Review: "Joker" Says a Lot About the World's Troubles, But Does Less With It

Scene from Joker

With last year's Black Panther earning a Best Picture nomination, the idea of the superhero film has become something more prestigious. Suddenly every Avengers movie has an aura around it, thinking that the genre is about to evolve into something new and rich, enhancing the potential of cinema by leaps and bounds. While director Todd Phillips' Joker is far from the first "dark" comic book movie, it's the first since The Dark Knight to chase acting awards for its star Joaquin Phoenix, an enigmatic actor if there ever was one. With a brutally earned R-Rating, the film shot onto the scene and escorted controversy into every theater. It's a film rich with complicated thoughts, where there's plenty to discuss even if you hate the film. It's a serious film after all. The best of cinema brings out big emotions.

Joker is a film that wants to capitalize the I in Importance, suggesting something that is apparent about the modern era. In a world where mass shootings happen weekly, there is a need to discuss controversial topics in a way that advances the discourse. It's what should make this film one of the most biting, exciting films of the decade. Instead, it feels like Phillips' first dramatic film is too insecure to dive deeper into the character. Everything is surface-level, coddling the audience through major scenes by stating Arthur Fleck's (Phoenix) internal grief so bluntly. There's plenty that it says, but what it does is far less effective, only surviving by the unnerving laugh that Phoenix brings to his character. Phillips knows his references, citing everything from Martin Scorsese to Charles Chaplin to Stephen Sondheim to Jerry Lewis. But what does all of this bring to the bigger picture? At most, it brings forth a conversation that isn't entirely eloquent in the film. It may be enough to make it one of the most staggering superhero movies ever to be released by a major studio, but that doesn't mean it's a success.

During the marketing for Joker, Phillips announced that he gave up doing comedy because he felt people couldn't be funny now that it's the Me Too era. In spite of the film being about a clown, let alone one who performs stand-up comedy, there is supposed to be no punchline. This is a serious story about a man with mental illness creating a dangerous movement simply because the system failed him. Arthur couldn't get his medication or escape the abuse he grew up in. He is antisocially personified. He gets pushed around because of a disorder that causes him to laugh constantly and bang his head against every hard surface. While the film is being sold as the origin of a comic book icon whose villainy has been around for almost a century, it actually feels like a commentary on Phillips' career.

Phillips has long been a comedy director going back to films like Road Trip and Old School, where he performed profane acts as part of a frat boy mentality. He gained popularity in 2009 with The Hangover and became an in-demand filmmaker. However, the one thing that could be noted about him is that his work appeals to an aggressive bro style that has started to go out of fashion. Maybe it's that The Hangover Part II was notoriously transphobic, or The Hangover Part III murdering animals (you know, for comedy). Whatever the case may be, his career began to lose favor with the box office, and suddenly he was an insecure filmmaker forced to turn to more serious stories like War Dogs (itself a The Wolf of Wall Street pastiche). In a sense, Joker was a long time coming because all he had to do was take the pathetic white male gaze and turn it from a punchline into a sad violin playing underneath.

This isn't to say that Phillips is homicidal in real life, but it's hard to not think that he probably made this film more as a chance to cope with the insecurities in his career. He doesn't know how to not tell The Hangover-style jokes. His movies hiccup where they used to send people into rapturous applause. It's likely why Arthur is such a damaged character, unable to be taken seriously. Instead, he's mocked for trying to cheer up children, beaten up for twirling signs on the street. Like Phillips' recent career, Arthur probably feels constant frustration with the disconnect and his slow descent into madness is one that Phillips expressed through art, citing current events around him. Why is the world unable to laugh? For Arthur, it's the cruel world that loathes him.

The film itself manages to get clever from there, but not by much. Phillips clearly used his Netflix account wisely to rent Scorsese's many masterpieces of social disarray including Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. He bought one of those "Best of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" box sets off of QVC to study how late-night used to be. He probably even saw Sondheim's A Little Night Music on Broadway somehow. He did his homework of finding every pop culture reference that could apply to Joker. In that way, it's the most "artistic" Batman-adjacent movie ever. However, it doesn't feel like any of it is used as more than the symbolism of clowns in pop culture. When Arthur is beaten up by Wall Street bros as they sing Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns," it's supposed to be ominous. Instead, it's a distracting reminder that Wall Street bros probably stole that reference from an effeminate theater fan who was on the subway 20 minutes earlier. This is supposed to be Gotham, and the majority of the real-life character references are fictional. What good does showing banners for Charles Chaplin's Modern Times do when most of the guests on Murray Franklin's (Robert De Niro) talk show are gobbledygook names? What's real and what's fake?

In fairness, Phillips' one stroke of genius was in how he created Arthur's worldview. He starts the film as a damaged character. He ends the film as a damaged character. Instead of simply showing a crazy man laughing on the street, Joker chooses to sometimes warp Arthur's perspective to the "feel good" version of events. It's one that justifies his actions by showing him as the sole hero of Gotham. While it cracks often, the control over perspective allows for the delusions to become clearer. If a great filmmaker had done this film, this would've helped to fuel the commentary as Arthur watches people wear clown masks as an act of protest. Instead, it wants to be about too much, and never all that clearly, at once. It's mental illness, the power of mob mentality, and the way that politics and media influence the causes. They're all there, but it's only when characters grandstand that it means anything. As an exercise in style, it works to see Arthur slowly gain power. However, once you stop and realize that the commentary that mattered stopped evolving after the early parts of the second act, it kind of feels lazy and hollow, serving more for shock value in the process. 

While it's great that a major blockbuster is addressing these issues, it feels like an indictment that this is the only way to discuss anything of importance. In that way, Joker's win symbolizes a shift away from our realism to one of Arthur's fantasy. Everything has to be discussed through a prism, a shiny box that comes with a neato t-shirt. Screw the adult dramas of yesteryear. If it doesn't have a DC Comics logo at the end, why should anyone care? It muddles the conversation when fears can't be confronted in a realistic way and taking it out on superhero movies isn't the way to go. While Joker gets away with it enough to be a "good" movie, what's to stop the genre from fragrancing itself with social issue stories that are just as dark, violent, and disturbing? It's not bad, but they're a far cry from the clear-voiced achievements of directors like Sidney Lumet. A comic book movie has to be workshopped to appeal to everyone, and sometimes having confrontational, even divisive, the text is important to these types of stories. Joker doesn't have enough of a clear mind to say anything of value that isn't boringly splayed out in grandstanding monologues.

Truth be told, Phoenix brings the character to life in a way that should elevate the film to something more. That's the problematic part, especially given that the story isn't as interesting as any dance up and down stairs, or the way he runs. If put on mute, Joker stands a better job of being a masterpiece because of how much Phoenix's body feels sacrificed for this role. It practically screams "GIVE ME AN OSCAR, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," which is a bit disappointing given that he's coming off of a decade of largely better work with more charismatic and nimble stories and performances. In a way, that's a joke unto itself that a character that feels like a rehash of Freddie Quell in The Master stands a better chance at earning the legendary actor a statue than something actually great. It's part of the allure of this film that it's neither a trainwreck nor a masterpiece, yet it feels in debt to both sides of the equation. It brings so many tastes together that its form of jambalaya is head-ache inducing. 

It shouldn't take a film like Joker to force audiences to talk about mental illness, gun violence, media influence, and political corruption. These should all be topics that are constantly at the front of any debate. For what it's worth, Phillips' ode to his career's midlife crisis at least brings it to light in ways that open conversation. Even then, it feels like a thrift shop approach to filmmaking, placing the racks in the background for Scorsese, Sondheim, Chaplin, and more. It's a Pavlov's dog response when the music plays, expecting us to find deeper meaning in the songs (though don't go looking into "Rock and Roll Part 2"). However, it all feels unnecessary except to add personality to a film that could skid by on Phoenix's performance alone. For a lot of the time, it does. For the rest, it makes you question a lot about society, including how unfortunate it will be if in five years if Mr. Freeze is starring in a global warming drama. It seems like the reality with Joker's success, but frankly it sounds all so stupid and regressive at the same time.