By Matt Lau & Kurt Jensen
Origin stories of Batman villains don’t get any darker than Joker (Warner Bros). Portrayals of Batman’s arch-nemesis have spiralled in that direction for years.
Welcome to the Kafkaesque world of Arthur Fleck, brilliantly acted by Joaquin Phoenix, a felicitous casting choice of director Todd Phillips.
It’s a familiar and unappealing narrative with no sense of moral uplift – the Joker character’s shady past in the DC Universe makes him something of an enigma. This depiction reveals how society’s treatment of Arthur plays a conducive role in creating Gotham’s notorious supervillain.
Arthur is both a failed party clown and a failed comedian, battered by poverty, mental illness (his uncontrollable cackle is shown as a form of Tourette’s syndrome), a raft of medications that seem to have no effect, an inability to find a woman who will love him, and a mentally unstable, delusional mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), with whom he shares a decrepit apartment.
The era in the fictional Gotham City is easily recognised as late-1970s New York, when basic municipal services were stretched to their limits, trash piled up on curbs, and the subways harboured violence.
“The worst part of mental illness,” Arthur writes in his diary, “is people expect you to behave as if you don’t.”
In another passage he repeatedly turns to, he has written: “I just hope my death makes more cents (sic) than my life”.
Penny has led Arthur to believe that his real father is aristocratic Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), who has failed to support them in their many troubles. Credence to the tales of his deranged mother, Arthur approaches Wayne under the false pretence.
Wayne is portrayed as an arrogant Donald Trump-like figure who decides to run for mayor because, he says of the city’s downtrodden: “They may not realise it, but I’m their only hope”. He is, of course, the father of young Bruce Wayne (Dante Pereira-Olson), the future crime-fighting Batman.
Adhered to the fantasy of being a Wayne himself but faced with an insurmountable rejection, Arthur feels compelled to commit acts of extreme violence.
With steep budget cuts closing the social services office that supplied his medications, the truth of Fleck’s life slowly weighs down on him until his rage emerges in a triple shooting redolent of Bernard Goetz, the “subway vigilante” of 1984. This gives Arthur a sort of demented tabloid fame as a killer in white-face clown makeup, and as his frustrations mount, so do his murders.
Arthur grows akin to those who show compassion towards him along is struggle – soon there is a clear societal demarcation between the rich and the poor. Arthur, through no fault of his own, falls in the latter category.
The violence portrayed in this film may arouse protective feelings of what should be permissible to audiences and how movies of this ilk has the potential to spark widespread acts of violence in real life.
Arthur is a serial murderer, but equipped only with a revolver another clown had given to him for self-defense. He’s not a mass murderer with an assault rifle. He seeks only to right the wrongs done to himself.
A reminder that this is a Rated-R screening for a reason. Although this is far from the most egregiously violent film ever produced, it has been highlighted more so due to its dark undertones of a man who clearly suffers from mental health issues.
A now-liberated Arthur, inadvertently, ignites a clown-faced revolution against the wealthy and the law enforcement with no sign of remorse as he is lauded as the king among criminals.
The ending scenes – based in Arkham Asylum – are pivotal in retrospect of the entire story. How much of it was real, and how much of it was Arthur’s psychotic concoction?
The general idea is for the audience to feel empathy for a troubled loner with none, and whose moral sense has wasted away in the face of hardship.
It’s not terribly original material, especially the long, lingering close-ups of Arthur’s face twisted into an insane sneer.
As well-constructed and sharply paced as the film is, it’s just another story of a very sad, compassionless clown who escapes justice at every turn.
The film contains a vengeance theme, gun and knife violence, some gore, and fleeting rough and crude language.
The Catholic News Service classification is L – limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R – restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.