Joker, directed by Todd Phillips, follows the story of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix). When we first see Arthur, he is a mild-mannered man who makes a meagre living as a rent-a-clown twirling store signs on city sidewalks, but hopes to make it big as a stand-up comedian. His sign is stolen by a gang of kids who, after a desperate chase, lure him into an alley and brutally beat him.
This is the ignominious beginning of the descent into madness that will result in the Joker, perhaps one of the most iconic supervillains in pop culture. Joker shows us how such a character came to be, and the answer we are given is a deeply unsettling one.
To begin with, it is important for would-be viewers of this film to know what they are getting into. If you are expecting an action-packed superhero movie, you will not find that in Joker. If you are expecting a dark comedy, you will not find that either. This is not to say that Joker is without action or comedy, but what there is disturbs and provokes instead of thrilling or amusing. The Joker’s own assertion is that “My life is a comedy,” but the film plays more like a tragedy.
Despite being set in the universe of a comic book superhero, Joker does not feel like a “superhero movie.” References to Gotham City and occasional appearances by the Wayne family are all that remind us that this is indeed the Batman universe. The story takes place before Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, and most of it takes place before Arthur becomes the Joker.
As for jokes, there are plenty, but you will probably not be laughing at many of them. The Joker’s sense of humour may be sick and twisted with its emphasis on death and violence, but the jokes of the stand-up comedians he tries to emulate are not much better. The jokes of people other than the Joker often struck me as crude, mean-spirited, and politically incorrect. The Joker states at one point that humour is not only subjective, but that in large part society dictates whether something is considered funny or not, regardless of how individuals think or feel. Sometimes I am laughing with the Joker, other times I am laughing with the “normal people,” but most often nobody is laughing at all.
Speaking of laughter, Arthur has a neurological condition that causes him to laugh compulsively regardless of his feelings. Sometimes his laughter is the product of genuine amusement, but more often it comes as a result of anxiety or hurt feelings. This, of course, is often misinterpreted by other characters who think he finds inappropriate situations funny. These misunderstandings contribute to the character’s isolation. Arthur writes in his journal that the worst thing about being mentally ill is having to pretend you’re not.
As far as we are shown, Arthur has always struggled with mental health issues. He also suffers from the effects of childhood trauma and was institutionalized on at least one occasion before the story starts. One gets the sense that Arthur’s life was always going to turn out badly. Yet, perhaps he would not have become the scourge that is the Joker if the people and world around him had not pushed him over the edge. Arthur repeatedly suffers cruelty at the hands of ordinary people as well as those he trusts and looks up to. Episodes of brutal violence that begin as desperate acts of self-defence soon spiral out of control, first into impulsive, then premeditated, lashing out at those around him.
The Joker becomes an inadvertent symbol of the frustration of Gotham’s common people. They struggle to make ends meet, surrounded by ugliness and danger while the elite have lives of peace and plenty. Reports of three prominent businessmen (the first people Arthur kills) murdered by a man in a clown mask make the Joker into a symbol of rage against a world filled with suffering and injustice.
Toward the film’s end, Gotham is in flames as hordes of people wearing clown masks engage in a mass outburst of blind violence. Arthur was especially vulnerable due to his underlying mental health issues and traumatic experiences, but the film shows that even otherwise ordinary people can be driven to do horrible things if subjected to a sufficiently negative environment. That, more than anything, is what really stuck with me about Joker. The film’s sobering central message shows that, given similar pressures and vulnerabilities as poor Arthur, any of us could become the Joker.
