Film review from Venice19: Joaquin Phoenix's Joker
The clown prince of crime is alive and mentally unwell in Gotham City in Todd Phillips' grippingly atmospheric supervillain origin story,.
Arthur tunes in to the show religiously with his sickly mother Penny in their dingy tenement apartment, drifting early on into a fantasy in which he's plucked out of the studio audience to be embraced on-camera by Murray, stepping in for the father he has never known. Arthur even studies guests on the show and rehearses his entrance and couch banter at home, Rupert Pupkin-style, though it's clear from the outset that his disillusionment with Murray will turn ugly.
One key symptom of Arthur's mental illness is a kind of ha-ha Tourette's — a medical condition that prompts him to laugh uncontrollably, usually at awkward moments. He carries a card by way of explanation, reading "Forgive My Laughter." This has contributed to his reputation as a freak at work and pretty much confined his social circle to his mother. She nicknamed him "Happy" from a young age and told him he was "put here to spread joy and laughter.
Some of the best moments of Phoenix's highly physical performance are the transformative interludes in which the increasingly unhinged Arthur applies his clown makeup and later dyes his hair,The protagonist's simmering psychosis is echoed in the unrest rippling through the city, given gritty, grubby textures and deep, rich hues by cinematographer Lawrence Sher.
Given that the world created here is clearly modeled on New York in the not-too-distant past, it will be interesting to see how audiences respond to the alarming depiction of a city under siege. The growing wave of vigilante violence includes a mob assault of two detectives , left in critical condition.
An innocent part of him really does just want to follow his mother's guidance and make people smile. But the city pulls funding for its welfare programs, forcing him to go off his meds; a video clip of him laughing uncontrollably while doing a spot at a standup club gets mocked by his idol Murray on national TV; even his doting mother is perceived to have failed him when he filches her medical records and finds what's either a disturbing cover-up or fuel for paranoia.
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