Dark Masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (22 October 2019)

Spoiler alert, don't read if you plan watching the movie "Joker"
The "Joker" always intrigued me because it seemed to me that the creative freedom to give life and character to joker was more important than creating a batman 2.0, 3.0 and so forth as versions of the movie came along.
Think about it, a dark character- called Joker! And another thought to ponder - similar to athletics records getting broken all the time which is in a way victory of the mind over muscle, there's the other logical application of mind in creativity and this particular character has evolved from a vanilla villain, to a psychopath and the most recent one... I don't even know how to describe him. He represents a lot of what the world is becoming, and draws sympathy from actions that are so wrong and very anti-social.
From Jack Nicolson with "So much to do, so little time"... and the acting canvas that gave Heath Ledger (RIP) which I had assumed to be very tough to beat and along comes the masterpiece of Joaquin Rafael Phoenix.
It was tough to miss a movie that has the Joker playing lead and the watching experience was very unnerving. This was perhaps the darkest of all Joker-in-character movie with a very strong satirical take on our own society. So much so, that some countries saw demands of banning this movie.
I had read about Ledger distancing himself from the world, dealing with insomnia and at the same time build the Joker character. He was given a lot of freedom and the genius in this actor delivered a top-notch experience where in his own words "It is a physically and mentally draining role - his Joker is a 'psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy"
Phoenix's portrayal of the same character was more challenging. It had to transform a person who was unlucky, some may say "a loser", and a person dealing with serious mental disorders thru really logical circumstances where the state fails to continue funding his medicines, his continuing bad luck and facing apathy and violence to someone who's such a dark psychopath that he easily redefines another state of "the goodness of evil".
Gone was the dark set of Gotham, any gross inequality or injustice in the society overall or the need for a vigilante. In some parts of the movie I heard a few laughs from the audience which sounded totally out of place to me. I didn't find one comic relief, maybe the character was too engrossing for me. Perhaps if Batman emerged in that train, to save Phoenix , I'd have clapped.
His first kill was a reaction to resist being bullied. And then it almost became the necessity of committing himself to be the quintessentially evil Joker...
The portrayal of a modern apathetic world had a ubiquitous influence over the evolving character. The darkness of the film was such that one doesn't feel guilty in empathy over the circumstances leading to evil than the evil itself.
After all, where's utopia anyway!
The movie - wow
The effort put in by Phoenix- OMG. The mental transformation led to the portrayal of the character and the physical transformation was beyond severe. Hope he wins an Oscar and also lives in peace. It amazes me how an artiste can get into a character so deep, and I hope it is as easy to extract oneself to reality once the character is played and over with.