November 2019 | Sight&Sound | 31
BEHIND A
PAINTED SMILE
oaquin Phoenix is 44 years old, with 35 movie
credits (more than half of those in leading roles),
one Golden Globe (for playing Johnny Cash in
Walk the Line) and three Oscar nominations (for Gladi-
ator, Walk the Line and The Master). He has gone by two
names – in his earliest screen appearances, he was ‘Leaf’
before reverting for good to his birth name in 1995 in
Gus Van Sant’s To Die For – and has had two retirements
from acting so far. One was authentic (when he jacked it
all in at the age of 16 to ride horses and work on a farm:
“Just growing up,” he called it) and one staged, when he
quit the business in 2008 to become a hip-hop star. That
volte-face turned out to be merely the raw material for
a 2010 mockumentary, I’m Still Here, in which a charac-
ter called ‘Joaquin Phoenix’ ditches a successful acting
career to pursue hip-hop, only to encounter incredulity
and mockery at every turn.
Phoenix is loyal: he has made four films with the
director James Gray (The Yards, 2000; We Own the Night,
2007; Two Lovers, 2008; The Immigrant, 2013) and two
each with Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master, 2012; In-
herent Vice, 2014), Van Sant (the second was Don’t Worry,
He Won’t Get Far on Foot, 2018) and M. Night Shyamalan
(Signs, 2002; The Village, 2004). Shyamalan said of him in
2002: “If he wanted to, he could be the biggest actor in the
world.” Whether he wants to is moot, at least now that he
has played Arthur Fleck, the physically bruised, psycho-
logically damaged part-time clown and aspiring stand-
up of Joker, a clammy character study with delusions of
Taxi Driver. The movie is like Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’
in reverse. Arthur begins the story as an insect scuttling
through the streets and being routinely crushed under-
foot, and ends it as something approaching a figurehead
for the dispossessed and deplorable.
Joker won the Golden Lion at Venice in Septem-
ber and will by now be hogging multiplex screens
J
As his sociopathic clown antihero in Todd Phillips’s ‘Joker’
confirms, right now Joaquin Phoenix is the most compelling actor
in American film – a star, whether or not that’s what he wants
By Ryan Gilbey
A RT
PRODUCTION
CLIENT
SUBS
REPRO OP
VERSION
Joker, 2
