I want to start this out by saying that I'm not going to compare any other actor’s portrayal of this character in this. I think they all have very different feels and they were all going fo something very different. Having said all that though, I think this is the version of the character that spoke to me the most. I’m a huge Batman fan and I consider the Joker to be one of the most complex villains of all time. This movie shows a side to that character that we have never seen before. Before I get into my thoughts I also want to say that I will going into full spoilers here since talking about this movie without them would be basically me drooling over how much I loved it. So let’s talk about this movie and some of the “controversy” surrounding it.
I saw a tweet by someone who asked what people thought the plot of this movie was and, as simple as that sounds, it’s a complicated answer to me. Yes, at it’s core it’s a movie about how Arthur Fleck transformers into the Joker but it’s also a deep dive character study. Because everything we see in this movie is through his eyes and he proves to be a very unreliable narrator. Him thinking he had a relationship with his neighbor and him wanting to have a father like figure with a late night talk show host are the big ones that we know weren’t true. It’s debatable if the ending really happened but we’ll get to that later. It’s also so different in that we just have this character in Gotham and Bruce won’t be the Bat until at least 15 plus years in the future. There’s a lot to unpack here and I want to talk about some things individually.
First I want to go into his look and how this movie is shot. It’s Nolan level gorgeous with some of the shots here and it’s one of the cleanest looking pictures I’ve seen in theaters in a while. It has that 70s - 80s New York ganstar movie feel and I’m guessing that’s very much on purpose. Even though it’s Gotham it doesn’t really feel like it outside of the visuals saying it is. That’s not really a negative thing, just a thing about it. Now, onto how Joaquin looks in this movie…my God! You can tell he lost 52 pounds and I’m not sure we saw a single shot of him being himself in this movie. He became Arthur and then became the Joker. There are so many shots of him not saying anything but the way he is moving and his facial expressions are literally screaming! Like after the subway scene and him dancing in the bathroom, I’ve never seen a scene like that in my life and it’s so amazing! The best looking/acting scene in my opinion is the final scene of him as Joker when his followers drag him out of the police car. The way he dances on the car, him smearing the blood on his mouth to make a smile, and the music! It’s one of the best scenes I’ve ever seen in my life and I got emotional both times I saw the movie!
Ok, three paragraphs in to this so let’s talk about the violence in this movie and my opinion on it. It’s not that violent of a movie in my opinion. His body count in this movie is 6. Bane literally blew up an entire football stadium in Dark Knight Rises. But, the violence here does feel more than that. Each act of violence is calculated and on purpose outside of the subway guys. That was the start of his transformation into Joker to me and those were impulse kills. I think the fact that they are all so in your face and realistic, that is the thing that is turning some people off. They are all acts that could happen in real life and one of them is very disturbing. When he kills his mother after he finds out she was also ill and lied about him being adopted, that one was cruel and would understand people not wanting to see that. I will say though that’s the character Joker. He doesn’t view people like others and if you are in his way in any form, he doesn’t hesitate with you. I loved they had the nerve to put that in there.
Staying with the violence theme let’s talk about the talk show scene. This is more than likely the scene that people are saying they are disturbed by. The shot right before Murray brings him out is one of the best shots in a movie of all time in my opinion. As they played his video again of him at the comedy club and Joker is standing there holing a cigarette with the blue and red of the backstage lights on him…Jesus what a shot. You can literally see the Arthur leave his body and the Joker emerge when he comes through the curtain. I also think that the speech he gives right before he kills Murray is straight up director Todd Phillips and it’s so good! And as cruel as this sounds, I love the fact that after he shot Murray he laughed with the blood on his face. It's a prefect scene from start to finish in my opinion.
I mentioned his laugh in the last paragraph so let's dive into that a bit. I loved that they used that as a condition. It makes it seem realistic while also unsettling to hear when he does it. He even gets to the point several times that he is choking on it and that little detail added so much to me. By the end when he is full on laughing it has a different tone to it and that was a smart evolution of it. I think it's the creepiest Joker laugh we have ever gotten!
The music in this movie is some of the best I've ever heard! It's prefect with what is going on and even the songs they play that seem out of place worked really well for me. Like when he becomes full Joker and he's leaving the building and dancing on the stairs, just perfect! The score is some of the most emotionally haunting music I've ever heard. It's very string heavy but it's not used much. The ending shot of him as Joker in the streets is so powerful it's hard to not get caught up in it and that's in part to the score.
An aspect of this movie that will be talked about for years is the unsure nature of it. We see so many things that he thinks is real but aren't and that makes it hard to tell if the real things are even real. There's no way that isn't on purpose and I love that! It's like in the Dark Knight when Joker keeps changing the story of how he got his scars, it's in that vein. He's gotten to the point of insanity that even he doesn't remember and that's what's going on in this movie. I honestly think that the ending is real because of how many other things he visualized. I think that was him finally getting the recognition that he wanted the entire film.
So I overall thought this movie was amazing and is in contention as one of my favorite movies of all time. I know that I probably shouldn't agree with/root for Joker in this movie but it touched so many things that so many of us feel but never actually say out loud. Do I think this movie is dangerous? Yeah, but not for existing. It's dangerous in that if someone wanted to do this they could get pretty far with it before they were stopped. It's meant as a waring, not an encouraging thing. Joker is not a person, he's a symbol. Arthur Fleck dies when he becomes Joker and he's never returing. I think the only way we see a human side to this character is if we get more of him and Batman has to be involved. We saw the Wayne murders in this movie and they were brutal, so they could go in that direction if they wanted. The murders is what connects them and that's what makes them who they are. They are both symbols, not men. This is all just my opinion though!
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