JOKER is a marvel which should be righteously extolled and commended, if, that is to say, we live in a perfect world

Rating: 8/10 (10 October 2019)

Asserting as a one-off enterprise from DC universe and starting the original story of Arthur Fleck aka. The Joker (Phoenix) in 1981, director Todd Phillips (hailed from the THE HANGOVER trilogy fame), first thing first, has done a mind-blowing job in exbibiting a tangible retro flair from the film's imposing set design, a refuse-ridden, duck egg blue-hued Gothom City where anarchy is brewing at every sleazy corner, in tandem with Hildur Guðnadóttir's forboding symphonic score, it set the film's overall unforgiving keynote up to the eleven. And JOKER's closest kindred spirit might rightly be Martin Scorsese's seminal work TAXI DRIVER (1976), with a knowing nod to THE KING OF COMEDY (1982), not least hinted by Robert De Niro's presence here, and it palpably belongs to the veritable "true cinema" which Scorsese laments in his recent comments about DC's rival, Marvel's superhero movies.
It is somewhat disconcerting (but not entirely unexpected) to learn Phillips' Venice Golden Lion winner is met with polarized reactions among critics stateside albeit being a legitimate box office leviathan by breaking all the October records in its opening week and audience simply adores it. Quite accountable, Phillips and his co-writer Scott Silver's script pluckily touches a raw nerve by lending an uncompromising view on the societal genesis of Arthur's violent predisposition - sowed by the disenfranchisement and impoverishment stonewalled by the plutocratic ruling class, represented by the future Batman's father Thomas Wayne (Cullen) and incited by the anomie and apathy Arthur faces on a daily basis....

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