The other side of a pretty dark coin

Rating: 10/10 (7 October 2019)

Well, this was certainly quite an anticipated movie, and just to think that it was made by the guy that came up with The Hangover. Then again this film is certainly not a pleasant movie by no means, but that certainly does not necessarily mean that it is a bad movie. Yeah, it is meant to make you feel really uncomfortable, and in a way you sort of also feel a lot of sympathy for the main character. In a way, by the end of the film, I am really wanting him to actually become the Joker, though of course this is all left in Limbo with the way the ending actually comes about.
One thing I have to say is that Joaquin Phoenix is absolutely outstanding. I remember people suggesting that nobody could ever top Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker, and of course there was Jared Leno who came along with Suicide Squad, yet Joaquin Phoenix truly moves this character to a completely new level. Yeah, we all suspected that the Joker was crazy, but the way Phoenix captures the dark insanity of the character, the way he captures his mental illness, is absolutely outstanding.
Thus, what begs the question is, could he actually be the Joker that we all know and love (and if it wasn't for the fact that the Joker is a much loved villain we wouldn't have got this movie - in fact I'm not at all sure if there is any other villian out there that could literally have a movie of their own). The reason I say this is because Phoenix's Joker is seriously disabled, yet when we encounter the Joker elsewhere, while he might pretend to be crazy, he all know that he has his wits about him.
The thing is that I don't believe that Phoenix's Joker could actually be the 'clown-prince of crime' because, well, I'm not entirely sure whether he is actually capable of interacting with people, let alone being the calculating criminal that he is famous for. The reason is that he really doesn't seem to be capable of being able to interact with people. In fact, he is more of a symbol, this is something that slowly becomes relevant as the movie progresses, until we get to the end. Of course, the ending is very ambiguous, and some of the suggestions that he is a joker as opposed to The Joker, really doesn't sit with me all that well.
However, in a way it sort of makes sense, him being a symbol and all that. One suggestion, and it is a suggestion that I sort can agree with, is that he actually died in the car crash (something that isn't all that surprising considering he was hit by an ambulance on the side of the car in which he was sitting), and the crowds removed him carefully, as if he was some sort of martyr. Sure, the final scene certainly doesn't suggest that he is in heaven or anything, but the thing is that many characters literally take on a force of personality, one in which the actual person could never fulfill, and Arthur is certainly no leader, not in that sense of the word, and as such he can really only exist as a symbol.
Yet we must remember that there is so much about this film that we simply do not know what is truth and what is hallucination. The thing is that Arthur is seriously disconnected from reality, that becomes pretty clear with the 'relationship' that he has with the woman down the hallway. Yeah, once that becomes clear, and it should not have been any surprise as all, it really throws into a lot of doubts what is actually happening, what is real and what is not. Then again, there are a lot of scenes going on in the background, which do give us hints that there certainly is a reality that is unfolding, which means that he certainly did kill the three men on the subway, and murdered Murray live on national television.
Yet even Thomas Wayne, a character that is certainly not held in such high regard in this film, has an ambiguous side to him. Then again, in the other Batman films, we see so little of the character that he is seen as some angelic figure. Yet in this film, once again, the truth, and the reality, are two completely different things. Still, the whole question of whether he did have an affair with Arthur's mother, and that Arthur is actually his illegitimate son, is certainly thrown into a lot of doubt.
So, yeah, this is a pretty awesome film, and it is certainly one of those films that is going to leave you thinking and trying to understand it for quite a while after leaving the cinema. Honestly, it is pretty good that we are starting to see more of these movies come into the cinema now, after a very long drought full of a bunch of quite sub-par action flicks.