Not half as intelligent or socially relevant as it thinks it is.

Rating: 6/10 (10 October 2019)

Joker is trying really hard to be more than it is. It endeavors a movie about a mentally ill man who resorts to violence as a result of an unsympathetic society wrought with ruthless bullying, an inadequate healthcare system, socioeconomic inequality, and political disillusion. A movie about a man traumatized by his detachment and misunderstanding of the world, painfully seeking some type of acceptance through entertaining others, chasing an unattainable ambition of living his dream, and winning love and admiration just by simply being himself. This is what Joker wants to be, and this what Joker halfway is, but the sad truth is that Joker is doomed to never able to flesh out any of these concepts. Its never able to make any truly relevant commentary in reference to these concepts. Because the character, Joker, doesn't have the type of mental illness that subtly or tragically allows his character to explore any of its larger sociological themes. Joaquin Phoenix's Joker is disabled, disillusioned, and truly from a disadvantaged upbringing, but he is too insane for the film to truly say anything about these concepts. Joker has more in common with Hannibal Lector than he does a real world schizophrenic patient. His violent tendencies are there from the start, and as you learn later in the movie, his delusions and hallucinations are hereditary rather than a result of his treatment. Gotham is painted as cruel and uncaring towards Joker, but he is the one who endangers children, repeatedly violating other's privacy, and murders helpless family members. The movie tries to make the point that it is sympathy Joker needs, but despite therapy, being on several medications and support from family and co workers, he still finds himself spiraling towards violence. It doesn't take long for Joker to become a killing machine; less a victim of circumstance and more an inevitable villain in the making. The ideas this film attempts to portray are indeed relevant and important, but the biggest mistake was using such a sinister villain as their conduit. In the end Joker was always going to be heartless mass murderer, and the trouble for the film maker was making that be a reasonable and sympathetic transformation that could communicate anything about society or real mental illness. They piled so much on Joker's ethos that every social commentary becomes lost in his truly off-the-wall insanity and maniacal tendencies. They try to make his violence so justified that when the poor lower classes of Gotham rally behind Joker's murders, but these people come off as more criminally insane rather than the poor desolate lower class desperate for equality. All that's left in the end is a Joker who's too villainous to say anything relevant about society, but at the same time too meek to pose any credible threat to Batman in his inevitable future.