Hollow performance of real people

Rating: 1/10 (4 October 2019)

I took my girlfriend to see this film tonight. I felt a high watching it, but hollow empty, sad, and like something crucial was missing walking out. People be damned at the shattered image of an untouchable. Queen B Beyonce making a flat note is not allowed to be called flat in the same vein that Joaquin's performance is not allowed to be called pretentious, lacking in soul and heart for the most part, and primarily too self aware. Which it was. The performance sat on the surface and didnt sit still with the weight of feeling of someone marginalized being gaslighted by society.
Acting, and directing was pretentious, contrived, and on the nose. Many choices and decisions from the director's standpoint were never made that should have been made. Ex: Joker kills bully, small person is kinda afraid, but begins to leave, Joaquin builds tension as if he is about to hurt little person, and then let's him go saying he was "the only one nice to him." Made no sense for the Joker to stay close to the door and pretend like something bad might happen to him. As written and given the choices Joaquin made for the character, it made no sense that he would do this. The Joker's character choices were sloppy and inconsistent, and the characters intelligence vs naivete and awareness of others vs lack of awareness teeter tottered throughout the film making the Joker not a plausible fully realized character. Made zero sense.
The ability to show how innocence and purity in a cruel world can affect someone subtly removed looking for the beauty in it could have been an interesting story, but instead there was no consistency, sloppy directing. So much potential, but this film was such a blunder to me and did a disservice to those marginalized and on the peripheries; a much more discerning ethos of this world and misinformation and stigma surrounding mental illness and individuals that go against the grain could have been wonderfully explored. Instead, these messages flew over the writer's, actors' and director's' heads in everything that was personified.
Many 16-30 something non discerning white males will hail Joaquin for being "genius/legend" and fanboy without meat supporting their feelings. Most of the praise I'm sure for this demographic comes from the performative, violent, egocentric, self indulgent, incel induced sexism, and pretentious nature of Joaquin's portrayal and the needless violence and cruelness against women of Joaquin suffocating his mother callously and unmoved.
Learningg of his mother's mental health dillusions and illness, with the empathy and sensitivity Joaquin's portrayal had would not garner this result. If there is one word I could use to describe this movie, particularly in character development and directing, it is "inconsistency." Not worth the hype.