Joker is what happens when one reads Taxi Driver wrong.

Rating: 4/10 (3 October 2019)

Travis Bickle is also an anti-hero like Arthur Fleck, so many bad things at once, a product of the times, but his actions are never justified or rendered aspirational either through plot or aesthetics of the film. The same goes for Rupert Pupkin in Scorsese's another masterpiece 'The King of Comedy' from which Todd Philips, the director, heavily borrows but without any proper insight or thought. Class divide, neurological issues, childhood trauma and all that glitter is thrown in the movie to disguise the shallow depth of ideas and adds to the confusion. The film tries to be so many things and ends up being none. 'Poser' would be a better title.
Joaquin Phoenix's acting is everything though. Very familiar but still feels fresh and knocks your socks off (and oh that laugh is haunting) and he was the singular reason I didn't walk out of the film after the first 15 minutes because the moment Arthur Fleck commits the third murder (and which obviously was not a self-defense tactic), I thought, "lo beta, ghus gaye na ghhade me! Yahan se impossible hai nikalna." And making my worst fears come true, this humorless film just kept on digging that first act grave.
So, in short: Loved Joker. Just hated the film he was in.
PS: Watch HBO's 'Succession' if you want to take notes on how to have a people as your protagonists, humanize them and still maintain that much-necessary ironic distance from them.