I'm a bit late to the party I know, but I finally had an opportunity to check out Joker and so I kicked back on my Poäng and let the film roll... if you care to join me here for a little while, here are my thoughts about it ✌😁
Soooo straight off the bat I was intrigued by the fact that the opening was very much in the style of a classic retro movie (the kind of stuff I was used to growing up with on VHS) complete with old time Warner logo and sitcom script, so there was an instant 80s vibe about it which I thought was pretty cool - the 80s revival finally in full swing with the likes of Stranger Things, throwback hi-tops, new Synth Pop (check out GEoRGiA's awesome cover of Kate Bush's Running up that Hill) and a full range of 80s inspired T-shirts at Target. I've been waiting for this revival patiently for years lol! Unlike all the other modern WB/DC movies set in the Batman universe it is very lo-fi, and understated which very much fits in with the tone and feel of the movie. I'd heard that it was set somewhere between the late 70s and early 80s and it definitely has that vibe nailed down. I'd say it was more 70s leaning however just given the dress sense... it reminded me a bit of Dog Day Afternoon with the oversize shirt collars, sludgy colours and greasy hair.
The Joker is a very grimy movie... it puts you right there on the streets of Gotham City and into the Sisyphean world of low-income living, giving us a different perspective of Gotham than what we have previously been used to in the Batman movies, and it is here that this particular iteration of The Joker is born. Arthur Fleck (no longer Jack Napier as in some versions of the Joker's origin story) is a clown for hire working for a small company called Pogo's doing various low-rent gigs around Gotham. He has an unfortunate neural condition which means that he bursts into fits of laughter at inopportune moments (mainly when he is nervous or uncomfortable it would seem) which of course means that he is often perceived as an outcast or a weirdo by those around him, and is also the hapless target of unwanted aggression. He has a tough life, dealing with his own mental illness, living in an impoverished apartment as carer to his elderly mother while trying to find his way into the world of stand-up comedy without success. Meanwhile the socio-political climate in Gotham City is at an all time low with high crime and unemployment rates weighing heavy on the population, along with an epidemic of giant rats.
The result is a slowly escalating pressure cooker of circumstance in which we see the essentially well-meaning and harmless Arthur gradually react to his increasingly difficult life as he is assaulted, loses his job, gets his social worker support and supply of medication cut off, and is finally mocked live on television by his TV chat show idol Murray Franklin. This of course sends Arthur into a downward spiral which crystalizes with him starting to realise that without his medication he can be free of certain internal constraints and fully embrace the "laughter" within. And it is from here that The Joker emerges...
It is a sad yet compelling film, it speaks very clearly to the struggle many people have with mental health issues and the sense of isolation and de-personalization that one can experience as a result of dealing with these issues. I for one could relate to some aspects of Arthur's plight as I have suffered from anxiety for a long time as a result of past trauma. At one point Arthur says to his social worker "for my whole life, I don't know if I even existed", which really captures the feeling of being lost in the ether of his illness... the negative thoughts/anxiety/depression all come from within and therefore the bedrock of stability, connection to and faith in The Self is put into question and thus often perpetuates the patterns of thought that create the unrest in the first place. This in turn can lead to internal destabilization and in some cases, complete breakdown. It's easy to see how Arthur suffers, and yet his transition from harmless well-meaning outsider into fully-fledged killer is not so much a direct result of his mental illness as opposed to a melting pot of ill-fated circumstance. It's a bit Falling Down and a bit Taxi Driver in terms of Arthur's unravelling and the film's ultimate dénouement. It has been said that the script may have been written for a completely different character and then applied to The Joker, and when you consider the above-mentioned flicks, you can see how that would be perfectly possible - and in fact the grandiose, comicbook nature of The Joker character probably acts as dispensation in this case because the beleaguered-everyman-turned-bad has already been done several times.
Ultimately, The Joker functions as a deep character study cum origins story the likes of which we haven't seen before for a principal villain in the DC Universe. It is gritty, realistic and authentic and retains it's own identity while paying suitable service to other Gotham City players such as the Wayne family. It is perhaps more of an "Elseworlds" tale in that it tells a different Joker origin story while changing up how he fits into the Batman timeline.
Whether or not we see the next evolution of Arthur Fleck AKA Joker is open to question, and although he is not my favourite Joker (interesting side note: one of the shots in the movie was very reminiscent of the scene in The Dark Knight where Heath Ledger's Joker sticks his head out the window of a car whole tooling along the streets of Gotham), he has enough Cesar Romero about him to keep me interested for future instalments...
✌😁