactory to assume that this is simply a reflection of his bleak perspective. Arthur has no one and nothing, thus his descent into destruction seems too streamlined and lacks necessary conflict.

Joaquin’s Joker just wants to be seen, and in a world of superficial hierarchies he takes the only route he can see. It’s important to remember that our world is, thankfully, less one-dimensional than the one portrayed in ‘Joker’. In Arthur’s Gotham, his mother hurts and lies to him, kids beat him up in the street, his heroes fail him, his unrequited love barely knows his name… In a city (and world) like this, why should we despair when he kills arrogant rich men, murders self-serving talk show hosts, or inadvertently kickstarts a violent protest? Perhaps that is the goal of the film – to incite empathy – but this is a lazy technique to facilitate identifying with an isolated, murderous loner that bypasses any free will of the audience to choose their side. Joaquin’s Joker is so sweetly innocent and oddly sexy that it is not an impossible feat to make him relatable. You don’t need to be him to understand him, anyone that has ever felt misunderstood or isolated will understand his desire to simply be seen. It is disappointing to rely on the ‘Joker versus Gotham’ narrative to get the audience on side, a bit more friction and confusion would go a long way in adding some mental conflict to our desire to sympathise with a killer.

An unreliable narrator is hardly a new concept. As the saying goes, there are always three sides to a story: his, hers, and the truth. Usually, we get even the smallest clues from the external world to guide us through a misguided narrative, but this one really runs away from us. Joaquin’s extraordinary performance may convince us that this is purposeful, a testament of Joker’s power, but let’s be honest – the plot is thin, circular, and confused. We need good to recognise evil, stability to recognise instability, and sanity to recognise insanity. Ironically, for a complicated narrator and character, the film is far too simple. We have no choice but to spiral with Arthur, and it is simply Joaquin’s bizarrely beautiful portrayal that keeps us from jumping ship.

Director: Todd Phillips
Writers: Todd Phillips, Scott Silver
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz