Review by Dennis D. McDonald

Back in the 1980’s I commuted regularly to Manhattan on business. In those days I wore hard contact lenses. On de-taxiing in the city my eyes would always start itching and burning from the dirty air. Fortunately the NYC air is no longer that bad due to much improved air pollution control.

I was reminded of those bad old days by the Gotham City imagined by Todd Phillips in JOKER. Things look bad in Gotham. Trash is strewn throughout the city, buildings are decaying, and if there were an accompanying aroma the movie would exude a fetid mix of mildew, smoke, and rotting garbage.

This Gotham is where JOKER lives. His life is one of desperation, discrimination, violence, and mental illness. He works as a clown, he wants to be a comedian, but Gotham and his own mental condition conspire against him.

We follow his descent into complete madness from, well, barely coping madness. How he finds his mental sweet spot is horrific to watch.

That’s the crux of the film and the source of the controversy around it. I don’t think that Phillips and star Phoenix are trying to make a profound social statement here. I think they are more interested in artistically rendering how an iconic fictional character “finds himself” by embracing his dark side through violence and cruelty.

That a portion of society responds positively to that is an underlying theme of the movie. We see today, for example, that a portion of American society is willing to embrace evil on the part of government officials even though by doing so they harm the very society in which they live. That’s not a new theme, though. We have always been enthralled by the “dark side”. Look at the mythic status that Hannibal Lecter has achieved.

JOKER makes this point through an awesomely extraordinary performance by Joaquin Phoenix. Just as we slow down to gawk at highway accidents, we can’t turn away from watching, horrified and mesmerized, by what he and director Phillips do with this character. If you have followed Phoenix’ other work (e.g., Her, You Were Never Really Here, The Master, and The Sisters Brothers) you may not be surprised by what he does here but you will be impressed.

Should this film and its crew win any awards? I don’t care about that. I am surprised at its commercial success. It is as far away from a “comic book” as you can imagine; the only comic-rooted film that comes close to JOKER is Logan.

This film is closer to the gritty graphic novels that have propelled once benign characters into an alternate and dark universe that is a frighteningly accurate reflection of our own.

Review copyright (c) 2019 by Dennis D. McDonald