Heath Who?: A Review of “Joker”

First, a brief disclaimer: Not a huge Batman fan. Also not crazy about big action movies, chase scenes or fight scenes (so you can imagine what a trying couple of years it’s been with all the Marvel movies).

I AM a fan of quiet movies off the beaten track that might not appeal to a lot of others, with quirky if not tragic characters. Joker is RIGHT in my wheelhouse.

(I managed to keep this spoiler free)

One of the first scenes of this movie is Arthur Fleck laughing, and it’s deeply unpleasant, downright painful to watch. He clearly can’t control it, he’s literally choking on it. And it goes on and on.

Buckle up. This is pretty much the theme of the rest of the movie.

Arthur has a neurological condition (not specified, but fits the description of “pseudobulbar affect”) where the emotions he’s displaying don’t match those he’s feeling. Tends to come out under stress, particularly social stress, where the confused disapproving stares he receives in return don’t help.

Tragically, Arthur’s dream is to do stand-up comedy. For now he’s trying to make ends meet as a clown, not easy in 1981 New York…I mean Gotham.

Arthur has a really rough life. He’s a sad lonely man with mental illness. All he has is his mother and she isn’t all there either. Things take a real downturn when a co-worker gives him a gun for self-defense, which he drops inopportunely at a children’s ward gig, which loses him his job. Then funding gets cut and he loses his social worker psychologist and psychotropic medicine. All his support systems slowly getting yanked out from under him.

From here, already pretty damn low on the food chain, Arthur begins his descent (or his rise, depending how you look at it (another reviewer’s observation, not mine)).

This movie reminds me so much of The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke (the only Darren Aronofsky film I can stand). 90% of that movie is staring at the back of Mickey’s head (and the view from the front isn’t an improvement), yet it mesmerized me. 95% of this film is staring uncomfortably closely at Joaquin, and I could hardly blink.

His transformation is so incremental, but you don’t appreciate how subtle Joaquin is about it until you look back and think about it. He starts the movie in a zombie state, half-dead inside. The only spark of life is his journal which is chock full of red flags and alarming ideations (“You ask me if I’m having any negative thoughts. All I have are negative thoughts”) that his social worker is presumably too overworked or not concerned enough by to treat properly. But once he’s off his meds, slowly, very slowly, you see a light coming on in his eyes — feral, predatory, unhealthy, terrifying if you know what he’s destined to become (of course we all do, that’s why we’re here). The look of someone slowly realizing they’ve got nothing at all to lose.

This is a Joker with complexity and layers. At any point in the movie it’s impossible to tell how far over the line Arthur truly is. A pivotal moment comes on the subway when it’s him, three drunk Wall Street assholes, and a young woman they’re harassing. She looks to him for assistance. He starts with his helpless cackling, which predictably turns their focus on him and she gets away. On first viewing I just assumed he was a good guy doing the right thing, but after thinking about the whole arc, I wonder if it was just stress doing what stress always does to him and his intentions weren’t so noble after all.

(The violence in this movie is extremely sparse (thankfully) but quite graphic, which makes it all the more startling when it comes. And I don’t know if it was the IMAX speakers or a director’s choice, but gunshots were REALLY loud and made your heart race a little, the way they should be.)

Unbeknownst to him, his actions start a social movement, an Occupy Wall Street with clown masks . He’s so lost in his own problems he barely notices.

His mother suffers a stroke and that’s the final nail in Arthur’s coffin — or the last swipe of grease paint on his clown mask, if you’d prefer.

I suppose my one complaint with the movie would be the unevenness of the first two-thirds compared to the last 30 minutes, where it seemed like they said “Whoa, is that the time? We’ve got to get moving here” and suddenly the spiral goes a lot faster.

The last 30-minute ramp-up had me in chills the whole time. Because we know where this is going, and when he starts slipping into his final metamorphosis, it’s almost a sense of relief to be there at last (well, I hugely had to pee by this point so my sense of relief was quite visceral). Just before his last big act of violence, he makes these jerky contorted movements like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. Then comes his shocking introduction to the world (no spoilers).

Sociopath. But a sexy sociopath

In the end he’s hailed by the clown protestors as a hero, and he smiles as he accepts the mantle — but I got the feeling it wasn’t the fires and the chaos and the anarchy making him happy as much as the adulation of the crowd, the cheering and applause he’s always wanted.

(Oh yeah. Young Bruce Wayne is in this, for about four minutes. I’m still calling this my favorite Batman movie.)

Wow. I have to catch my breath just writing this.

My first thought was “better than Heath,” but on further retrospection I realize that’s really unfair. Heath was a brilliant Joker for the movie he was in, which didn’t allow much opportunity to show us motives or interior life or anything outside of “anarchic psychopath.” And that’s what Joker has been virtually for the entire span of his mythology. Until this.

I saw a comment from a fanboy protesting that Joker didn’t need an origin story, that it’s “intentionally left blank.” That might work for true fans. I’m not one. I like to look deep inside characters, and Joaquin gives us a LOT to study.

I said I enjoyed watching him evolve into a sociopath. My friend argued that he always was one, and she’s right. But he tried to fit in, tried to treat his illness. He’s fully a sympathetic and even heartbreaking figure at first. Society let him down (and given the timeframe of the movie, the 80’s, that’s about right — that historic decade when Ronny Raygun decided to shut down all the mental hospitals and let the criminally insane live on the streets). This is probably the most social commentary we’ve ever seen in a Batman movie.

Arthur sums up his (and my) frustration nicely in his speech at the end: “Everybody yells and screams at each other. Nobody is civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it’s like to be the other guy.” He’s right. Humanity is really shitty, and seems to be getting moreso by the day. And the wrong person going off their meds and killing a bunch of people is becoming a daily reality, not a crazy comic book plotline. There could be a hundred Jokers out there as we speak, waiting for the perfect storm of terrible circumstances. We should all be very worried.

This is probably why I love Joaquin’s Joker the best — there’s nothing super villainous about him. Nothing colorful to explain his affinity for clown makeup, like falling into a vat of acid (didn’t that happen to Nicholson?) or however Heath actually got his facial gashes (I remember he had at least three different explanations). He’s just a guy with an awful life who came to the edge of the cliff, and instead of jumping decided to take everyone else with him.

I couldn’t even tell you if there was a post-credit scene. The second it was over I ran out of the theater — mostly because, as I said, I was swimming by then, but also because I know I’ll be getting this on Blu-Ray day one. If I had to break my theater boycott for a film, I chose wisely to make it this one. You should do the same.