A Chilling Ballet of Mental Illness, That Dances Between Life's Tragedies

Rating: 10/10 (7 October 2019)

The Joker is not a comic book movie, but rather a master class in character study. The film follows your lead Arthur Fleck or "The Joker". You're told the story through his eyes, and through this lens it is easy to find Arthur extremely sympathetic. Jaoquin Phoenix's portrayal, coupled with Todd Phillip's writing had made for a character who holds onto your attention the whole film. There wasn't a moment of the film I wasn't in awe, when the score would slowly creep in to give you chills over a scene that was previously completely silent, or still shots of hallways, and stair cases as Arthur is alone in frame, just to give you a gripping sense of loneliness throughout the film. Though the plot can be fairly predictable, it's how those moments play out that are surprising. You feel like you know something will happen one way and it does happen never in the way you feel it will though. The script can often times be dull for some, but to me I saw these moments as cold, hard bits that look into Arthur's psychy. Like a scene in which Arthur is in a comedy club and doesn't get what's funny and what's not so he just laughs, none of the jokes are really funny, but they're supposed to be things we know are supposed to be funny so we see that Arthur doesn't understand. There are other jokes that aren't laugh out loud hilarious, but are just funny enough to get you to think they are, and then immediately, a like of dialogue comes in to make you feel bad about laughing about that.
The best things I can say about this film can't be said without spoiling it, all I can say is that it is a cold, gritty horror film about the horrors of the human psyche that'll leave you uncomfortable towards the end, with many questions about yourself left in your head after just one viewing.