“The Joker” is a Shallow Masquerade

By Sonali Mathur 

“The Joker” is the most beautiful thing you’ll see this year. Not because of the depth of Joaquin Phoenix’s take on the supervillain or because of its nuanced portrayal of someone with mental illness, but because every one of Todd Phillips’s shots is so aesthetically pleasing, even the ones where Phoenix is kicking a trash can, being kicked himself, or shooting innocent people. Every shot is exquisite, in shades of red, green, brown, yellow, and black, so stylish I want to hang up stills from the film in my room.

The film delves into one of the versions of the Joker’s origin story: former psychiatric patient and failed stand-up comic Arthur Fleck is driven to violence and insanity due to the unsympathetic nature of the world around him. He isn’t able to keep a job and support himself and his mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), he has a crush on his single-mom neighbor Sophie (Zazie Beetz), but to no avail, and his comedy hero talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) laughs at him on public television. In the end, he fights back by starting a revolution against the wealthy. 

The film opens with Fleck, dressed as a clown, getting beaten up by children who steal the sign he needs for work. Then he is fired for not having it. Later, the man who seemed to be his friend turns on him for no apparent reason, and when he plays peek-a-boo with a little girl on a bus, her mother brusquely tells him to stop bothering her daughter despite her giggles and his harmlessness. His therapist is unsympathetic and abrupt with him. So many terrible things happen to him for no reason and he is completely powerless to fight back until he gets a gun and takes the drastic step of murder. Multiple reviews have characterized the Joker as a “loser” who turns evil because that’s exactly what he comes across as. We don’t feel his pain in these scenes, we just pity him because he is apparently blissfully oblivious, despite saying “it’s getting really hard out there,” about how merciless people in Gotham City can be. He continually expects kindness even though we see that no one has ever been kind to him in his life. And then he is incapable of doing anything to get back at those that have wronged him, or even defend himself.

Fleck only feels “noticed” when others start to wear clown masks and hate the rich, but this is shallow. Instead of focusing on corruption or lack of assistance for the poor or mentally disabled, Phillips focuses on random rich white men who beat up Fleck whenever they feel like it, for no reason whatsoever. This shallowness comes across in Phillips’s very pointed direction as well. There is no subtlety to what the camera chooses to focus on. It’s theatrical performance art: from the crazy laugh, to the hordes of people with clown masks, to the disgusted expressions on the faces of people when they look at Fleck. Phillips tells you exactly what to notice and when, instead of letting you do the work yourself. 

There is something irresistible about Phoenix’s thrilling portrayal. His acting is brilliant; every movement, every gesture, expression and even dance move, stand out unusually—his arm is crooked, his smile is creepy, his dance is grand and at the same time full of sadness. The character scared and disturbed me, but I couldn’t look away. It’s difficult to compare Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker with Heath Ledger’s. It’s difficult to say if those two Jokers could exist in the same universe. Phoenix’s has an agenda, which takes away from the senseless madness that we associate the Joker with having. He’s doing things to get back at people, he’s only being evil because others were. Ledger’s Joker remains more exciting and more nihilistic. His is a Joker who has gotten over the issues he had, and the evil he does comes out of a desire for chaos, rather than vengeance. Ledger’s Joker manages to be more scary, more intimidating and exciting, and somehow also more nuanced than Phoenix’s. 

There’s a lot of debate about what the film means and the consequences it will have; some say it will incite shootings, while others say it will inspire people to be kinder, especially to people who are poor or suffer from mental health issues. Yet it’s hard to imagine “The Joker” inspiring anything at all, since it fails to explore any theme with enough depth to make an impact.

Sonali Mathur is a senior majoring in English and journalism. She loves Romantic poetry and Oscar Wilde.