Typical Cinematic Tragedy

Rating: 5/10 (13 October 2019)

I went to see this not having read reviews, but hearing some good things from some of the hype, and hype it is. There are some serious fan boys that are out of touch with what makes a good movie. I call this a cinematic tragedy because like so much in movies now-a-days, there are some great elements to it but the story, direction, or core elements fall flat somehow.
One thing that everyone is getting right is that Phoenix does an outstanding job. Perhaps too goog. The director, editor, producer, or whoever is responsible can't seem to take the camera off him. Yes, he's the titular character, but how many damn times do we need to see him dancing to music that's only in his head or to his own reality? Many, many times. The damn movie even closes with a slow motion of it. We get it. He's crazy.
And that is one of the things that hurts the whole theme to the movie. Aurthur is a sad sap of a character. Lives with his mom, crappy job that he looses and has probably had issues with maintaining employment in the past, looses his public mental health support, lives in a city that is full of trash, super rats. Because Aurthur is the solo, main character and are stuck with his close up, we are supposed to, and do identify with his plight. I feel that we are supposed to cheer him on when he kills. He's celebrated as a hero of the impoverished, the downtrodden. But that's the rub. It's not necessarily society that has pushed him over the edge, it's the fact that he's totally nuts. A normal person wouldn't do these things. And if the movie showed a perfectly normal person snapping in a reasonable way, then that would give weight to the theme. So there's a big fat contradiction to all the effort that the movie is going through.
---minor spoilers---
Also, there's really no story. Solo movies like this that are an exploration in character typically have the same character as the antagonist. After all, the whole movie is told from his point of view. What I mean is, Author is crazy, he killed, he knows killing is wrong, he's at odds with it, and the movie is a struggle between right and wrong. Not here. Well, maybe there's an outside force acting against him to create conflict or tension. Not here (there is a minor police investigation, but we're not shown its progress, so we don't even know if Authur is in any danger). Is he hatching some scheme to make a grand statement against the growing class gap? Not at all, so nothing to thwart there. There's just no story.
---end of minor spoilers---
It's strictly an exercise in character development that can not sustain 2 hours. There was a story here, but the movie ended before anything could be done with it. This whole movie gets us to the beginning of an act 2 then fizzles out.