Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy
Have I Seen It Before?: That’s the real question, isn’t it?
Did I like it?: Wow, just the one-two punch with the really tough questions, huh?
I had a temptation to write two separate reviews for this movie, one unrelentingly positive, the other abjectly negative. The film had spawned so many hot takes even before its wide release that adding anything to the discourse started to feel like a mix of disingenuous and redundant.
There is a fundamental flaw in the idea of trying to explain the Joker. Part of his disturbing appeal lies in the fact that he eschews origin. The comics are steadfastly bumfuzzled as to where The Joker even has a name. Alan Moore’s superlative The Killing Joke even casts a vote for the notion that The Joker himself can’t even remember how he became like this (a notion hinted at by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight [2008]). Trying to explain who he is by giving him a name and a series of events to go wrong to push him into murderous clowning takes away from the essential spark of the character.
Before you start, yes, I know Batman (1989) tried to give similar dimension to the character by way of Jack Nicholson, but I’m allowed to love a movie despite its flaws. I’m allowed to live with some contradictions.
There is no way this film would work even fitfully if it weren’t for Suicide Squad (2016) and Jared Leto. Much as it pains me to give credit to Leto for anything outside of Dallas Buyers Squad (2013), but that ill-considered adventure effectively nullified the question of should anyone play this character after Heath Ledger’s mesmerizing turn. So, thanks, Jared. As it stands Phoenix gives a performance to rival—although I think I will land on not-quite surpass—Ledger’s. He certainly has committed to the part (far more than others associated with the movie committed to their roles, but I’m getting ahead of myself), and the anguish he contorts his face into during his flare ups of pathological laughter add a dimension to the character at a time when one would have been forgiven for assuming that there was nothing left to mine in the Clown Prince of Crime.
The sequence where Arthur/Joker (Phoenix) finally arrives on the panel of Murray Franklin’s (De Niro) talk show is about as good as any handful of minutes of Jokerdom from Cesar Romero to the present. The tension is palpable. The movie itself wants to telegraph the punch that Arthur will kill himself live on TV, Budd Dwyer-style. Anyone who’s read The Dark Knight Returns had to have been like me, and wondering how he was going to kill everyone in that television studio. When he puts a slug in De Niro’s face and chest, it’s genuinely surprising.
I wish I could say as much for the rest of the film. The clown’s uprising spreads throughout Gotham on that same evening, culminating in—you guessed it—the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne. If I have to see that woman drop her pearls on a wet alleyway one more time, I think I may lose my mind. Including the TV series Gotham this is the sixth—count it, sixth—time I’ve had to watch that same exact scene, and there really aren’t a lot of ways to stage those events.
It’s the first crumbling piece in the façade that is the entire movie. Phoenix may be doing great work, but every other ounce of the movie and every word out of director Todd Phillips’ mouth has been a real bummer. Yes, it’s sort of new to bring the early-Scorsese sensibility to the superhero film, but it is still not far removed from films that have already been made. Phillips is—to borrow a phrase from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)—imitating the sounds, but not the language of those films. He’s even gone record to insist that the film should not be taken seriously, because he wasn’t trying to say anything with it. Such a cop-out feebly tries to absolve him from any negative impact on society, but it also nullifies the entire movie.
It’s lazy, and it’s dumb. While there are parts of the film that work despite itself, it can never truly achieve escape velocity from that unfortunate reality.
Now, this is all to say that I saw a story (it was admittedly click-bait-y) that hinted that after this film’s somewhat surprising box office success, Warner Bros. may be wanting to further branch out into weird one-off films, including an adaptation of Batman Beyond with Michael Keaton as Old Man Wayne. If that comes to pass, everything is forgiven, Todd. You gave me what I always wanted, despite yourself. Kind of like Jared Leto.