Joker: The monster in the deck

Joker (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.4.19

Heath Ledger has some serious competition.

Actors have craved playing villains ever since Shakespeare’s era; as the cliché goes, it’s because they get the best lines. There’s a certain truth to that, just as the challenge of persuasively portraying madness carries its own allure.

As we initially meet him, Arthur (Joaquin Phoenix), much too socially awkward to hold a
"regular" job, makes ends meet — barely — by dressing up as a clown, and trying to
bring some joy into people's lives.

But that’s only half the equation. Unless one believes that evil emerges from the womb that way, it’s even more fascinating to depict the evolution of a monster: the downward spiral that transforms a disenfranchised — but otherwise placid — individual into a violent sociopath.

That’s where director/co-scripter Todd Phillips — sharing the writing credit with Scott Silver — truly shines. Joker is an uncomfortably disturbing portrait of an awkward misfit who’s just perceptive enough to recognize — and eventually resent — the fact that society doesn’t give a bent copper penny about him. He’s one of the “invisibles”: the exponentially expanding mass of homeless, jobless and unloved, utterly ignored by the One Percenters who don’t even glance in his direction.

If this sounds disturbingly similar to current events, that’s no accident. Phillips and Silver unerringly tap into the rising anxieties of middle-class, blue-collar and working poor individuals who have lost patience with the system, and therefore are willing to hitch their wagons to a movement or charismatic individual … even if he is a lunatic. 

Phillips and Silver exploit that angst so well, that at times Joker feels like the match about to be tossed into a dynamite-laden basement.

(Which explains Warner Bros.’ serious case of the jitters, while releasing this film in the wake of last week’s “mass shooting threat” directed at U.S. movie theaters. Recall that 2012’s Colorado slaughter took place during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises.)

Of course, Phillips and Silver’s script is merely the template; Joaquin Phoenix brings it to chilling life. His performance is an all-in depiction of mental instability: of — as initially introduced — a social outcast desperately trying to hang on to meager crumbs of civility and sanity. The film opens on cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s tight-tight-tight close-up on Phoenix, cast as hapless Arthur Fleck, who mumbles, stumbles and chain-smokes his way through an interview with a tight-lipped but sympathetic social worker (Sharon Washington, aces in a brief role).

She asks to see his journal. He reluctantly shares it. We glimpse some of the pages, and regret having done so. The message is clear: This film will be relentlessly, unapologetically uncomfortable. Fasten your seat belts; it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Arthur has a menial job as a clown for hire at children’s birthday parties and store openings — or closings — while attempting to live the mantra instilled by his mother: “She told me I had a purpose: to bring laughter and joy to the world.” Unfortunately, Arthur has the added misfortune of suffering from Pseudobulbar affect, characterized by uncontrollable and inappropriate laughter.

The more anxious he becomes, the more deranged and unmanageable the guffaws, chortles and half-smothered chuckles, to the point that these fits cause him genuine pain … and we viewers genuinely feel Phoenix’s agony. (Just in passing, this is the best explanation of the Joker’s demented cackle that I’ve ever come across.)

On the home front, Arthur tenderly cares for his invalid mother, Penny (Frances Conroy); they enjoy watching late-night talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Arthur fancies himself a stand-up comic, a goal he unwisely admits to the other sorry souls who apply white pancake and bulbous red noses, when they clock in each day at Ha-Ha’s, their decaying clown-for-hire outfit.

Arthur’s job is just enough to keep them afloat. Wanting to help, his mother constantly sends letters — never answered — to wealthy Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), for whom she worked, years ago. He’s a good man, she insists; if he only knew how we live, he’d want to help.

Actually, Wayne is campaigning for mayor of Gotham City, promising to fix the homeless crisis, along with myriad other signs of urban decay. One gets the impression he intends to “cure” the homeless by locking them all up at Arkham Asylum, where they’ll be out of sight of the One Percenters who dislike stepping over drunks and derelicts sleeping on the sidewalk. (Again … sound familiar?)

The setting, Thomas Wayne’s presence and a few other carefully selected markers indicate that this saga is indeed part of Batman’s carefully constructed folklore. But such mythic familiarity doesn’t preclude the unsettling real-world parallels. The 1960s Batman TV show and Tim Burton’s early big-screen films clearly occupied a fantasyland of exaggerated burlesques, but that changed with Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, which brought the fantastic into our own back yards.

Phillips, Silver and Phoenix have upped that ante. Because Batman doesn’t yet exist — Bruce Wayne (Dante Pereira-Olson) is but a quiet little rich boy here — it’s distressingly easy to witness, understand and even accept Arthur Fleck’s transformation from oft-kicked dog to … something else. He feels very real.

1982’s Blade Runner set a precedent for a richly visualized environment divided between the über-wealthy and everybody else, the latter relegated to existence on hauntingly grimy and neglected streets. But that was science-fiction; we could be “safely horrified,” realizing that this futuristic society need not come to pass. We can’t be nearly as complacent about production designer Mark Friedberg’s depiction of a Gotham City that looks, feels and (were we there) smells as credibly awful as the economic collapse that typified 1970s New York City. 

This isn’t the faux-retro, Art Deco/gothic sensibilities of Burton or Nolan’s Gotham City; this is today’s Los Angeles, San Francisco or Chicago. Sher makes excellent use of this city’s towering buildings and steep inner-city stairways. Watching Phoenix climb one such set of stairs, early on, we wonder if he’ll even make it to the top; utterly crushed by despair, he has the hobbled gait of a near-crippled centenarian. 

Sher also makes excellent use of darkness and shadows; this is one of the rare modern crime dramas that deserves to keep company with 1940s and ’50s film noir classics. Even the hallway and elevator in Arthur’s dilapidated apartment complex are foreboding.

Hildur Guðnadóttir’s underscore is unsettling and disquieting, with bowed, low-end bass and rumbling synth enhancing the slowly — yet always palpably — rising aura of menace. His moody themes share screen time with pop tunes artfully placed for maximum irony: Jimmy Durante’s “Smile,” Frank Sinatra’s “Send in the Clowns” and The Guess Who’s “Laughing,” among others.

And for sheer, flesh-crawling ookiness, nothing beats the horrifying application of The Glitter Band’s iconic “Rock ’n’ Roll (Part 2),” at a moment of dramatic intensity.

De Niro is rock-solid as a shallow celebrity who feigns compassion and sensitivity, while losing no opportunity to humiliate a hapless target (the fascinating other side of the coin, to his role as Rupert Pupkin in 1982’s darkly savage The King of Comedy). Zazie Beetz radiates empathy as Sophie, who lives with her young daughter in the apartment a few doors down from Arthur and his mother. Beetz has a wan, rueful smile that speaks volumes.

Shea Whigham and Bill Camp are memorable as a pair of Gotham City police detectives who become increasingly curious about Arthur; Glenn Fleshler and Leigh Gill stand out as two of Arthur’s fellow workers, at Ha-Ha’s.

Phillips’ film proceeds slowly, but it’s never, ever boring; he and editor Jeff Groth cunningly heighten our anxiety because of their deliberate pacing. In truth, we often don’t want things to move faster; we’re too worried about what’s coming next. Despite Arthur’s struggle to be “proper” and “compliant” in the face of abuse, we know that — sooner or later — “this time” will become “the last time.”

Or, more accurately, the first time for … something else.

Joker definitely isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s highly disturbing and feels persuasively possible (we can hope not “probable”).

And it should satisfy Batman fans, which is the cherry on top.