It’s a shallow, under-examined movie that
renders the dark descent of a troubled man with
an operatic fervor. That this feels so familiar, like
the backstories of countless unhinged gunmen
that so populate our tragedy-filled newspapers,
could be seen as a powerful and grim reflection
of today. Since the film has already so stuck a
nerve, perhaps it is. But conjuring psychosis for
the sake of a pre-determined origin story, make
“Joker” feel cavalier and opportunistic. Its danger,
really, is no deeper than a clown’s make-up.
The template of “Joker” isn’t anything from
the comics (Phillips wrote the film with Scott
Silver) but a pair of Martin Scorsese films about
twisted loners: “Taxi Driver” and “The King of
Comedy.” To make the point, Phillips has cast
Robert De Niro, the star of both of those films,
as a late-night host whose show Arthur Fleck
(Joaquin Phoenix), our Joker-to-be, dreams of
being on. Phillips, the maker of male comedies
about clung-to adolescence (“Road Trip,” “Old
School,” “The Hangover”), has elevated the
Joker from DC Comics villain to ’70s-movie
anti-hero.
The Arthur we meet is a clown-for-hire and a
wannabe stand-up. In the opening scene, he’s
caking his face with makeup in front of a mirror.
His smile already has a plainly forced, unnatural
form. It’s the crooked outward manifestation
of Arthur’s anguish. Laughter is the symptom
of his heavily medicated disturbia (“All I have is
negative thoughts,” he tells his social-services
case worker), a product, we learn, of a childhood
of abuse. To those who look at him strangely
he hands a card informing them that he laughs
inappropriately, like a condition of Tourette’s.