Joker analysis

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I finally got around to watching "Joker". I hadn't been keen on seeing it when it came out due to two reasons. One was that the trailers left me utterly cold, and then, after they hit, there was this instantly toxic discourse about it sparked by the director himself in a vainglorious attempt of self-aggrandizing and sparking a sales-boosting controversy. He succeeded in that, I am sad to report. But my wife was in cinema back then and liked the movie, and so we've taken the DVD release as an occasion for a movie night so she can show me the thing.

Alas, I don't like it. I really don't. Let's get the good stuff out of the way first. The movie sure is intense. Practically all of this is due to Joaquin Phoenix, who deserves all the praise directed at him. Given how lackluster the script is, it's incredible that he manages to get a performance out of it that not only feels coherent but also propels the movie forward like a force of nature. To his credit, Todd Philipps must have realized this; the number of scenes that don't feature Phoenix in center frame can be counted with two hands.

The production team is also very adept of setting a mood (although that should be expected given the budget); the 1970s/1980s vibe that decaying Gotham projects puts the attempts at the same aesthetic that Batman Begins sported to shame.

However, for me, that's it when we come to the positive stuff. The movie just doesn't work. And I want to explore why in some more detail.

The first and major issue I have: What is this movie actually about? Sure, it tells us what the real name of the joker is, where he comes from, when he donned his signature look for the first time and what he says made him what he became (something about treating a mentally ill person badly).

But staying with the Joker origin for a moment, we do not actually learn why he becomes the Joker, which is kind of weird, considering that's what the movie is actually about. Why does he decide to become a clown, where this was his job before? Why this look? Sure, it's the Joker look, but that's engineering backwards from a pre-determined conclusion. We don't actually learn who the Joker is. Joaquin Phoenix just starts playing him at one point and stops playing Arthur Fleck.

Sure, there are some inciting incidents, but it's unclear what these signify. He gets beat up by some people while performing as a clown, he gets harassed by Wall Street types and he learns his mentally ill mother was mentally ill leading not to one but two reveals of his identity.

But none of these connected to the Joker persona. They would explain the gradual breakdown of Arthur Fleck, but the movie isn't interested in Arthur Fleck, because it wants to get to its conclusion, the Joker. Ironically, that remains as much a mystery as ever before, even though the intention is clearly to spill it all out. The script does a better job to explain Batman's origins, and Bruce Wayne is only in two scenes (in these two scenes are two too many, as we'll discover in a bit).

But the movie is also not about anything in relation to society. Sure, the Joker spills it out in the end - treating mentally ill people badly is bad. That's a profound revelation, but there is nothing in this as to why society is bad. People are randomly behaving bad towards Fleck, but neither do all of them nor is there any reason given for those that do. And here we come to the mood that the production designers expertly set up.

It's not revelatory to state that this movie is heavily influenced by "Taxi Driver"; Philipps even sought (and received) Scorsese's seal of approval. Therefore, everything looks like 1970s/1980s New York, with all the vandalism, graffiti, the taxis, the steam from the canalisation (you half expected the Turtles to jump out at any moment), the VHS cassettes, everything. But this is decidedly not how cities look today, and the movie is very much aware that it's aiming its message at 2019, not 1976.

This becomes most apparent in its use of a video going viral as a major plot point, which really doesn't fit the times at all, but it's also visible on the margins as when Arthur imagines a love relationship with an African-American single mom (one of the most gratuitous and genericly executed elements of the whole movie, which adds insult to injury): for all his professed going against the progressive Hollywood mainstream, Todd Philipps wants to check the diversity box as not to open himself up to accusations of making too much of a right-wing movie. It's a profile in cowardice.

But back to the setting. I'm hanging on this because in Taxi Driver, the source of much of Joker, the ills of society were the reality of the day. High crime, vandalism, a sense of decay and decline, corruption in politics (it was two years after Watergate, after all), feminism upending traditional masculinity, all of that. Nothing of this is in Joker, but it references its visually. These visual references are hollow, though, akin to fastfood. They're heavy, but they don't nourish.

Therefore, people are mean towards Arthur for no real other reason than "people are bad". But even that isn't consistent; it's some people that are bad, others are just fine (and, egregiously, directly signified by being their looks). Why some are bad and others are fine is unclear. There's no "there" there, it's story beats that need to happen, mostly to recreate the feeling.

And don't forget Arthur Fleck himself, the guy is not exactly innocent either. Yes, he's mentally ill, but his behavior is threatening and off-putting, and it's no wonder his neighbors and work mates avoid him as much as random encounters on the subway. That's no reason to attack him, of course, but it will play a major role when we come the inclusion of the Waynes.

Because up to now, your mileage might vary. Maybe the whole setting and movie speaks to something in you that just wasn't receptive in me, that's no problem, art does that. But the whole subplot of the Waynes is a travesty that pulls the movie down for no other reason than the prerogative to make a Joker movie. They don't need to be in the movie, and they fulfill almost no narrative function.

Let's start with Thomas Wayne, who is something of an antagonist of sorts. He's rich and arrogant, so he checks the box of roughly belonging to the subway assholes - which by the way is a real problem when it comes to Batman's whole backstory; it is very much predicated on Thomas Wayne being a really good-hearted philantropist. For reference, see Batman Begins.

But on the other hand, he doesn't ever do anything to deserve any ire. He runs for mayor on a platform of "I'm really rich", and while that makes him an asshole, it doesn't make him an antagonist. This is essentially "The Bloomberg Presidential Campaign: The Movie", and like in reality, Wayne would sink a lot of money in a vanity campaign and cap out at 15% of the vote with the attitude he displays. But there's nothing that we ever learn where he would be responsible for the ills that befall Fleck.

This becomes most apparent in the scene were social services close down due to budget cuts. Who makes these cuts? The Wall Street types? There's nothing in the text to support that conclusion. A faceless bureaucracy, careless about people? Nothing in the text. It just happens, like an act of god. That's a MAJOR problem in world building, because no one is responsible for this act that more than anything prompts Fleck's descent in the downwards spiral of insanity. But the movie offers nothing, and Wayne promises to actually FIX these problems, even is he's an ass while doing it. He's not mayor yet, so the movie can't build him up as a villain.

So, second attempt. We learn that Fleck is Wayne's son from an affair back when his mother used to work for Wayne, and Wayne is since then reneging on his public promises to care for everyone in the family. So, Fleck seeks out Wayne, but he learns (and confirms in a trip to Arkham Asylum) that his mother is in fact mentally ill and that he was adopted and abused as a child, so there's no family connection to Wayne (mercifully; the Joker as a step-brother to Batman would have been the height of bad storytelling). But Fleck harasses the Waynes; creeping out Bruce and assaulting Alfred, and when he then also harasses Thomas in person, he gets a well-deserved punch in the face. So, there is no reason to hate on Wayne; if anything, he is the aggrieved party here.

So, why are they even in the movie? Everyone knows - cultural osmosis and all - who the Waynes are, so it all has a heavy air of foreboding to it, giving the Joker not one but multiple connections to the Wayne family. But this makes no fucking sense, since the Joker never learns of Batman's origins. His beef is with Batman, not Bruce Wayne, as Batman's beef is with the Joker, not Arthur Fleck.

As an inciting incident, it pushes Arthur over the edge to become the Joker. But why? He proceeds to murder first his mother and then the show host that humiliated him on TV (another story arc that really doesn't sync up; the first half of it is the story of Arthur Fleck, but its conclusion is the story of the Joker, and both have practically nothing in common).

And then we have the riot that serves as the finale of the movie. We are led to believe that the murder of three suits on the subway sparks a citywide riot and protest movement, but here, Philipps really goes of the rails and wades into the same right-wing swamp that Nolan got bogged down in in The Dark Knight Rises. The people, an amorphous, mean and violent mass, are inspired by plain murder of a clown to become clowns? What's the inciting incident here? There is none, other than the need to have riot at the exact moment that the Joker dons his clothes for the first time and then to be rescued by an adoring crowd for the cool visual spectacle.

But why do they riot? Why do they riot as clowns? There actually is an interesting element midway through the movie where a news anchor connects it to a comment of Wayne's, who called the population "clowns" (again, how he wants to win an actual election I cannot fathom), but that thread is dropped later as well when the movie decides not to be the story of Arthur Fleck anymore (who has absolutely zero connection to the riots) but rather the story of the almighty Joker.

Instead of having the riot and the protests as a backdrop that mirrors Fleck's journey, the overbearing intent of making this about the JOKER (in capital letters to underscore the importance and gravitas) they connect everything to him. As with the inexplicable electoral chances of Thomas Wayne, it's utterly unclear why anybody would sympathize with a subway murderer and model themselves on him. Yes, we as the audience know that the Wallstreet guys were bad apples, but no one else does, and the authoritative voice of Thomas Wayne, electoral champion, informs us on TV that they were decent and honest employees of Wayne Enterprises!

The movie is full of inconsistencies like that. All that propels it forward is the irresistible force of Joaquin Phoenix' performance. How he managed to get something out of that hot mess of a script that feels actually coherent is beyond me and a testament to his abilities. This is where Joker's lost brother, The Dark Knight Rises, failed. While Nolan is a much better storyteller than Philipps can ever hope to be, he couldn't rely on any interesting character or performance.

But that's no reason to watch this movie, honestly.