Joker shows how enough misery can drive a person to madness.

Rating: 8/10 (4 October 2019)

Joker is a new drama thriller directed and partly written and produced by Todd Phillips, the director of The Hangover trilogy and Due Date.
The film is set in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the fictional city of Gotham. Here Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) works as a clown, who hopes to break through as a stand-up comedian. Arthur also suffers from mental health problems and a brain disorder of pathological laughter.
Because of his job and health problems, Arthur is hard to be taken seriously by the world and he is often the victim of cruel jokes or violent actions by people who are better off. All this misery of the physical and mental blows are gradually driving him into madness. In this way he eventually takes on a new personality called Joker.
This film is a new standalone film from the DC film universe, which serves as a story of origin of the famous character The Joker. Despite the fact that the film is based on a fictional character, the film responds quite realistically to how enough misery can drive a person to madness. It is sometimes a bit uncomfortable to see certain scenes of this film, because you see how an innocent and weaker person is trampled by society. This continues until he has reached his breaking point and undergoes a dark change. In this way, the film also responds well to world-wide current affairs, where certain people or groups of people are also seen as being lessened or treated by others. Which often leads to crime or riots.
The role of The Joker has come to the fore in other films, such as Batman from 1989, where Jack Nicholson has portrayed the role in his own but well-known manner. In The Dark Knight from 2008 where the now deceased actor Heath Ledger played the role and won an Oscar for this. And the most recent version where Jared Leto tried to portray the role as a clay cameo in a modern way in the film Suicide Squad. Furthermore, the character has also appeared in old, modern and animation TV series.
Despite all these predecessors, Joaquin Phoenix managed to set the role in a proper way. For this role he has lost 24 kilos and has done research and watched videos of people who really have the pathological smile brain disorder. That is how he himself comes across when he laughs in the film as if it became painfully uncontrollable at a time. Then he also shows small separate eye movements and nervous twitches with his fingers. Because of all these problems, you as a viewer quickly feel sorry for his character until, due to all the misery, he makes a big turn in his life and goes into a dark direction, so that you are now more afraid of his character, because you do not know what he will do. He also portrays the role in a different way from the weak, insecure man who continues to be brought down by society until he decides to take the dark criminal path. In this way he gradually changes from an insecure character to someone with more self-confidence and dark ideas.
In addition to Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro also provides good acting as the host of a talk show. This film is also somewhat inspired by the similar film The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver in which Robert De Niro also played characters who are somewhat reminiscent of the Arthur Fleck role. For people who are familiar with one of these films, a few moments from this new film can come across as an equally copied version.