Joker is great because unlike the films it homages, it goes beyond an ordinary character study by analyzing the interaction between character and society

Rating: 8/10 (5 October 2019)

As the twisted character study that it is, I think Joker could hardly achieve its goals much more effectively. Having watched The King of Comedy yesterday in preparation for Joker and having seen Taxi Driver a year ago (incidentally both character studies I liked but didn't think had a lot deeper I was excited to examine, and both were 7s) the inspiration Joker drew from both was obvious, in the shunned-by-society main character of Taxi Driver and the obsession with comedy and a talk show as a media vehicle from The King of Comedy. Where Joker improves on those two quality films is in how it investigates its protagonist: with those you gain an understanding of his basic psychology but makes no broader point, while in Joker you also see how society caused his psychological development.
There are two central components to this: mental illness and socioeconomic divide. As Gotham cut funding for social programs, he lost access to his pills and therapist, and we see him quickly decline into violence and madness without them. He is also on the poor side of a stark contrast between the rich and poor in Gotham. We see both of these manifest themselves repeatedly, making Arthur feel like a worthless punching bag. He figures since he's at the bottom with nothing to lose, he may as well take his frustration out on the people who look down on him and take their spot above him for granted. The criticism that Joker sympathizes with Arthur or presents him as a lovable figure completely misses the mark; it's an extreme cautionary tale about how someone completely neglected by society can feel worthless and become dangerous and unhinged. The idea that the cult following tells people that if you stick it to the man and cause chaos, people will back you up is similarly misguided; that illustrates the prevalence of the feeling of worthlessness at the bottom that Arthur feels. I had the criticism for a bit that it was too extreme and unrealistic - the gap between the haves and have nots is never so clear, and the world isn't ready to embrace such chaos with reckless abandon. All of this takes place in Gotham though, which is notorious for the absolute madness and ruthlessness in the city (which you really know if you watched the Gotham show :), so the extreme setting just illustrates a dark fantasy of how bad things could get if we allowed these gaps in society to grow into such a grotesque shape.
I would be remiss to go further without acknowledging the absolute bravura performance put on by Phoenix. I've always loved his performances and thought he is an all-time great actor even if I'm more mixed on his movies, but this is his crown jewel, a dark and intense film that he gives his absolute all to. The way Phoenix shows the gradual descent from an insecure awkward man to a carefree man embracing violence was exceptional. The film simply would not work without a strong lead performance, and Phoenix is dynamite. I would be shocked if I saw a better performance this year, and Nyong'o and Pitt (in Ad Astra, though I also like him and Leo in OUATIH) have already given quite strong ones. I'll also note here that the oppressive score worked wonderfully for me.
All of Joker's strongest elements that make it a great movie are independent of the fact that it's about the comic book character. Honestly, if it was a similar story about a random person, I think critics would love it and think it's one of the better films of the year and audiences would be very mixed, with some embracing it but some seeing it as darkness without purpose. It's very challenging to give a reasonable origin story to the Joker, but if you were to craft one, I think this type of story explaining not just that he's purely evil but was turned this way by how society cast him out was the ideal way to do it. Plenty of nice small references to the Batman universe, but the only tie in that stood out either way was Thomas Wayne. In every iteration of Batman I've seen up until now, Thomas was hailed as "a good man" who always tried to look out for the less fortunate in Gotham and was a wonderful philanthropist. One of the things Joker does so effectively is allow us to inhabit Arthur's perspective, where we see how Thomas looks down on poorer people. Flipping his narrative underscores the flip in perspective from the usual elite, pure anti-crime of Bruce to the marginalized one of the Joker. I still don't think it is about sympathy with Joker, but it allows us to understand another piece of how his persona was forged.
The final thing which is one of the elements that I most wonder about after the movie is: how much of that was in his head? Two scenes we definitively know were fantasy: the first time he goes on the show (which was another big homage to The King of Comedy, where there is exactly the same fantasy by the main character of going on the show and having a blast and then he goes on much later in the movie after going through all he did), and the images of his romance. Especially with the shot of him painting blood on his face and the crowd cheering, followed by him in Arkham dancing with bloody shoes, what was real? That ambiguity opens up many questions, with Arthur as potentially a classic unreliable narrator. Many of the criticisms of Joker miss the intention of showing how society drives him to his actions rather than sympathize with him or glorify his violence. Taken as the dark fantasy character study that it is, Joker is a wonderful and well-made movie.