Joker's laughter is no joking matter

Rating: 9/10 (6 October 2019)

Writer-director Todd Phillips's new movie "Joker" appeals to me on multiple levels, primarily by offering an engaging story, strongly rooted in believable reality, related to audiences mainly by opposing protagonist's prevalent dark depressive moods while using often optimistic soundtrack and sound editing, shallow nonetheless rich visuals, angles and framing, theatricality augmented through expressive costumes, props and sets, but most impressively via great principal performances and acting choices made by Joaquin Phoenix in the lead as a title character (under proper fictional name Arthur Fleck), whose sudden uncontrollable and seemingly inappropriate laughter (justified as a medical condition) easily counterpoints the (painful need for) outcry from Gotham (read: any) City masses, hurt and deprived by injustices of their quotidian existence, as well as by Robert De Niro in a quintessential supporting role of a TV-comedy show host Murray Franklin (both worthy of the end-of-the-year acting award considerations), and by setting believable pre-course for the future adventures of the most realistic DC Comics character, the Batman (not a superhero at all, with his extraordinary capabilities rather resulting from his physical fitness and skills combined with high technology employed), who appears here only as a young boy, and whose later adult activities could be understood as largely driven by what has happened to his parents in the final scene of this movie, an event directly inspired by actions of Joker, henceforth his future main nemeses.