Joker

“Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?”

Arthur Fleck

The Dark Knight when it released in 2008 introduced us to an extremely demented version of the Joker that we had never seen the likes of before, and it instantly became iconic due to Heath Ledger’s performance. The pencil scene in particular is still one of the most tense and uneasy scenes I’ve seen in not only a superhero film but any film in general. The unpredictable nature of the Joker makes him absolutely terrifying because you can’t even begin to guess what he’s going to do next and quickly landed him the role as Batman’s arch nemesis. Due to that performance being so spectacular, I was very skeptical of this film going in, I was also afraid they were going to make us sympathize with the villain similar to how Maleficent did in 2014. The Clown Prince of Crime isn’t a character I wanted to feel is just “misunderstood” and be seen as “not that bad” because he’s the worst of the worst, the way the character operates is fully evil and I didn’t want that to be taken away. Fortunately that’s not (fully) what happened, and how this movie portrayed his origins I thought was done well. This review will be shorter than most because it’s going to be hard to explain my points without giving too much away, so I’ll be brief.

Joker is a very slow burning film which only added to the suspense of what you know Arthur Fleck is destined to become. Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as this role was up there with Leger I believed as almost every time he was on screen I felt very uneasy and was unsure of what was going to happen next. Even when he’s just Arthur I was just waiting for any little thing to set him off into the unpredictable psychopath of the Joker. It’s as if he was a balloon and as events piled up, more and more air was pumped into the balloon and the anticipation of the pop was insanely well done as the movie progressed. The soundtrack itself also helped set the stage with lots of pulsing sounds and screeching violins and cellos.

As I mentioned before, I was afraid of potentially sympathizing with this character and feeling bad for him, but the way it was done in this film I thought worked really well. It showed you can feel bad for someone, even immensely bad for them but it in no way makes up for their actions, not condoning them in any way. Watching Arthur get slowly more and more broken and keep trying to repair himself in all the wrong ways as burdens continues to weigh down on him was interesting but sad to watch.

Again there’s a lot I really want to say but can’t really say due to spoilers if you’re like me and didn’t know most of his origin story before going into this movie. I’m also unsure of how to word a lot of what I was thinking about this movie as well, these types of movies are generally harder for me to review than most. I do remember being very on-edge while watching certain scenes and there’s definitely stuff in here that kept me up thinking about after I finished the film.

Overall with the performance of Phoenix and the writing/pacing of this movie it was extremely well done, but it doesn’t hold a lot of re-watch value for me, although there are a few scenes that I think would benefit from a second viewing having the knowledge of what comes next. I enjoyed watching it, I give it a 8/10 but can’t see myself watching it again anytime in the near future. What did you think of the film if you saw it? And which portrayal of The Joker from over the years do you think was the best? Let me know in the comments!