Joker rises like a Phoenix!

Rating: 10/10 (8 October 2019)

Below is the transcript from my video review on my YouTube channel, Slice of Pai. Please subscribe, would mean the world to me and I'm trying to change it :)
The Joker. I'm not joking when I say this could be the first time that two different actors could win an Oscar for playing the same character.
Now the Joker is one of the most iconic villains of all time, but do not walk into this expecting it to be a typical comicbook movie with blockbuster action.
First and foremost it is a character study of the Joker, of one man's descent into madness, but the terrifying part was just how real it all felt. Arthur Fleck, A Fleck, Affleck? is a really sympathetic character at the beginning of the movie and you really feel for him when you see how mistreated he gets just for being different and misunderstood. Things just keep going from bad to worse for him over the course of the movie until he finally snaps when he gets pushed to the edge.
And when he hit Rock Bottom, he rose from the ashes like a Joaquin Phoenix.
Because at the end of the day, this is his movie and he carried it with ease. He has clearly been psychologically scarred, his laugh is something like a tic from a neurological condition and he does have something of an Oedipal complex as well. You can see the Joker's physical and mental transformation when he embraces his madness in all its perverse glory.
Speaking of physical transformations, his method acting reminded me of Christian Bale's. His emaciated physique was a bit like the Machinest, and parts of the movie also reminded me of American Psycho and had me questioning what was real and what wasn't.
As the whole movie is shot from Joker's perspective, it brings some very interesting twists to the Joker and Batman lore. I'll delve into that more in a spoiler section at the end of this video.
The film is also a character study of society as a whole, and although it is set in the fictional city of Gotham in 1982, it's still social commentary for today. Too many people tear down others to feel good about themselves, too many people want to see other people fail, too many people have no empathy. The movie shows the dangers of nihilism that is caused by all of the above, and it shines a light on the importance of mental health treatment.
The film also brings credence to the expression "Don't meet your heroes", as the public personas so many celebrities have of wanting to help people are really just facades, which is something I've noticed as well.
The film was excellently directed by Todd Phillipps and although it was a slow burn, that simmering really gave Joker so much nuance and complexity. The colour palette was very gritty and Gotham-esque and gave the movie a depressed ambience to reflect Arthur's.
Overall I'd give joker 4.5/5 Pais, but I'm bumping it up to 5 for Joaqin Phoenix's Oscar Worthy performance.
Have you seen Joker yet? What did you think about? How do you compare the Jokers? From Hamill, to Nicholson, to Ledger and now to Phoenix? Let me know in the comments below.
Thanks for watching, but if you could hit that like and subscribe button I'll thank you even more. If you haven't seen the movie yet, this is where I say bye for now. But if you have, spoiler talk is coming soon.