It didn’t take long for Joker to take on a life far beyond the big screen. After opening to rapturous praise at the Venice International Film Festival, where it won the top prize, it pretty soon became a bit of an internet punching bag for the perceived social harm of what it portrays. All this before the wider public even got a chance to see it. The prospect of Joaquin Phoenix in makeup as a deranged clown is enough to spark any moviegoers attention so Todd Phillips’ gritty and depressive origin story was always going to reel in the crowds. But what the hell to think about a film that’s been so divisive already?

Well, nothing if you haven’t seen it. That was half the problem was people getting upset about a film they hadn’t seen for its real life impact which hadn’t happened. Given the current political climate perhaps that’s understandable… but if this film acts as a trigger to violence for anybody then there were much greater factors involved and cancelling a movie over hypothetical fears is a pathetic response compared to, you know… gun control? Maybe pass some laws so that there are fewer murder weapons out there in society and that might do a whole lot more towards preventing violence? I dunno, just a thought.

Censoring art though, that’s a dangerous thing. A repressive thing. Freedom of speech is an argument I have complicated feelings over, people seem to use that as an excuse for avoiding consequences for their words and the hurt those words may have caused without realising that nobody stopped them from actually saying them in the first place, the idiots, but there’s a difference between some old shock jock political commentator sounding off on the radio and a motion picture that’s been in production for months and months. That’s a genuine creative undertaking… and the outcome of that doesn’t have to be to everyone’s taste but you have to respect the work and the vision and the collaborative endeavour that led to the final product. Dickheads spouting hateful stereotypes can take a running jump but we do need to protect the right to make art that offends. Sometimes that offence is the whole point. Otherwise we’re not a whole lot further down the road than the whole: ‘video games are making kids violent!’ argument.

With all that in mind then, here’s what I thought about the movie itself. I thought it was nasty. I also thought it was incredibly bold and the cinematography was brilliant and the lead performance from Joaquin Phoenix was mesmerising – although for a guy on his immense level I’m not even sure if it’s a top five performance… off the top of my head I’m still tipping The Master, Walk the Line, You Were Never Really Here, Inherent Vice, and Her. Phoenix sizzling near best here though, losing enough weight that you think they’ve just sliced him in half and embodying that maniacal laugh and… yeah you don’t need me to tell you how good he is because you already know.

But this film is nasty, dude. Some people seem to have gotten a cathartic glee out of that nastiness but I found it a slog. It’s not about Joker/Arthur Fleck either because we know what his destiny is, that’s the whole reason why we’re watching. It’s more about the world around him, this oppressive and suffocating Gotham City in which every single person reacts to every single other person with cruelty, selfishness, scepticism, and suspicion. It is a hopeless place, which is kind of the points and a major theme here is the societal conditions that led to Fleck’s disenfranchisement… but for there not to be a single sympathetic character in the whole film? That’s what I mean by nasty.

Gotham City is stylised heavily on 1970s New York City and when you’re filming a dingy and grimy 1970s New York City, mate, there’s only one touchstone that you need and it’s safe to say that Todd Phillips did his research. With Arthur Fleck as both a deranged psycho in a sick world and a failed stand-up comedian with stalker-ish vibes you could hardly have made a film more indebted to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and King of Comedy. Especially King of Comedy, this film even goes so far as to invert Robert De Niro into the Jerry Lewis role from that one. If you’ve only seen Taxi Driver (or neither – in which case, come on, sort it out) then you might get away with it. But if you’re familiar with King of Comedy then there are a couple sequences here which cross the line between paying homage and simply being derivative. It’s all a little too indebted.

That’s not the worst thing in the world though. All artists steal, from big shot Hollywood directors to cheeky alternative media scribblers, and some of the great wonders of creativity were crafted from the clean-picked bones of their idols. If you’re gonna steal you can do a lot worse than the Scorsese/De Niro oeuvre after all. Nah the worst thing about this film is the shallow and ridiculous way they try to set a political backdrop to parallel Arthur Fleck’s decline in sanity.

As Fleck gets closer and closer to completely snapping there’s this weirdly imagined social protest that starts happening in Gotham which apparently consists entirely of poor people wanting to inflict violence on rich people. Like, there’s no attempt to polish a moral reckoning here or any kind of logical framework, or even to put a rational bend on things. It’s pure and simply poor people lashing out and the film has zero empathy for their plight.

There’s almost a semi-interesting salvation to this idea when they contrast it with Fleck’s nihilism even as he becomes the face of the uprising but even then they don’t quite see it through. The bits where they try to explain this backdrop, most excruciatingly the talk show scene at the end where De Niro grills Phoenix (over an admission he has no reason or evidence to believe), make it clear that the film hasn’t really given any thought to the uprising at all. It’s merely a plot device and what could have been a striking social commentary instead just becomes: poor people ain’t gonna take it anymore! Take what? Their poverty? Why are they so impoverished? Why is today so much worse than yesterday? What’s sparked this action all of a sudden?

By turning the revolt into a parallel of Fleck’s personal sense of oppression they rip all the actual cause and effect out of the matter. Instead of pointing the fingers at unfiltered capitalism’s culpability in this growing class chasm and seeking to understand how that was allowed to happen it’s all such an empty vessel. Which is okay because of course it’s still a comic book movie and you can’t expect deep and meaningful from a big blockbuster, plus we’ve already established that films are allowed to be offensive, but this was such a missed opportunity to say something real.

For me the success of the film hinges on that ending. Because there’s this little storytelling device established early on, as Fleck watches the Murray Franklin Show on telly and imagines himself being called up out of the audience, where you realise that we’re not dealing with a reliable narrator. We’re dealing with a man out of touch with the world around him and sometimes that can filter through into what we see on screen. I assume if you’re reading this that you’ve already seen the movie – why the hell else would you be reading a reaction to it? – but just in case I won’t mention the twist that happens later on (there are a couple, to be fair). I’ll just say that I think the ending is designed to be more ambiguous than it seems. (“I was thinking of a joke” “You wouldn’t get it”).

Ambiguous endings are supposed to be subjective so it’s really up to the individual how they wanna interpret them. My problem was that as the action ramped up the plot holes burned through with way too many moments which only make sense because they link things up, not because they feel like natural progressions in this world. An example is that talk show scene. I mean, the viral video stunt? Arthur Fleck has absolutely no relevance to that show but they find a video of him and roast him live on the telly for no reason. Who would possibly do that? This guy was supposed to be Gotham’s answer to Johnny Carson or David Letterman, not some half-arse America’s Funniest Home Videos bully. And then why is there no show director pressing the big red button after the producer starts begging the guy to cut to a commercial break? That’s what the technical difficulties screen was made for!

It was all too convenient… which either means it was bad script writing or maybe it was convenient for a reason... because it never actually happened. The whole film was a projection of a clinically insane man. Like, otherwise he’s never getting out of prison so how is he supposed to fight batman anyway (who is a young child in this film which means Joker would be at least in his fifties by the time Batman is roaming the streets, which is another confusing point – but the Never Happened excuse would explain it all, damn like this dude might not even be the real Joker).

So don’t count me amongst the crowd that’s adoring this film and all it accomplishes. It’s just so overwhelmingly cynical about human society. Obviously a lot of that is because of the lens the story is told through but I’m struggling with what might motivate a person to put that kind of vision out into the world. It’s one thing to portray a broken system but to do so without offering even a sliver of hope or the possibility of redemption? You’re basically saying that Arthur Fleck only had two options: mass murder or suicide. Not really the sunniest outlook, that one.

Still, the good does outweigh the bad. Joker is heavily stylistic in a way that you have to appreciate and I can’t write about this thing without mentioning a stunning soundtrack from Hildur Guðnadóttir as well. Plus some of the song choices, specifically That’s Life, are utterly inspired (not the Gary Glitter one though, mark that down in the What Were They Even Thinking!? category). As a comic book film it rises above the genre with its ambition and between Phoenix’s maniacal laughter, his incessant dancing, and those bloody clown masks, there’s a decent amount here that’ll sink into the wider cultural landscape same as with previous incarnations of this iconic villain.

Which makes me wonder if part of the problem isn’t that we’re dealing with a super villain here. Super villains are supposed to come fully-formed because any attempt to explain them causes us to sympathise with their suffering and trauma, if not their actions. You’re complicating the narrative. Muddying the waters of what’s supposed to be a clean line between good and evil. And when you humanise a villain, you also highlight the violence that the hero inflicts – which is otherwise excused because, hey, super villains are there to be punched and shot and kicked and generally abused. They deserve it.

And to its significant credit, Joker understands that. It might have failed miserably on a political level but it does have some extremely salient points to make about mental health and the way society brushes such struggles under the stigma rug, ignoring caring and preventative measures to instead react with outrage when it’s too late and something terrible has happened. It’s just that, like… damn that’s a nasty movie.

Be a champ and get involved on the old Patreon gig if you wanna join the TNC revolution

Whack an ad as well if you rate the yarn you’ve just read… or even if you don’t but just wanna be nice

Keep cool but care