Very Interesting Movie with a Confusing Storyline of Events

Rating: 6/10 (22 January 2020)

In the 2019 Drama/Thriller film, Joker, Joaquin Phoenix (Arthur Fleck in the film), is portrayed as a man who is lost in the world. Not just our world, but his own too. After getting beaten by people off the streets dressed as a clown and struggling to make money for his mom and himself, he tries to start getting more involved in the world when he is given a gun from one of his colleagues at work. He uses the power of threatening people, to make them feel what he feels whenever he gets tortured. This soon leads to Arthur shooting 3 men when they tried to beat him up on an underground train. Running back to his apartment, realizing what he has done, he laughs and cries at the same time. Not only was he changing the way he is, but he also liked it. He loved feeling power over others and the gun was the reason why. He keeps the gun hidden from everyone, including his mother, whom he loves and takes care of everyday in their old worked down apartment. Finding out that the newly elected Senate was actually his mother's husband and his father, he goes to go meet him. He gets punched in the face by the Senate and he goes totally crazy. As he gets "popular" for his stand up comedy from one night, he gets invited to go on his favorite show host's show. He goes and dresses up as the Joker (as seen on the cover) and this is where he starts it all. Times and times before going on the show, he practiced telling a joke, then shooting himself. As he dances on to the stage, everyone thinks he's just some guy to be laughed at, but Arthur is actually the one laughing. As the host and him are talking during the show, Arthur asks if he wants to hear a joke and brings out his "joke book". When he says, "Knock Knock" , the host asks "Who's there?" and then instead of going with the joke, or shooting himself, they come to an argument, once he tells the world that he killed the 3 men earlier in the film. He starts going on a rant on how he's been degraded and treated like total crap and there are many people like him that are feeling the same, but nobody does anything about it, they just laugh. Finally, Arthur pulls out a gun and shoots the host on live television. He is then arrested, but he had started an uprising. Many people on the streets treated him like a King. They got him out of the police car on the way to prison and they danced in the middle of the street. In the end, Arthur is walking in what seems to be a hall in a psychiatric hospital with blood footprints. Then he looks as if he's being chased around the hall. All of this in the movie was very confusing. There's no actual proof to what is happening and it is way too hard to understand. I don't like that about this film, although I did enjoy it. It keeps the audience guessing, but not the guessing you would want. It is something more of, "What just happened?" And personally, I don't like that at all.