A great performance from Joaquin Phoenix, and fantastic Cinemetography are enough to distract from Joker’s ultimately shallow, and overstuffed, plot.
The Upside:
Two things stand out in particular about Joker, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance, and the gorgeous cinematography. Joaquin’s awkward and unstable “Arthur Fleck”‘s descent into madness is by far the high point of the film. His slow burn into insanity and few violent outbursts are without a doubt unsettling and disturbing, and paint a horrific picture of an all too plausibly realistic individual. I loved the depiction of Gotham as well. The city itself feels unique and alive, and adds to the despair of the title character. There is also ambiguity to the character which is quite expertly done. He is established as an unreliable narrator, so a lot of what we are shown as an audience, could be truth, but could be the product of Joker’s narcissism.
The Downside:
Joker has an incredibly overstuffed plot. There is a lot of fluff to what should have been a straight forward story. The themes presented are simply recycled and shown in new ways, or completely repeated, instead of being peeled apart and dissected. The fan service of Batman tied into it felt unnecessary and didn’t quite mesh with the rest of the movie, and a side plot romance doesn’t add anything to the film other than showing the character is unstable (which is beaten like a dead horse). Some of the humor is also awkward, especially jokes directed at little people in a movie that focuses partially on respecting people with disabilities and/or illnesses. There are also some awkward jumps from very goofy to dramatic/serious that seem incredibly odd and out of place. A couple of examples being campy violence in the Joker’s apartment and a very odd song choice that makes the definitive transformation scene, which could have been an iconic moment, fairly cringey.
Oh and (SPOILER ALERT) did I mention you have to watch Batman’s parents get killed AGAIN?
The Verdict: B-
Joker is a good movie with a lot of flaws. Conflicting tones, and unnecessary fan service keep it from having a true identity, but gorgeous cinematography and a great performance by Joaquin Phoenix make it well worth watching.
P.S.
Despite a few sexy lines that have been floating around Instagram, the themes presented in Joker are very shallow, and are veiled in social commentary and controversy to seem like they carry more weight than they actually do in the film itself (okay I’ll be honest, this is just me calling out the die hard fans of this pretty good movie making it out to be a masterpiece, which is why I’m not including this in the review itself). The reason I say this, is it is established that the Joker is an unreliable narrator, so to say that the lines he gives are tragic and we should empathize with the character is a complete oversight of the fact that the character has narcissistic tendencies.
End Rant.
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