OVP: Joker (2019)

Film: Joker (2019)
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert de Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy
Director: Todd Phillips
Oscar History: 11 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Joaquin Phoenix*, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Makeup & Hairstyling, Score*, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

In an odd twist, Joker is so far the only film that I have seen (in some capacity) twice in 2019.  That might change (there's at least one movie I'm hoping to do a re-watch of, though that might be in January), but about a month ago I was getting over a bout of what would turn out to be pneumonia, and during what I thought was a lull in the cold I went to the movies, only to find myself hacking up a lung about thirty minutes into the picture, and because I didn't want to ruin Joker for the packed theater that had paid to see it, I left without knowing the finale.  As a result, I put off seeing the film again because I felt I had already established my opinion in the movie's universe, and got the rare opportunity to see if a film's ending actually changes your opinion of the film.

(Spoilers Ahead) I'm aware I'm probably the last person on the planet to see this movie, but for those of you who only frequent dollar theaters (bless you-I love all filmgoers, but particularly those whose routines support independent theater houses), Joker is about the origin of the most famous Batman villain.  Here we have Arthur Fleck (Phoenix), a man who suffers from some sort of mental illness and at one point was institutionalized.  He lives with his mother Penny (Conroy), who is frail and doesn't leave their apartment, and spends most of her time writing to her former employer Thomas Wayne & watching television, including Murray Franklin (de Niro), a Johnny Carson-inspired late night host that Arthur idolizes.  Arthur wants to become a standup comic, but he doesn't have the skills to do so, but more so he just wants to be loved by a world that continually strips him of his dignity.  This happens in a subway one night when he shoots three men who are beating him and mocking his mental illness, but instead of retreating from the public eye, he keeps emerging into it, first trying to prove that Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) is his father, and then after realizing his mother lied to him, going off of his medication and randomly starting a killing spree.  In the process, he murders his mother, Murray Franklin, and leads to the death of Thomas & Martha Wayne (Carrie Louise Putrello), which of course eventually causes Batman.

As I mentioned yesterday in my Frozen II review, Joker is the sort of film that starts out as unnecessary.  Origin stories are almost always bad ideas, particularly for villains, because they're repetitive ("villains aren't born, they're made" could describe literally every villain's backstory), and uninspired.  Joker isn't spared this, even with an iconic character and an actor who has been one of the most exhilarating to watch this decade.  We see Arthur as a victim, someone whom society has left behind, but his message is empty, and Todd Phillips feels like he's telling a story about issues he doesn't want to properly flesh out.  The film is reliant on jump scares, violence, and twists, all signs of a script that doesn't really know what it's about.

The film has been attacked for demonizing mentally ill people (it does that-there's no way around it) by people more qualified than me to speak on the subject, but I do want to make sure that I also address the picture's hollowness.  The movie improves in its second half, perhaps best with the encounter between Robert de Niro, who gets the toss-away role of Murray Franklin, and Phoenix's Arthur.  De Niro is good in this movie, a nice complement to his work in The Irishman, and might be one of the few people who could get Phillips' expository dialogue out in one interview without it reading as too much of a plot crutch.  But the fact that Phillips has to underline his ideas of income inequality and economic oppression in such an obvious way indicates that he didn't have any confidence in the story that's been told up until that point (and this happens late in the film).  In a lot of ways Joker reminds me of Vice, another movie about a villain's origin, and the way that that picture constantly has to reiterate its opinions to the audience, not having any confidence we'll see the message the director is trying to achieve.

Phoenix will get an Oscar nomination for this, and I'm not entirely mad about that (I'm confident a lesser performance will get in along with him).  He's good, though he's been considerably better in films like The Master or Her.  I do feel like more of Arthur was surface-level than others are giving Phoenix credit for-this is a physical performance, one that requires a lot of discipline with Phoenix's actions & body, which he achieves, but in the process it makes the softer moments for Arthur (like the sequence where he chooses not to kill the coworker who has been kind to him despite that ensuring he can no longer maintain his innocence) more two-dimensional, his confessions feeling bereft of the depth Phoenix has shown in past work.  I worry if he wins the Oscar for this part (which could happen-it's that kind of role), it will be for a performance that will be well-remembered, but ultimately is only 60% of what it could have been.  Given a better script & a director more focused on Arthur and less on "Arthur finding the Joker," Phoenix could have given a meaningful interpretation that would rival Heath Ledger's Joker.  In reality, his is just a good imitation, landing decidedly in the middle of the "Joker Pack," but not as iconic as the gifs and memes from this movie would suggest.