An Attempt to Unpack “JOKER”

Todd Phillips accomplished what he set out to do… not make a comedy; Joker is one of the darkest movies I’ve ever seen. I felt unnerved the entire movie but that may have been the least confusing of the feelings I had while I was in the theater. I love the character of the Joker. I grew up watching the cartoon and the Michael Keaton / Jack Nicholson movies. While I think this movie was hardly a comic book movie, and despite seeing this scene 100 times before, I got excited when we see the Joker kill Bruce Wayne’s parents, thereby kickstarting Batman’s story. I’m also a sucker for a good origin story. When The Dark Knight came out, I, like many others, was absolutely enthralled by the movie and thought Heath Ledger’s Joker was fascinating. Ledger’s Joker was smart, cunning, evil, chaotic, mysterious, sick and masterful in his plans. He enjoyed psychological warfare against Batman almost as much as he enjoyed committing crimes just to see who would care the most about the destruction he was causing. In The Dark Knight, the Joker is the agent of chaos, the one who actively encourages and supports all of the violence occurring in Gotham by committing the largest crimes himself. Ledger brought to life all the most interesting facets of the Joker and it’s one of my favorite performances ever. That is how I like to think of the Joker. 

In Joker, we’re introduced to Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, a mentally-ill man who is doing his best to keep his life together. He goes to the doctor so he can talk to a social worker and be given his medicine, he journals, he’s able to keep a job as a clown and take care of his mother. After getting taken advantage of while on the job, one of his co-workers decides to give him a gun to help him defend himself. On his commute home, he’s attacked again, but this time he’s armed; he uses the gun to defend himself and kills the three men who were attacking him. He gets home and seems relatively unphased by what’s just occurred until he turns on the news and sees that they’re recapping the horrible tragedy that has impacted the three Wayne employees he killed. At his last session with his social worker, before he finds out that this is the last time they’ll be meeting due to budgeting cuts, he begs her to listen to what he’s saying. That his whole life he hasn’t known if he’s even existed until now but people are finally starting to notice him. They’re just noticing him without knowing they’re noticing him. Only Arthur knows that he killed those three men, everyone else just knows that the killer was wearing a clown mask, but in his mind he’s essentially unable to tell the difference. 

The movie continues as we witness his unraveling after being denied his meds and access to his social worker due to the government cutting the program he was in. In what I think is the most heartbreaking, poignant part of the movie, which anyone who has ever suffered from mental illness can relate to, Arthur writes something to the tune of “the worst part of having a mental illness is everyone expects you to behave as if you don’t.”

This is one of those moments where you ask yourself what the movie is really trying to say; it just feels too of the current moment to just be a throwaway line as he deteriorates. We continue to watch him spiral downwards as he’s fired from his job, creates a fake relationship in his head with his neighbor (Zazzee Beetz), and discovers the truth about his mother, the only (questionably) stable relationship in his life. In a triggering moment, he opens a letter from his mother to Thomas Wayne in which she implores Thomas to stop ignoring her and help her and their son (Arthur). Arthur freaks out when he learns this and shows up at the Wayne house. He starts off by trying to befriend Bruce and ends up losing it at a security guard who calls both Arthur and his mother crazy; the guard tells Arthur the truth that Thomas Wayne is certainly not his father and in fact, his mother adopted him and was unable to shield him from horrible physical abuse when he was a child. Arthur, an already unstable man, completely unravels from here. When his mother is hospitalized, he suffocates her to death thereby cutting off his own source of love and responsibility. Then, when his old co-workers show up to his house, he murders one of them by violently stabbing him in the throat with scissors and excessively bashing his head against a wall. I had to look away. After Arthur gives a horrendous stand-up comedy performance, Arthur’s hero in life, talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) exploits his failure by making fun of Arthur on the talk show. Murray makes a point to call him a “Joker.” The audience appears to love Arthur’s failure and Murray’s commentary so much that Murray invites Arthur to be a guest on his show. Since Arthur has lost his support system (his social worker, his job, his mother), there is nothing to stop him from fully embracing his role as a failure – as a “Joker.” 

He dresses up in the famous purple suit, dies his hair green, does his full face of clown makeup and prepares for the show that he’s been waiting his whole life to be invited on to. Murray is slightly shocked when Arthur arrives looking like a clown, in light of all the clown-inspired terrorism (again, inspired by Arthur with no one knowing so), but Arthur insists that it’s not a political stance whatsoever. This is actually true, as Arthur has no understanding of whether what he’s doing, thinking or feeling is political or not – his brain just doesn’t function in that way. He gets on the show and essentially calls Murray out for making fun of him – he admits to the murders he committed and shows no remorse. He makes a public speech, asking why he should care about a system that has never once cared about people like him. He shoots Murray in the face on air and chaos ensues for the last 20 minutes or the movie. Arthur is then taken away in a cop car and we get the police car Dark Knight homage.

Someone slams into the police car, killing the cop and seriously injuring Arthur, now fully the Joker. Another person pulls Arthur out of the car and puts him on the hood of the crashed car. All around the city is burning, people are stealing, breaking windows; it looks like the real-life purge. A crowd starts to form around the Joker and he gets up and everyone is cheering him. He soaks in the moment as the screen fades to black. The movie ended and I had no idea what to feel besides horror. When I got up, I saw 3 kids under the age of 14 behind me. My first thought was how could this movie not have a trigger warning. Clearly, intense themes of mental illness, abuse, mass shootings, and politically charged violence permeated every moment of this movie. I was horrified that these small children were exposed to this and that anyone who thought they were seeing maybe a slightly darker origin story were subjected to such intense themes. It made me try to unpack a little bit more about what the movie was trying to say and why I was so affected by the story. 

Most Americans seem to love true crime stories, including myself. I’m sure there are studies out there to explain why we’re so intrigued by those who have committed horrible crimes. This past fall, there were multiple Ted Bundy documentaries; I watched Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile with Zac Efron and Lily Collins and loved it. I then did more research on him and enjoyed reading about the prolific serial killer. It’s easy to enjoy something (or someone) knowing that it’s over. Yes, I can research and be intrigued by Ted Bundy because his crimes are in the past. He isn’t alive anymore and his crimes are over with. We don’t have to fear him, we can just study him. 

But the Joker isn’t a real person; he just stands for something. That’s the point in the movie: that he’s just the person everyone can attribute their growing anger and taste for violence to; he’s merely the one who acts as inspiration. However, because the movie feels like it’s so relevant to the current climate, despite being just a movie set in the 1970s, it felt like the Joker could stand for those same ideas in real life. Maybe there is someone out there who’s looking for an excuse and maybe this mentally ill Joker and all the angry people who seemed to follow him in the movie are that excuse. It just didn’t feel finite to me; it didn’t feel confined to the past or the movie like it did in Extremely Wicked, Shocking Evil and Vile which I understand is counterintuitive since Ted Bundy was REAL and the Joker is NOT. The symbol almost felt scarier than the person. 

People say that due to the comic book nature of the last 30 minutes, different for a movie that certainly was not a comic book movie the other hour and 30 minutes, Phillips has left it open for a sequel. Only I’m not sure where he would go with that. The movie did so much work in trying to say that Arthur stood for nothing, that he didn’t care about the politics and that he was a sick man who could barely plan for 5 minutes, let alone be the criminal mastermind that we’ve come to see the Joker as. Throughout the whole movie, even up until the end, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop; I was waiting for the switch to flip and for Arthur to suddenly turn into this evil mastermind with an agenda of chaos. That switch was never flipped and the movie ends with everyone cheering him on while he stands atop a cop car watching the world burn. This is theoretically because of what he did but he actually had very little to do with it. This was unlike the Joker from The Dark Knight who actively caused and participated in the world burning. I would be interested to see how the sequel would go because if they turn it back into a comic book movie where it’s the Joker vs. Bruce Wayne, I’m not so sure they could convince me that Joaqin Phoenix’s Joker could be a successful participant in that psychosexual and destructive cat-and-mouse chase. 

I would like to acknowledge that I am not immune to admiring Joaquin Phoenix’s performance. Impressive is the physicality of the performance, from his actual physical appearance where he’s overly skinny and even slightly dysmorphic, to his extremely unnerving dancing, and to the way he leans back and runs his hands through his hair when he’s confused or upset. Most amazingly is the way he makes himself so small physically to reflect how small he feels existentially and emotionally. It truly is a transcendent performance, and Todd Phillip’s ability to capture him so effectively is equally as impressive. I can understand and appreciate all of that. However, I simply did not like this movie. I’ve explained before that I am anti-scary entertainment; both flat out horror and also things that you’re supposed to watch because they’re so traumatic (i.e. Sharp Objects). That’s exactly how I felt during this movie. Like I said, the most excited I felt was when it actually became a comic book movie. The part when he died his hair green, onned the infamous purple suit and interacted with Bruce and kick-started Batman’s life by killing the Wayne parents was easily my favorite part of the movie. You could say that I’m just another millennial who only is entertained by superhero movies and can’t appreciate the dramatic mid-budget movie anymore but I don’t agree with that. The Farewell is one of my favorite movies of the year and that’s a tiny indie film that barely anyone has seen. I just don’t appreciate entertainment that is meant to scare us and I think that’s what this movie was. I left the theater completely unnerved by what I had just seen and understanding all of the critical reception the movie had already generated. I understood why the feelings surrounding the movie were fearful and while I thought people were adding fuel to the fire with the “this movie will inspire mass shootings” narrative, I understood why people said that when I exited the theatre. With that being said, I don’t think art has any moral responsibility. There are lots of movies where the lines of morality are blurred; I think people maybe took extra issue with Joker due to the climate we are in. However, even if something horrendous were inspired by this movie, I do not think it would be the movie’s fault; people who commit crimes of that dark a nature are clearly sick and a movie shouldn’t be responsible for their actions. I don’t mean this to be an “art should be regulated” article because it’s not. I’m just explaining why I personally don’t enjoy movies that are scary, especially at this time in history. Too many political nightmares and mass shootings and battles over healthcare are happening in real life – I don’t need an Oscar-bait movie to reinforce that for me (although I do think Joaquin should be nominated and maybe even win for this performance). I tried to do my best to untangle my complicated feelings about this movie and address the current conversations around it. I’d like to see it again and see if I still have as strong of a reaction as I did the first time – maybe I can chalk some of my fear up to shock. I’m curious to see how this movie ages and I look forward to continuing to unravel my thoughts as we talk about this movie and Joaquin’s performance until the Oscars in February.