Joke’s on us

Joker, the latest take on DC Comics’ Clown Prince of Crime, will go down as one of the year’s big missed opportunities. Director/co-screenwriter Todd Phillips apparently had the green light to do whatever he wanted with the character’s story, and he also landed the perfect lead (Joaquin Phoenix) for the title role. This was a chance to tell a fresh, dark origin story from the Joker’s point of view. Phillips blew it.

Phoenix, on the other hand, did not. He is otherworldly good as Arthur Fleck, a severely troubled clown and wannabe standup comic (and mama’s boy) with a condition that causes him to laugh uncontrollably at inappropriate moments. He physically and mentally disappears into the part—to the point where you may become concerned for the actor’s well-being.

He accomplishes this in a film that has a major identity crisis. It’s trying to do something new (mostly via the use of extreme violence), while also riffing on something old (Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, as well as various other comic book and cinematic influences). What’s delivered is a muddy, predictable and ultimately unoriginal film.

There are many borrowed elements here—from the story of “subway vigilante” Bernie Goetz to films like Death Wish and a couple of Martin Scorsese/Robert De Niro classics. We’ve seen the plot mechanisms before in Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy (Phillips even casts De Niro as a talk show host).

When we first see Fleck, he’s dressed as a clown, spinning a sign and generally having a good time. He promptly gets his ass kicked, and not for the last time in this movie. We then see him in therapy and living in poverty with his quirky mother (Frances Conroy). Fleck slowly but surely starts to lose all sense of his humanity as he grows into a criminal monster.

Phoenix does a thing with hysterical laughing early in the movie, where his Fleck struggles as it hurts his throat and challenges his smoker’s lungs. As the film progresses, it appears that the Joker’s laugh muscles are strengthening, a sort of training for his future criminal career, when the laughter will no longer cause pain. Touches like these, and the depiction of Gotham as a 1970s version of New York City are impressive.

But any good is ultimately ruined. Fleck’s standup comedian aspirations don’t make a whole lot of sense, other than to provide a convenient plot device to reach the movie’s predictable finale. Everything to do with Fleck’s mother plays like a poor-man’s Psycho. For a movie that was supposed to be a new approach to the Joker, nothing feels original other than the creativity sparking off Phoenix. It’s boringly familiar.

And about that much-advertised violence … is it too much? That would depend on your personal threshold for fake mayhem in movies. I, for one, was shocked at how visceral some scenes were, and can say this goes well beyond your typical Avengers movie or the playfully crazed violence of something like Deadpool. The violence in this movie is ugly, extremely downbeat, and leaves you with knots in your stomach.

I don’t know how Joker won the Best Film award at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Maybe the voting panel was on mushrooms?