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No question that Todd Phillips’ “Joker” is disturbing. Despite its Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, critics have been vying with each other to describe its shortcomings.
New Yorker’s Anthony Lane called it a “miserabilist manifesto” and declared that “I happen to dislike the film as heartily as anything I’ve seen in the past decade," September 27, 2019.
A.O. Scott upped the ante by calling it “an empty, foggy exercise in second-hand style and second-rate philosophizing,” dismissing it as “not interesting enough to talk about” New York Times, October 3, 2019. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw calls it “the most disappointing film of the year,” claiming that “The film somehow manages to be desperately serious and very shallow,” October 3, 2019.
Yet it’s a clear box office success. On October 7, a mere three days after its US opening, “Joker” sold about $93.5 million in domestic tickets and made an additional $140.5 million overseas.
Granted, “Joker’s” release was timed for the Halloween season when we tend to celebrate unorthodox costumes and behavior—as long as they are limited to children and the consumption of sugar-loaded treats. But after watching this film—a personal indulgence of my own—I couldn’t help wondering: if someone in a clown face shows up at my door, will I want to open it?
Whether or not you choose to see this film, you will already know that it deals with an emotionally disturbed man, who transforms himself into the classic Joker of DC fame. You will also know that it involves a lot of mayhem—not only the targeted murders committed by its protagonist Arthur Fleck, who relinquishes his unremarkable name for “Joker” before a live TV audience, but also a proletarian uprising committed to revenge against the moguls of Gotham.
There are many film analogs to “Joker,” most of which are called out by its critics. Here is a brief sample (in non-chronological order): Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” (1936); Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” (1983 ), and also his (darker) “Taxi Driver” (1976);” A Clockwork Orange” (1971); “The French Connection” (1971); “Batman” (1989); “The Dark Knight” (2008), and so on.
To this list, I would add Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960) for its classic portrayal of a mother-dominated son, and the sequence of “Purge” movies (2013; 2014; 2016; 2018), for their indulgence in the id-like release of social violence.
To return to my question: what is wrong with this movie?
At first, I felt drawn to the character of Arthur Fleck and the unfolding of his story as a middle-aged man trying to forge a life of his own, while subject to a humiliating job and limited life circumstances. He lacks independence (living with his disabled mother whom he cares for) and basic opportunities for success.
We understand that he suffers from a neurological condition that involves sudden, uncontrollable fits of laughter. (Oliver Sacks, where are you when we need you?) Also that he works a depressing day job as a professional clown. In this first part of the film, we witness his degradation—at the hands of a gang of youths who beat him in a dank alleyway after stealing his “Going Out of Business” sign, and again in a deserted subway car by an upscale group of white men who work for the Wayne Corporation. Oh-oh.
In these episodes, Arthur cups his hands over his groin, suggesting that he has been violated at the center of his manhood.
Presented with a gun by one of his clown colleagues, he begins to use it—against the gang of three in the subway car. Suddenly now, he becomes a culture hero for the discontented masses, who celebrate him for his act of rebellion against the wealthy elite who control the city–supremely indifferent to the plight of its humble denizens, forced to live amidst uncollected garbage and super-sized rats.
At this point, the plot moves from a portrait of a mentally disturbed adult, who is striving to make a life for himself (he aspires to be a stand-up comedian and develops a fantasy relationship with a woman in his apartment building) into pure caricature. The film drops its pretense at serious character development to enter comic book mode.
It’s no wonder that critics—or audiences—feel confused or betrayed.
For one thing, there are too many “explanations” for Arthur’s problems and behavior: his neurological laughing disorder; his delayed developmental relationship with his mother; the suggestion of a (bi-polar?) mental health issue; his mother’s history of psychosis; the absence of an affirming father-figure; his childhood neglect (including a possible traumatic brain injury), and physical abuse. The film doesn’t distinguish between one trauma or another. It just piles them on, as if their sheer number will prove convincing.
Then it breaks down. Arthur ceases to be a human being, for whom we might feel empathy and descends into a one-dimensional stereotype. That Joaquin Phoenix brings this off as well as he does is a tribute to his performance, rather than to the film’s inner logic.
The plot isn’t even very original. It’s the inverse of Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy,” where an aspiring comedian, who lives with his mom and fantasizes about success despite his apparent “loser” status, manages to wangle a spot on the show of the late-night comedy host he most envies and wishes to emulate. He even courts an attractive black woman, whom he desires to impress. The difference is this: “The King of Comedy,” starring a youngish Robert De Niro (who plays the murdered talk show host in “Joker,”) is a true comedy, replete with a happy ending.
Todd Phillips’ “Joker” is “The King of Comedy” on steroids. It turns the unlikely story of success of a guy who suffers serial humiliation in love and work into the ghastly narrative of a man who turns his accumulated rage against his real and imagined perpetrators.
If this film is a form of political allegory, let us disavow its dystopian message.
Let us not, this Halloween, bring in the clowns.
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