A masterclass in acting, sound mixing and cinematography.

Rating: 9/10 (7 October 2019)

Without a doubt, Joker is in contention for the film of the year.
With Joachin Phoenix garnering praise left and right for Joker it's easy to dismiss the multiple other elements of direction, sound mixing, editing, cinematography, set and costume design and casting that make this a truly astounding piece of artistic cinema.
Joker is a film that without any one of these elements, it would fail. It would slip into the same bracket as Suicide Squad and be forgotten, but, fail it certainly does not.
Joachin Phoenix is phenomenal. We know this already from pictures like Her and The Master, what we didn't know was how utterly deep and broad his range was. At points, I was totally absorbed by Joker. For the first time in possibly 10 years the movie theatre melted away, along with other viewers and noises and I was a part of that film. It was as if I was watching a documentary, rather than a fictional work. His commitment to the role, his weight loss and mental strain are dangerous but it produces something that no one ever thought would happen. It produces a performance that could genuinely rival Heath Ledgers.
Todd Phillips direction and script are masterstrokes. If it were a painting it would be a Turner, with bright violent skies, and dark sad landscapes. His beautiful melting pot of inspiration features large doses of Martin Scorsese's 'The King of Comedy' and 'Taxi Driver', alongside the physiological battery acid from more recent pictures such as Fight Club and Black Swan.
It swirls together to birth this bitter, gritty, dark, mesmerising masterpiece, that both requires and demands, multiple, in-depth viewings.
For me, what makes this film is the costume design and the cinematography. The design of every minute detail on each character to make Gotham look even more drab and dull, even more grimy and beaten down is exceptional. Similar to how Scorsese made Harlem and The Bronx look broken and corrupted in Taxi Driver, you feel physically dirty after watching numerous sequences and you feel pangs of genuine social guilt stemming from your own moments of awful selfishness.
The cinematography is astounding, and MUST be in contention for an Academy Award, alongside Best Lead, Best Direction and best Sound Mixing. Some of the shots could have been lifted from a Time Magazine piece on 'City Life' they're that artistically powerful. Whole, dialogue-free sequences that say far more with silence and sounds of a city teetering on the brink of oblivion in the background than anyone could ever say. The sound mixing to have conversations, telephones, car horns, shouting, trains prevalent in the background audio leaking into the foreground does what Nolan did in 'Dunkirk' and pushes further the feeling of strain. The idea that even noise is seeping in from the city and soon the barricade will break and it'll drown us all in it's filth, corruption and decadence.
Joker is a true masterpiece. So dark, so dirty, so vindictive of a modern flawed and broken societal system, but it always reminds you:
Put on a happy face.