Somewhere between Masterpiece and Oscarbait

Rating: 7/10 (19 January 2020)

I was reluctant to watch this. I really am not into the typical superhero movie with tons of fight scenes and special effects, but I ultimately rented it on Amazon because so many people raved about it. So let's go step by step:
Joaquin Phoenix: Gives the performance of his career. The physicality, the desperation of the character, his instability, his erratic nature, his fraility. I find the descend into madness to be very compelling and like Natalie Portman in Black Swan, I think this portrayal is the strong aspect in what would have been a so-so film.
People harshly judge this film as simplifying issues such as class, a lack of civility in society, alienation of the underpriledged etc. True, if this movie were a straight-out analysis of what was going on in New York City in the early 1980's, Reaganism etc., it would fail. Yes, NYC was in a pretty dark place in the early 1980's. Crime was up, discontentment was high, people felt alienated and angry. But here we see everything through the lens of a seriously deranged individual who is an unreliable narrator. For him, the world is increasingly dark and the instances of abuse only multiply. He does not have the sophistication of being political or even being able to fully articulate his rage for being mocked and for being overlooked as a member of society and he very accidentally becomes a folk hero as his acts happened to coincide with a period in which the population was greatly angered and enraged. It is not even truly clear how much of this adulation is real or even, indeed, how many of the acts in this film really are real.
The film does play a theme reflected in other works, also in the film Parasite, this class rage and the desire to strike back at real and perceived oppressors. The increasingly hostile environment of the city adds to Arthur's malaise and contributes to his total breakdown.
Many Batman franchise fans will not like this. Where is Batman? I think the point of this film is that this villain is very far from the criminal mastermind that Joker was in other versions, this guy can barely get up and function, let alone run a major criminal enterprise. He is pityable, sad, pathetic. ironically it is one of the enraged protesters, not Arthur, who killed Thomas Wayne and thereby created Batman, if this too even happened. Yes, they did a new take on the comic version but I feel it had some valuable points to make.
Was the film Oscar-baity? Yes. The quirky anti-hero, many scenes created for shock value. A pretty thin plot. Another plot device of "How much of this was only in his mind." Having said this, I really enjoyed it but have no real desire to see it again. I think Phoenix as a lot on Joker but the film without him would be mediocre.