(Goin' full spoiler mode for a film that's still in theaters, so turn back if you aren't down for that.)
Right. Let's have ourselves a talk about the quote in the title. It's been in the trailers, gone viral as part of the marketing, gotten propped up as one of the big iconic capital-T Things from the movie alongside Joaquin Phoenix crying as he stretches his mouth into a fake smile and Phoenix smash-step dancing on the stairs. And it has been... interesting for me. Because I've said that quote before. Paraphrased or verbatim, I've hit low points where all I want to do is lash and rant and hurt whoever's listening, and said that it's so goddamned frustrating having to go through my day under the expectation I'll act all normal when inside I'm getting angrier and angrier at myself and everyone around me. "Yeah, me," I'll say, "it really does suck not being allowed to go round unloading all your damage on other folks whenever you want to, and getting called out when you decide to anyways out of the blue." It is a Bad Thought, one of the repeating lines that comes up when my mental state hits its worst point, and one of those things I constantly promise myself I'll never unload with again before whoopsy-daisy! Turns out we're right back here.
Hasn't exactly been one of those situations where it's this major trigger every time I see it - despite my problems, I'm generally collected enough to not deal with that problem, though I understand plenty others do and wish them the best in coping and overcoming. It's more a strange situation because there's been all this talk about how Joker will get audiences inside the famous supervillain's head, make them see the world as he does, make us sympathize with the mad clown. And it all sounds a lot of marketing guff reinforced by folks on the internet who're more than happy to repeat marketing guff if it's guff written to appeal to their sensibilities. Until there's that thing I say when I'm having problems. My self-pitying, self-justifying line, which functions so well as a means of hurting others by implying they're doing something wrong by not tolerating my overly-aggressive nonsense, and hurting myself by explicitly stating the out-of-control, undercutting, unstable mindset is the healthy one. That... sure is one hell of a Thing to have at the forefront of a marketing campaign.
And y'know, cliched and close to incel sadboi talk as it may sound, in watching Joker, there's an awful lot've Things in Joaquin Phoenix's performance I recognize from my own struggles with mental problems. The tendency towards performative behavior when feeling cornered. The attempts to sound decisive and harshly-spoken made ridiculous by storming off into a glass door or some other such unaware pratfall. The struggle to break out of your own headspace and properly connect with folks. The fantasizing - so much of the fantasizing. Placing yourself in situations where you know you'd otherwise recede into the background or bomb if put on the spot, and imagining how you'd effortlessly breeze through it and get all the veneration and positive reinforcement you'd ever like. And then when you can't idly dream anymore and come back to reality and find things aren't so good as you'd like, tearing everything out of a small space, crawling in, and not coming out for hours on end. I've definitely done that last one more than a few times myself.
It should be noted, my life doesn't suck the same way Arthur Fleck's does. I'm not dangling over a pit of economic ruin in a city on the verge of social revolt with an equally-ill mother to take care of and a need for multiple medications that the state pulls away once social programs get the axe. Things are, in spite of how I feel many hours of the day, generally fine. But Joker is out here smartly working the fears that things might be this way one day, or worse, how they might be so right now. It's rote to say a film plays with your sense of reality, yet this film's right up front with how it does this, inviting you into Arthur's head to see how readily he detaches from reality early on, and evoking the same sudden shifts to the world acting flattering towards him at multiple points to slyly indicate when he has a break. Most of the time, these breaks come when his situation is deteriorating, and while moments like his realizing the woman he's been courting never spoke to him beyond their initial meeting are obvious, other bits like the yuppies he murders taunting him or the city reflecting his self-image in the adoption of clown masks as a means of performance take longer to resolve themselves as real or not, if they do at all. For the record, while I unfortunately had to give up a theory that the clown masks were all in his head (the third act doesn't really work as a narrative if you hold to it), I'm still nursing a notion that the guys he kills on the subway didn't actually do much to him, given the oddity of their singing Send in the Clowns before beating the shit out've him in the same way the street punks do at the beginning.
It could all be wrong, is what I'm saying. Life could seem good, and the things you hold dear could all be inventions of perception to make yourself feel better. S'a terrifying thought, and one I frequently have when down in a really dark place. Cinematically, it's an easy place to explore, and would make a fine film on its own merits. Where I think Joker goes right, where I think it earns the accolades it has claimed in this last month, and where I think it dodges the traps inherent to a story about how your reality isn't true and the world really wants to just beat you down, is in its refusal to validate.
Phoenix is key here. He spends so much of the film chasing after some notion he's more important than he feels, be it a career in stand-up, a place as Thomas Wayne's son, or someone who can hold a lasting relationship. When all lead to dead-ends, and he is left with this hollow, hating feeling inside, he breaks, and turns fully performative. He's more dynamic in his movements, playful in his speaking, clever in his speech, more the image of a man treating the world as something to kick back against. That fantasy of going out there, making a grand statement, and blowing your brains out for all the world to see (another one I get at times) constitutes his whole plan for the third act, and his every action is played as if however the world reacts, he'll take it as validation. Yet the film does not reinforce, nor does it condone, because it treats his actions as disturbing, shocking, and vile as they are. This man has killed people to make himself feel better, taken advantage of the big shot he's always wanted to enact a small-screen suicide, found a way to control his inappropriate laughter by deliberately, forcefully laughing at the horrific acts he perpetrates. Each and every action is an act, and it is act to get attention, to feel important, to raise a middle finger at the world and tell it all to piss off.
And it is wrong. The film treats it as wrong. Phoenix's performance indicates he is wrong. The whole big fantasy of becoming an important person, and what does it involves? Breaking down on air, violently oscilating between performative and self-pityingly angry, blowing a man's brains out, and becoming the cult leader of an aimless, needlessly violent movement based in destruction as an ideology. Big whoop, buddy. Your dream's everyone's nightmare. MY dream's everyone's nightmare. That's why I push it down and try to get better. And the thought that there might come a day when I can't push it down, because I can't control it or because the wrong stimuli come along or because I can't get the help or support I need any longer is terrifying. And that's the big success of Joker - taking all those what if fears of living with a mental illness, playing them out to their logical conclusion, and condemning the result. This is wrong, because the end result is the JOKER. This is his world, this is what I get if those impulses are acted on - a nightmare world where the veneration I want only comes from people who might want to serve a goddamned supervillain.
Now, if I've any big issue with Joker, it's in how it adheres to the whole supervillain thing. Namely, at the climax, as Arthur's story is reaching its climax, we cut over to one of the rioters chasing a rich couple out of a movie theater, and gunning down Bruce Wayne's parents. The camera stays with the little boy for a little too long for my tastes. If it were incidental, a sharp punctuation note in the midst of all the chaos he's needlessly inspired, I might be good with it. As stands, this feels like a far worse attempt to tie Batman and the Joker's origins to one another than the Tim Burton Batman film. At least there, the connection was more casual, a nice third act twist to make the stakes more personal in the way a thousand other action films have. Here, we've a film whose writing and star performance work their asses off to show how this is all the result of a man disintegrating and taking every little thing as an opportunity to scream at the world about how unfair it all is and work his damage out on everyone who crosses his path, and how none of it is right or justified regardless of how he feels... and then throws a little "And this was all the start of a great franchise rivalry!" note in right as it ends. It's far, FAR too close to making his actions seem righteous and exciting rather than hellish and terminal. A story like this, this sort of sympathetic but still firm and moral look at the Joker, should not end with Batman's creation.
I should dive out, back into healthier waters. This has been a lot more soul-baring exercise than proper review, even though a lot with regards to the film's editing, sound design, other performances, and general visual feel deserve praise. Just for a quick little example, it's smart in the way it brings in the Taxi Driver and King of Comedy homages, as they mostly play into Arthur's runaway, self-destructive myth making, and function as means of showing how he's taking the wrong path more than making him look cool in a shallow way. But I've gotten dark here, and possibly implied some things about myself in finding a mirror in this movie that I really don't intend. I just want to say, in spite of how much of my worst thoughts I find in this movie, how much I feel the fear of giving up and doing whatever and taking even the most horrific things as a means of feeling great, I am OK. I wouldn't appreciate Joker quite so much if I wasn't OK. In much the same way Psycho is a scary but enjoyable way of watching a mentally ill person wrench the movie's narrative away from its original track and refuse to let it go with each plunge of the knife, Joker is a terrifying look at all my intrusive thoughts and imagined scenarios. It's a good way to see that all actualized with a palpably horrified reaction to what it all means if brought to a conclusion, and then lean back, self-reflect, and say "Let's not go there. Let's be healthy." Hopefully it stays this way, and we don't see it all blown to bits by Phoenix coming back to fight Batman as a more standard take on the character.
(Last note: Todd Phillips has been talking a lot of nonsense in interviews of late, all this stuff about how comedy is dead because the leftists and SJWs are out to cancel all comedians, and how he's trying to smuggle a REAL movie into the world of comic book fluff. I very much disagree with his perspectives, and will be quite disappointed if further thinking on this film turns up that ideology in his construction. It still works quite well for me, though, and I can't find reason to condemn his comments in the same way I condemn other directors for endangering/abusing cast and crew, so y'know... fuck what he thinks. Movie's still good.)
4/5
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