Joker (2019)
Review by: Robert Chandler
JOKER is here and it is terrific. Although set provisionally in Gotham in 1981, it is New York that is evoked. It made me nostalgic for the great, pre-clean-up NY films of the late 1970s; there are scenes that look and smell like they just spilled out of THE WARRIORS or DEATH WISH.
JOKER is splitting audiences. Some love it; many hate it. There have been walk outs (four people walked out of the screening I attended.) It’s full of “triggers”. Red flags. It should come with a warning, but this would just feed its zeal. It sustains its peculiar tension for the duration, and it’s frequently awkward and uncomfortable to watch.
What a relief. I’ve missed feeling like this in a cinema; like a film was genuinely disquieting.
Perhaps Joker goes out of its way a little too much to skew the kink – Gary Glitter’s Rock & Roll Pt 2 while the Joker dances down a set of city steps is knowingly provocative; suggesting that Bruce Wayne owes part of his Batman origins to George Hamilton’s camp comedy ZORRO THE GAY BLADE rather than the 1940 The Mark of Zorro with Tyrone Power, as depicted in the original comic books, is a wilful poke in the eye. By a clown.
It also owes too much to Martin Scorsese’s TAXI DRIVER and KING OF COMEDY but at least it knows this and acknowledges the references overtly. Imagine Rupert Pupkin when, years later, he has become Jerry Langford with his own chat show, and he invites Travis Bickle on as a guest.
Let’s talk about what really holds the film together. Joaquin Phoenix is MAGNETIC as Arthur Fleck, the man destined to become the madcap hyena in Batman’s world. He plays the character like a dyspraxic spider, a gnarly twist of man it’s possible to love and care for as you watch him spiral, and you will him not to become the bad apple the world – and his own psychosis - is conspiring to have him become.
Phoenix is the centre of the film and, boy, does he make it work, and worth it.