Smile and put on a happy face

Rating: 10/10 (17 December 2019)

There is no reason why Phoenix's elaborately backstoried Joker shouldn't be as powerful as Heath Ledger's mysterious, motiveless, originless Joker in The Dark Knight. But at some stage the comic-book world of supervillaindom has to be entered, and Ledger was more powerful because he wasn't weighed down with all this realist detail and overblown ironic noir grandeur, and he wasn't forced to carry an entire story on his own. This Joker has just one act in him: the first act. The film somehow manages to be desperately serious and very shallow.
Final rate : Masterpiece.