No, really, why so serious?
I recently viewed the now infamous crime drama Gotti, a film so terrible I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies (at least not alone and sober). The John Travolta-starring gangster biopic is cheaply made and packed to the brim with hammy performances and bad dialogue. It thinks it’s a compelling epic like The Godfather or Goodfellas, but if Goodfellas is a filet, cut and cooked to perfection, Gotti is a raw meatball warmed through on a blistering Queens sidewalk. Sure, they’re both beef, but boy is there a difference.
Director and co-writer Todd Phillips’ new take on Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime is much closer to the prestigious films it’s imitating than Gotti is to Godfather or Goodfellas; it’s handsomely crafted and anchored by a terrific Joaquin Phoenix, but its determination to be a “Serious Comic Book Film” drains it of any self-awareness. I applaud Phillips for convincing Warner Bros. to make a film that, were it not for Batman character and location names, would be just another crime drama, but everything about the movie feels performative in an attempt to prove its worth as a movie for adults. They put so much time and effort into being serious, they didn’t stop to ask, “why?”
Joker is set in early 1980s Gotham, portrayed here as a city that doesn’t have an inch untouched by graffiti or grime, and follows Arthur Fleck’s (Phoenix) descent into madness amidst a community rapidly deteriorating in every way possible. The city-funded programs that provide Arthur with a social worker and medication for his mental illness is being cut; street punks are beating him up at work as a clown for hire; local tycoon Thomas Wayne insists he alone can solve the failing city’s problems, but resentment for Wayne and his one percent ilk festers. A seeming respite, Arthur’s nascent career as a stand-up comic—and his dream to appear on Live with Murray Franklin—isn’t taken seriously by anyone.
He’s just a guy who wants to make people happy, but at every turn, the world around him is simply saying, “Fuck off.“
Phoenix, ever the committed chameleon, makes Arthur a hypnotic presence on screen. He’s at turns disturbing, pathetic and pitiful, and even occasionally lovable. He makes Arthur’s turn from troubled but optimistic loner to chaotic nihilist believable, and mostly compelling to follow. Where the film fails him is in its portrayal of that bleak and brutal world that won’t stop until any hint of Arthur’s joy and compassion is gone.
Given the state of the world today, it’s not hard to believe that society can fail its most vulnerable and grind them down, but there’s no introspection or analysis of the culture that does this. The world around Arthur doesn’t need to be redeemed, but it does need redeeming qualities. Almost no one makes an effort to help Arthur, and that lack of conflict with his descent makes his journey an intriguing but predictable one.
Joker, with its story of an isolated wannabe comic in a dark, mad city, draws direct comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy (indeed, Robert DeNiro winningly appears as late night host Murray Franklin, more or less the role Jerry Lewis played opposite his own obsessive character in the latter). In its early conception, Scorsese was attached as an executive producer on Joker, though his time was ultimately consumed by The Irishman. It’s not lazy to call Joker a rip-off of those movies and others of the period, but the filmmakers aren’t pretending otherwise.
What is lazy is to rely on that aesthetic and our familiarity with those works to imbue this one with gravitas. Phoenix provides plenty on his own here, but the story, with its toothless politics and shocking violence, doesn’t amount to much. Arthur Fleck’s life and world are designed to make him blame everyone else for his problems, and there’s little drama in an unstable person caving to their worst impulses when faced with a total lack of empathy. The only real struggle between decency and evil that exists in this film takes place entirely behind Phoenix’s eyes; that carries Joker a long way, but not far enough to make Arthur’s two-dimensional world feel as real as him.