Clowns to the Left of Me But is Joker to the Right?

One of the great ironies of 2019 is it was the year in which Martin Scorsese lamented the theme park attraction of superhero movies, declaring them not cinema, while Todd Phillips Joker lovingly evoked Scorsese throughout his film. Joker may not have quite achieved the status of cinema that Scorsese so clumsily fails to satisfactorily define, and despite its failures, the film is possibly the closest to cinema yet. For whatever failures, Joker fails gloriously but just as glorious are its successes.

Phillips wrote the script along with Scott Silver and it offers a new origin story of the Joker in the form of Arthur Fleck, played predictably well by Joaquin Phoenix. A sad sack and awkward loser, Fleck suffers from a strange disorder that causes him to laugh at the most inappropriate of times. Arthur hides behind his disorder by working as a party clown, but the indignities of this persona, particularly in a decadent Gotham, lead to a series of violent episodes.

It begins with he standing in front of a business swirling a promotional sign when several young thugs steal his sign. He chases after them only to be beaten and kicked severely, putting him in the hospital. To add insult to injury his employer takes him to task for losing the promotional sign and gives him a warning and holds him responsible for the cost of the sign. Later, in the locker room a co-worker, Randall (Glen Fleshler) gifts him a pistol as the pieces carefully fall into play.

Phillips Gotham is so reminiscent of Scorsese’s early film depictions of New York that the film often alternates its evocations between Mean Streets and Taxi Driver with a smattering of King of Comedy. Robert De Niro co-stars as Murray Franklin a twist on his Rupert Pupkin character of King of Comedy where this time he is the late show host (played with great restraint by Jerry Lewis in the former) and Joker is the wannabe comedian. Even down to the idolized attachment Arthur Fleck has for Murray Franklin the evocations of Scorsese’s work is undeniable. But Scorsese is not all that is evoked in Joker.

Much has been made about Phoenix vs. Ledger Joker’s, and there is a scene, one of the few on the stairs scenes, where Phoenix’s Joker looks eerily like Ledgers. Arthur Fleck, however, is no Heath Ledger Joker. That Joker, much like the Joker of the comics is a criminal mastermind, perhaps only faking insanity. Arthur Fleck, on the other hand is a helpless, miserable soul who imagines himself a misunderstood angel brought to this world to make people laugh. Laugh they do, but thanks to a merciless Murray Franklin who shows a video of Fleck tanking at an open mic stand-up comedy night, they laugh at him not with him.

This moment, where Fleck goes from giddily watching Franklin feature his stand up routine on national television to embarrassed outrage is possibly the moment it becomes clear that we’ve been watching both the poetry and brutality of Gotham through Fleck’s not so stable mind. It seems odd that this socially awkward man is able to, after first stalking his attractive neighbor and single mother, Sophie (Zazie Beetz), wind up dating her and that she becomes his attentive and adoring lover. It also seems creepy odd that he is prone to give his own mother baths while looking on fondly. Arthur’s world is nuts, and it becomes increasingly clear that if he were narrating this tale he would not be the most reliable narrator.

The further Arthur’s life spirals out of control the more obvious it is he is suffering from mental illness. He’s no criminal mastermind, nor does he seem in anyway to even come remotely close to the kind of villain that would dominate Batman’s rogue gallery, although he certainly comes off as a man that could easily kill Robin just for giggles. It is this disconnect from the Batman canon, where the Joker is a such a formidable force to the point of taking on Superman and Wonderwoman as well as Batman, that is either the film’s strength or weakness.

Philips film is intended to be a stand alone film separate from the Batman canon, but making Arthur Fleck such a helpless miserable soul and leaving his final brutal act one of having the consequence of his arrest and presumptive incarceration in Arkham Asylum, raises some questions. Would this version of the Joker/Arthur Fleck eventually become the master of chaos that is canon or does he simply remain a hapless simpleton too nuts to care? It would have been nice to see sparks of genius in Arthur Fleck instead of the simple minded character he comes off as. Maybe Philips is using Joker to critique the American Dream, and maybe he is critiquing it as a symptom of simple minded idealists. The film is too good to get caught up in political criticisms of it. Who cares what side of the aisle the films political leanings fall, if they do at all?

It is interesting to see figures such as Thomas Wayne (Bruce Wayne’s father) cast as a coldhearted villain of sorts, with Fleck being the hero at least in his own mind. It is even interesting in the brief scene that a young Bruce Wayne appears to watch his quiet curiosity towards this clownish Joker, but neither do much to flesh out the chaotic Gotham and how it got that way, or how exactly Thomas Wayne running for office might fix that. There is, of course, a simplistic ideal that dynamic leaders can fix people’s problems and maybe that’s the point.

I’m not so sure either of the Wayne’s belonged in this picture, especially since this Joker seems to break away so far from canon. Virtually everybody knows that Joker is an infamous Batman villain and if they don’t then they’re not going to understand the Wayne scenes either. Of course, Thomas Wayne is also used as a device to fulfill Arthur Flecks daddy issues. Arthur comes to believe that Thomas Wayne is his father. This in turn means that would make him Bruce Wayne’s half-brother. This is primarily why Bruce Wayne is in this picture at all.

Bruce is there to demonstrate to Arthur how Bruce is far more privileged than he is and to see first hand the love of a father Thomas Wayne holds for Bruce and the callous way in which he denies any relation to Arthur. This is a great plot point that falls just short of greatness. It might be that Brett Cullen who plays Thomas Wayne (and who also played a politician in The Dark Knight Rises) is not up to the task of conveying both an outrage over the threat Fleck appears to be to both he and more importantly his son, while simultaneously showing some compassion once he learns Arthur is the son of a woman once in Thomas Wayne’s employ.

The script is what has Thomas Wayne reject Fleck’s claim of heritage and has Wayne informing Fleck that his mother was not mentally stable, but Cullen seems intent on a performance that focuses more on anger and self-righteous defense. Maybe that’s how Philips wanted it, but it is things like this that once again lead me to wonder if Philips critique of the American Dream is that is a simplistic one, even for Thomas Wayne, who is maybe just a two-dimensional fat cat industrialist. This isn’t Wayne’s story so who knows what the intent was or if it was even thought out to this degree?

These are quibble with a film that is always captivating and often beautiful in its portrayal of an ugly world. Returning to the question of cinema, is Joker that and what cinema actually is; there is nothing really groundbreaking in what this film does and if that’s an element necessary in labeling a film cinema then Joker is not that. If one holds a broader understanding of this poorly defined term “cinema,” then Joker just might be more than a very good comic book movie and maybe a cinematic experience for those who watch it.