Todd Phillips' Unsettling Masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (23 October 2019)

Every decade or so, the perfect movie is made, a stand-alone masterpiece unlike anything before its time. And for appreciates of true cinema everywhere, I'm beyond thrilled to report that Todd Phillips' Joker is that very film.
Coming from someone who hates every superhero movie made, this is saying a great deal. Phillips, who directed a few of my all-time favorites, including The Hangover Trilogy, Due Date and War Dogs, has set aside his slap-stick comedy for a far greater edge. He took the wildly inflated, hardly realistic Gotham, and transformed the city into a terrifyingly beautiful reality.
And apart from its fictitious DC Comics origin, this film couldn't stand further from a superhero fantasy. Instead, we're dealing with a psychological thriller showcasing the failed life and career of Arthur Fleck.
Joaquin Phoenix, who in his unusual brilliance fits the role perfectly, has recreated the villain into a character all his own. Gone are the days of past jokers including Cesar Romero (1966), Jack Nicholson (1986) and cinema-legend Heath Ledger (2008). Philips's Joker is the first film in fifty years of franchise history to address the clown and clown alone, no batman in sight.
And rather than a God's eye view of his mental instability, viewers are hurled directly into Fleck's heart and soul. We grow attached to the traumatized child trapped in a grown man's body, the impoverished outcast longing for affection and the dead-beat seeking ultimate purpose.
With every day wielding a Shakespeare-grade tragedy, he inevitably reaches his breaking point. And as Fleck's prescribed antipsychotics grow scarce, his savage desires run rampant. He's been bludgeoned, degraded and mislead for the last time. He submits to the slums and, with glorious triumph, creates a legacy through chaos: "The Joker" is born.
Fair warning, this movie isn't for the faint of heart. Fleck's disturbing persona, clinically diagnosed laughing disorder and overall drear will challenge your comfort zone from start to finish. His nonstop tragedy is conveyed to such unsettling degrees, that one can't help but sympathize. And when he makes the first kill in a fleeting act of self-defense, who could blame him?
Initiating a downward spiral, Fleck's quench for chaos grows to immeasurable lengths. Law and order grows corrupt as the street-revolution turns vigilante. The slums picket for more violence and Fleck promptly delivers. He's psychotic and unstable, but arguably justified in his heinous crimes.
The Joker will make the moviegoer support a psychopath and demand societal equality for degenerates. It'll twist ones perception of higher-ups, resulting in ultimate support for the villain.
"What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treat him like trash?" says Arthur. A glorious film.