Haunting, but sporadic

Rating: 8/10 (19 February 2020)

This tale of Joker's descent into madness has legitimate pathos. Joaquin Phoenix here is not charismatic, but sad and pathetic-not in the derogatory sense of the word, but in the sense of appearing skinny, having a cruel neurological condition, and being constantly misjudged, and in deserving pathos, or our sympathy. Sometimes, it did seem like this world of this newly created Joker struggled to fit with the comic book character we know from the Batman franchise. While Joker's slow burn into violent activity was believable, it was less believable that the same descent could lead him into becoming a super villain. Joaquin's Joker doesn't seem to have much agenda for the grand scale. His violent actions are all personal and reactive. This Joker falls into becoming a symbol for a protest movement, which doesn't feel quite a product of Gotham but of hasty scriptwriting. The film does its best to mix outcast themes, clown imagery and mental illness all in one to create the Joker, but something more than clown makeup is missing from the equation.
"Joker" is an uncomfortable and magnetic film. It uses several kinds of storytelling devices to disorient our sense of reality, sometimes successfully and other times not completely enough. Its use of soundtrack is compelling but also less than fully consistent. The era of the when the film occurs confuses itself between the 40s, the 60s, the 80s and the present 2000s. The soundtrack is pulled from a variety of these decades as well, and adds to that feeling of disorientation. The Batman franchise spans these decades, so gives meaning to their reference, but also warps the viewers frame of reference in assessing the important themes of the film. Is there a reason most of the social workers Alex Fleck/Joker encounters are black? Is this a statement of some kind, or a metaphor for projection, or just part of the demographic of the time?
Anyway, not to overshadow the fact that this is a movie dealing with complex psychology of an unsettling but humane kind, and that this film that makes viewers uncomfortable somehow remarkably landed a wide audience and mass acclaim. Well, not remarkably. Any Batman movie would. But that this movie got made is quite a feat.
While this movie isn't anything about incels (it's not a movie about perpetual virginity or anything 2000s, I think), it is probably the one movie most having to do with the fear of violence modern society has for those it has outcast. With this film I think it's possible to have more empathy than fear. However, there are some problematic messages that comes up by meshing together a story of an isolated, troubled, but rather ordinary person with a desire for simple joy, and that of a uniquely celebrated anarchist super-villain like Joker. These two characters don't quite relate, and perhaps shouldn't.