The Movie Room

Joker 2019, directed by Todd Phillips

Rating: 5/10

This movie is one that I thought I would love, as I am usually very into comic book movies, and especially into ones that try something new, and if that something new is “gritty 1970s New York” aesthetic, then that’s even more up my alley (see Smithereens). And yet, here I am thinking this movie is far from the original take that it promised.

The homages to past great films make up pretty much this entire movie. Plot points and mise-en-scène are taken from movies like Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, The Third Man, Network, The Dark Knight, and many, many others. I would be super into that if the movie made a point with any of this copying, but instead it just copies and is like “look at the movies I know!” Beyond not having a point to its “homages,” the point of the entire film itself is so nebulous that Joker: Folie à Deux exists almost entirely as a post-script to let people know what the first one was trying to say (and then again not being much of its own movie). This movie essentially seems to have no point in any regard and serves as just a two-hour game of “spot the reference.” If one goes into this without a knowledge of older cinema, then it would probably be much better, but operating on the same knowledge base as the director (seemingly) made me feel like the entire thing is as hollow as Arthur Fleck himself. 

Despite the film having nothing to say, it is competently put together and its greatest strength is Joaquin Phoenix. His performance as Arthur Fleck is legendary. Beyond the weight loss that he put into the role (which is an acting technique I don’t really love—I would rather the actors just act well instead of having to starve themselves or bury themselves under layers of makeup), his physicality, line readings, and faces make this character into a true living breathing person, even as he is a person with no personality of his own. He is clearly a man made up of the various bits around him, but unlike most people that take our experiences and mold them into a cohesive personality he has taken these bits and tried to just reflect them back at the world. While this same ethos is why I think this screenplay is terrible (see my previous paragraph), it works as a character bit especially when given life through such a performance. 

Overall, though Arthur Fleck works as a character made up of bits with no guiding star, the film itself falls flat for me because it is also made up of homages with no central thesis. I do not think this movie deserved most of its 11 Academy Award nominations, but I do think that the two it won (for Best Actor and Best Original Score) were justly awarded. This movie is well-made, but that’s not enough to make up for the fact that it demonstrates no reason to exist.