Yeah, I know... I'm late to the party.
So, last year (Or was in the year before? Pandemic Time is a blur...) I decided to give my dad Joker as a Father's Day gift. I'd not seen it, but it's a comic book film, and my dad likes those, too. I'd heard it was a great movie (the Blu-Ray I have has a quote calling it 'a masterpiece'), but other than it being a Joker origin story, I didn't know too much more about it. I think I had heard that it does a bang up job showing mental illness in a very realistic way before I gave it to him, but that might have come after...
Dad... didn't like it. (I felt really bad, giving him a gift that made him feel a certain kinda way, so I replaced it with Spider-Man Home Coming and Far From Home, which he enjoyed much more better, and so Joker fell back into my possession.)
I hadn't seen it because I was not in any way shape or form interested in a Joker origin story. My favourite Joker is Heath Ledger's, and one aspect about him that I loved was that he was an agent of chaos who just appeared out of nowhere to fuck shit up. I came to really like that idea for Joker, so I wasn't keen on finding out what makes him tick or whatnot. I just want him to show up, blow some shit to high hell, and laugh maniacally about it along the way.
I also, however, have a PS4 I got for free secondhand, and I've been apprehensive about putting any discs in it (for reasons), but I decided to test it with something that I might not miss if it got ruined. So, Joker is how I spent my Sunday night (and the disc is fine).
It really is a masterpiece of cinematic storytelling. Joaquin Phoenix does an absolutely astounding job portraying this guy. There is depth of character, wonderful storytelling, great dialogue, natural flow in the acting. It is, by all accounts, a spectacular production.
I hate it.*
When the movie finished, I had a lot of emotions going on inside my head that I couldn't really identify, but in the end I was just left feeling empty and drained. I get why people have issue with how mental illness is portrayed in this film. It hits just a bit too close to home, the failure of the system to take care of people. When we meet Arthur Fleck, he is doing his best to live his life as normally as possible. He still struggles, but he wants to not feel horrible all the time. He goes to his therapy sessions, keeps the journal he's been told to, takes his medications. Even with Gotham being shit, he's trying.
Gotham isn't, though, and therein lies the problem. His therapist doesn't seem to care much... To give her the benefit of the doubt, she's probably buried under more cases than one person should ever have to deal with. Then, though, the city cuts funding across the board, and that includes Social Services. The office is getting closed, and even though Arthur asks how he's supposed to get his meds now, there's apparently no help to be had.
Arthur becomes one of the forgotten, the people of society who need assistance who fall through the cracks constantly. They need psychological help or financial assistance or housing assistance or whatever assistance, but either there are no programs in place or the income restrictions on them are too strict. Joker puts this on raw display for you, the observer, to consume, and for anyone who happens to be or was at one time forgotten or overlooked (or anyone who has an actual human level of sympathy), it strikes a very uncomfortable nerve. As social animals, humans don't actually like dealing with apathy.
Even still, Arthur tries. He tries and he tries and he tries until he reaches the breaking point where he doesn't see the point in trying anymore. He's beaten up, he's fired from his job (which he loves), he finds out his mother allowed him to be abused, he's ridiculed on television by a personality he admires. Everything in his life is crumbling down around him, and with nothing there to help support him, he gives in. It is a story that happens all too often, and yet is ignored at the same rate. Granted, not everyone becomes the Joker... A lot of the time they end up dead, which is absolutely a failing on society's part.
...
So... yeah.
There are some inconsistencies with what I know of the Batman universe that didn't quite sit right with me (I am, after all, still in that 'I really need to read the comics' stage of not having done so yet). One thing is how much older than Bruce this story makes Joker, as Arthur is about 20 years his senior (give or take a couple of years). I'm not entirely sure why this bothers me as much as it does. Perhaps it is because it gives Joker a longevity in the criminal underbelly of Gotham that I don't wholly agree with, but, again, I prefer the random chaotic pop-up version of his character, so that may have something to do with it.
Another is that Thomas Wayne is portrayed as being a dick. I know the man wasn't exactly a saint (I mean, he's only human), but most of what I know of him, other than tidbits from Wikipedia that don't make much sense to me without the overall context, comes from Bruce and Alfred, who both hold much more fond memories of him than someone in Arthur's position would. It was jarring, though, to watch him be the hard-ass and then punch Arthur rather than actually trying to explain himself in a more compassionate way. It isn't like it's Arthur's fault his mother lived the delusion that Thomas was her son's father, after all. Being aggressive and dismissive about it when, at this point, Arthur has no reason to distrust his mother is only going to cause further issue. As a doctor and a philanthropist, I would have expected a bit more softness from Mr Wayne... but I guess that would not have fit the narrative being told to explain how the Joker was born.
It was helpful, I think, to mentally disconnect Joker from the Gotham I am used to. It is, first and foremost, a character biopic, and, no lie, it reads a bit like fanfiction (good fanfiction, mind, not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child gods-awful fanfiction). Other than a few overlapping characters, it really doesn't actually feel like a Batman-related story, so it was actually pretty easy to do. I did it initially without even realising it.
The end of the film left me having various questions, though... After it is revealed that Arthur's 'relationship' with Sophie was all in his head, I have to wonder what exactly happened and what didn't. Did he actually smother his mother in the hospital? Did he murder Sophie after he broke into her apartment? What about the incident with Randall and Gary? Or his therapist at the end?
I don't know, and I don't like not knowing.
* This is not actually true. It was a great film. This isn't a Review (sort of), but if I were giving it a rating, I think I'd have to give it at least an 8/10.
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