Joker

2019's JOKER became more than a box office smash.  It became an anthem.  Not just for Millenials.  For millions who quite frighteningly could identify a little too closely with the titular character  - a manic depressive who suffers a hefty dose of psychosis, eventually to become homicidal.  That's no spoiler if you know the Batman stories, that the Joker would become Bruce Wayne's #1 nemesis.  Director Todd Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver took a bid from the stark graphic novels but went off on their own dark trails to give a backstory to that most famous of comic book villains.  Attempting to make him less fantastic, less larger than life, less comic. More like that defeated soul in a darkened theater who might see a reflection of him (or her) self.  Left behind by the American Dream.  Never having a chance.  The victim of bad parenting. 

In a nightmarish Gotham City, quite similar to early 1980s NYC, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) aspires to be a stand-up comic, working days dressed as a clown to visit children's hospitals or to hold sandwich board signs for going out of business sales.  He lives with his mother Penny (Frances Fisher) in squalor, a hovel of an apartment.   His night gigs don't go so well, and one gets recorded and ends up on 'The Murray Franklin Show", where it is ridiculed mercilessly by its host (Robert DeNiro), one who young Arthur always adoringly watched on T.V.  This leads to an invitation to be on the show........

In between,  Arthur meets and begins dating his neighbor, single mother Sophie (Zazie Beetz). She seems to be the only one who gets him, his dark sense of humor and outlook on life.  She seems to good to be true. But he also loses his free medication when funding cuts shut down social services.  And three corporate douches fatefully harrass him on the subway.  And we meet Bruce Wayne (and his father).......

Much happens in JOKER, and I'll leave my invisible audience to discover the sordid details on their own.  This is a grim, sad motion picture, nicely shot by Lawrence Sher.  Digitally, with Arri Alexa cameras, but also with some nifty old school optical effects.  I have to give Phillips, whose resume has been less than impressive, props for capturing a specific look and feel for its time period.  Technically, the film sparkles.  But...the use of old pop songs/standards for ironic effect are far too obvious, as if the filmmakers didn't trust their rabid audience.  And a little of Hildur Guonadottir's relentlessly dour scoring goes a long way.  JOKER is also guilty of being too self-consciously ominous and self important.  It really believes it is an important contemporary polemic, a grand statement on class struggle and mental illness.  To me, the movie is an also ran thematically.  I'll let others make parallels to groups like Antifa.

Mainly, it doesn't have an original idea under its greasepaint.  The homages to TAXI DRIVER and several other films (some from much earlier decades) are well publicized, and mostly heavy handed.  Many viewers/fans of this movie have no filmic reference points, so it will all seem fresh.  I want to scold/feel sorry for them for not being familiar with THE KING OF COMEDY, THE MAN WHO LAUGHS, or even FIGHT CLUB, but not everyone is immersed in the history of cinema.   Each generation embraces some bit of pop culture, makes it their own, and this one certainly reflects the times.  It guess it is valuable for that alone.  I hope it hasn't inspired or incited any mimicry of its lead character, or his brethren, who emerge in a fiery, troubling climax.

Joaquin? Good work overall, with a few regrettable "look at me" moments, particularly early on.  His laugh at times sounds like that of a demented 1970s era Burt Reynolds.