Heartbreaking and COLOSSAL

Rating: 10/10 (7 October 2019)

I have read a lot of reviews about this film commenting on the cinematography and the music (haunting) and the outstanding direction (Phillips) and acting (Phoenix) but none has expressed how utterly heartbreaking Phoenix's portrayal of a grown man who has suffered child abuse and neglect is - it is physically painful to watch - utterly beautiful and heartbreaking. I felt as if I'd taken him home with me after the film; his all consuming embodiment of the tortured man who is Arthur Fleck attaches itself to you like a needy animal and doesn't let go for days. And then only reluctantly. How he manages this is mesmerising. The violence in the film is gratuitous but feels inevitable and 'justified' given how he has suffered. It is of course coming from a sociopath who so clearly has been created by the neglect of a mother who suffered from mental illness, herself. The violence he inflicts is the manifestation of the utter rage and emptiness he feels. Phoenix lives this onscreen. This is what is so utterly devastating, exhausting, colossal and enveloping about his embodiment of Arthur . And it is an embodiment, not a performance. It's too real to be a performance.
I totally agree with another reviewer who says that if you're not willing to develop you're own thoughts about the subject in a film as dark and vast as this - watch something else. You'll feel it physically but you're brain will try to process what you've just been through, so be prepared.
Utterly transfixed was I for the ENTIRE film. Life changing. And utter kudos to the director and lead actor who were not afraid to show us mental illness and it's heartbreaking affects (extreme though they may be, here) and it's legacy, in all it's deep, dark relentlessness.