Joker purports to be an origin story for - arguably - the greatest villain ever ripped from the pages of comics. Using the structure of a “gritty character study” it follows a man caught in the muck of political neglect and social unrest during the baton pass between the 70s and 80s in a mutant New York City/Gotham hybrid. According to Bryan Callen on The Fighter and the Kid podcast (a background actor in the film), Phillips wanted to make Taxi Driver for the 21st century, and the pervasive comic book medium became a means to make that happen.

Joker pulls you into the orbit of a young mentally ill street clown named Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix). Plagued by an unseemly, snarling, screech of laugh Arthur is flogged by apathetic street kids by day, and cares for his shut-in mother Penny (Frances Conroy) by night. The only shards of light that permeate this deepening swamp of despair and powerlessness are in fleeting fantasies surrounding his favourite T.V show. Host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) - is the respite for the cruel world and the kindling for his aspirations to become a comedian.

Co-writer and Director Todd Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver have created a work of disorientating misery. On a technical level, it’s superb and affecting work. Time after time in Joker, you plunge into these kinds of audio/visual immersion pools. Reflecting Arthur’s psychosis through Lawrence Sher’s (Godzilla King of Monsters) towering cinematography and Hildur Guðnadóttir’s (Chernobyl) demonic possession of a score; is experientially sublime.

Joaquin Phoenix is absolutely the actor of his generation. As I write this review and I’m assembling a list of my favourite films of the last decade, it’s been near impossible not to feature at least three films starring Phoenix (they are The Master, Her, Inherent Vice in case you were wondering).

While Phillips’ cast is riddled with character actors whose unique faces would rival the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest it’s mostly an individual piece. Frances Conroy’s Penny Fleck feels older relatives that you’ve had in your life whose grip of memory and time is being consumed by that succubus dementia. Zazie Beetz’ Sophie feels as if her role in Arthur’s life is imagined long before the twist toward the end of the film. It’s simply unimaginable that a single black mother at that time would ever suppress the intuition that this man’s psychosis is a danger to her and her daughter. Robert De Niro’s Murray Franklin is totemic, a jawing flat-faced 70s Jay Leno, wrongfully diagnosing Arthur’s limits. While many critics and audience members alike have called out this performance as intrinsically connected to the Scorsese masterwork The King of Comedy I think that’s a misdiagnosis. De Niro’s square-jawed Franklin is the establishment. While he may have the ability to conduct a crowd and deliver incisive barbs, he’s punching down at a people feeling abandoned and angry.

In critic Luke Buckmaster’s examination of the Joker, he called it “a rare and incendiary work of art.” Luke goes on to talk about the politics of the film. If popular art is a mirror to our society and Joker as a character in the movie and now the film’s place in popular culture is a symbol of the actualisation that there is simply no societal mechanism that has your best interests at heart.

It’s an interesting take that in my mind misplaces the credit for context that Arthur emerged. Arthur did not create this; he’s a by-product. Arthur did not create discontent and revolt. He’s the star of a powder keg moment, a hashtag that’s gone viral, a transient Egg Boy (a young Aussie kid made virally famous for smashing an egg on a racist politician).

Here, perhaps, lies the issue. Joker did not affect political change. It did not, upon reflection, insight violence or aggressive activism in any way. The reception was bordering on lascivious. It’s all gushing confirmation bias that those viewing it as a near-religious parable. Finally had a character that exhibited their apathy, inferiority and amorality.

The reaction in pockets of online reminded me of a quote from another popular film. Men in Black’s Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) - thanks to writer Ed Solomon - gets the quote of the film. I think that it’s genuinely relevant to the supposed danger, thrill, edge of “Joker”.

Will Smith’s Edwards/J says, “People are smart. They can handle it.”

K replies, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals, and you know it.”

Since the movie was released, there’s be a plethora of takes ranging from masterpiece to garbage fire, as well as the positive audience endorsement of enough ticket sales to make it the most successful R rated movie of all time (usurping Deadpool).

I have experienced two moments of contemplation and broad reevaluation since the film’s release.

The first was in a reaction with Stu Coote, Sydney critical voice who shared the proposed theory that Arthur’s entire tale is a fabrication. The finale of the film that places Arthur in therapy in Arkham Asylum has a clock on the wall. By design - one assumes - almost every clock in every other part of the film matches that time. I’ll give Phillips intentional benefit of the doubt. That would mean that this is Arthur is manipulating his captors with an elaborate fiction, laced with twisted facts, to affect empathy and weakness. It is thereby creating an opportunity to initiate his unhinged and bloody escape. While it certainly made sense and felt more faithful to the character’s genius in a way that isn’t addressed by the rest of the work, it didn’t add up.

The second is a letter from my favourite filmmaker Michael Mann to Todd Phillips about the film. Mann praises Phillips and Silver’s screenplay calling it “authentic and not derivative.” Mann goes onto say that “We find Arthur disturbing and poignant simultaneously. He’s both child victim and adult perpetrator. Both are true, as is the case with most schizophrenics. That both are true is uncomfortable. We find ourselves in a fugue state. It’s counterpoint.”

Mann’s points are something to consider in portrayals of the Joker. In Mann’s own work adapting Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon into Manhunter, he wanted to make audiences feel that quandary deeper than in the pages of the novel. It’s not that Arthur Fleck cannot be “victim and perpetrator” it’s that when his cocoon opens the inference is that he ascends into the Joker. Manhunter’s Dollarhyde crystallises that premise in a vastly more frightening and unique way. Dollarhyde’s family observation, killing, the staging of victims into a profoundly perverted dead audience for his sexual domination and death-dealing - is “authentic and not derivative.” Origin stories in the superhero genre, by definition, are derivative.

Finally, perhaps the most egregious sin of the film is being put through the fucking Bat origin AGAIN. If one more filmmaker shows that damned dominant, Frank Miller, pearl flying, double murder, I’m going to curse loudly at the screen and frighten the patrons around me. There’s no creative scenario that doesn’t end in the filmmakers or the studio treating that the audience like complete fucking morons.

This film is a Joker cosplay more than Joker. A cipher elevated to saviour by the disenfranchised and angry. It’s not only a bad joke, but it’s also a sad joke.

★★/★★★★