We are, immediately, in a realm very far from
the spandexed world of superhero movies.
Where there is usually superficial shine, in the
human-sized, adult-oriented “Joker” there is grit
and grime. It’s 1981 in Gotham, but the fictional
city has never been so unmistakably New York,
home also to Scorsese’s Travis Bickle and Rupert
Pupkin. Due to a strike, garbage has piled up on
the sidewalks. Reports of “super rats” have hit the
tabloids. While twirling a sign on the sidewalk
(“Everything Must Go”), Arthur is harassed by
a group of teenagers and then beaten and
mugged in a nearby alleyway.
For Arthur, everything has already gone. His
life is pitiful and unrelentingly bleak. Athur
lives with his mother (Frances Conroy). His
tenuous grip on employment slips away
when a gun, given to him by a coworker after
the mugging, slides out of his pants while
entertaining children at a hospital.
Phoenix, among the finest actors working, is
dramatically thinner here, turning him sinewy
and sinister. His face and movement holds the
movie together. It’s impossible to look away
from an actor so fully, so hypnotically throwing
himself into a character, even if there’s an
acting-class self-consciousness to the whole
production _ one surely indebted in spirit to
Heath Ledger’s whole-body transformation in
“The Dark Knight.” But Phoenix has also been
better with similarly broken souls in films like
“The Master” and “The Immigrant.”
In close-up, Phoenix’s smiles are ghastly. He
chokes on his laughter. He’s been raised to smile
through pain, tragically divorcing himself from
expressing his emotions.