I have a condition

Rating: 10/10 (20 October 2019)

This movie makes it easy to pity the Joker. I felt sorry for him throughout the whole film but the part that made me pity him the most was when he tried to explain why he's laughing on the train and his two assailants just assaulted him without even trying to understand him. I imagine many people would probably pity him more when he tries to do stand up and his compulsive laughter interferes but for me, the little moment where he was trying to explain that he has a condition and desperately asking for a little compassion before getting his ass kicked was more upsetting. Whenever he laughs, it sounds like he's close to crying and the only time his laugh seems like one of genuine amusement, rather than just a result of his condition, is when he's on the talk show with Murray Franklin. Even his laugh in the asylum at the end seems like a pained kind of laughter like he still knows that his life is a tragedy and he's trying to turn it into a comedy.
Is Joaquin Phoenix a better Joker than Heath Ledger? Hard to say. They both have very different approaches and while Heath's Joker will always be iconic, Joaquin's Joker actually makes you feel sorry for him whilst also holding a mirror up to the ugliness in society. Yes, The Dark Knight did the latter but you never pity the Joker in that movie and his commentary on society was conveyed through his dialogue. In this movie, they show it. The assaults on Arthur in the streets and on the trains, Murray making fun of him and then forgetting that he'd done so because of how little he cared about Arthur's feelings, Thomas Wayne pretending he wants to help "the clowns" whilst also talking down to them and outright punching Arthur in the face when he just wants to form a relationship with him, it all reflects how messed up our society is right now. Switch "the clowns" with struggling people in real life and it shows that politicians and Hollywood will often talk big but 90% of them don't actually care about helping people less fortunate than themselves.
With all that said, Arthur Fleck isn't just a victim of tragic circumstances. It's easy to feel sorry for him but the movie never shies away from the fact that he's a dangerous man. Joaquin Phoenix's performance is very human, showing a man who's been beaten down constantly whilst also struggling to deal with a condition he can't control, but it also shows a man who casually carries a gun around, shoots Murray on live television, and finds murdering his own mother to just be part of the "comedy" that is his life. Speaking of his mother, I love the indication that she might have slept with Thomas Wayne and the Joker could be Batman's half-brother. It's never outright confirmed in the movie and it's entirely possible that it's just one of Joker's delusions but that's a take on their relationship I've never seen or even heard of before.
Robert De Niro turns on the charm as Murray Franklin and, of course, Joker sees right through him at the end of the film. When Murray comes to Arthur's dressing room and Arthur asks him to call him Joker because he had called him that in the past, Murray genuinely didn't remember the fact that he's made fun of him. De Niro plays a shallow celebrity in this movie who knows how to play to a crowd but when you get right down to it, he doesn't give a damn about the pain and difficulty that other people are going through. I imagine a fair few people in Hollywood, possibly including De Niro himself, are seeing themselves in his performance and it freaks them out because it forces them to face the fact that all the fame and glamour doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Most celebrities won't go out on a limb to help the less fortunate and this can make people resent them, which results in Murray getting a bullet in his brain.
The media is terrified of this movie. You know why? Because it's forcing them to see how ugly most of them are and how they can contribute to the rise of people like Joker. Murray represents all the self-absorbed, virtue signalling celebrities who pretend to care about the less fortunate but ultimately just want to make themselves look good. Celebrities who use their wealth to help people do exist - Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are notable examples and they did it secretly for years before the media found out - but most of them are all talk and this pisses people off. While most aren't crazy enough to shoot their heroes in the head, people who are treated as inferior by celebrities will inevitably build up some resentment. Todd Philips and Joaquin Phoenix had the balls to look Hollywood and the media in the eye and suggest that they might be just as monstrous as The Clown Prince of Crime.
Then there's the ending. All I can say is that it reminded me of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining and, just like that movie, people are going to be talking about it for a long time to come.