"What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you deserve!"
~ Arthur Fleck
Mrs. Film Geek pointed out the exit door as we made our way to our seats.
"If something goes bad," she said, "that's the way we get out."
Neither of us fully believed violence would take place during the movie in our small town, but we know it's possible. It has happened before: a theater-based mass shooting took place a few years ago at a Bat-flick opening in Colorado, and mass shootings have become all too common these days.
If you aren't looking for the exists when you go into a movie theater, a mall, a bar, or when you go to a concert then you're just sticking your head in the sand.
It's the new norm. Right?
I still felt unsettled as I eased into my theater seat, and that feeling only intensified during the 122 minute run time of the movie. I had ring-side seats to watch a man try to maintain some sense of dignity, and be desperate to keep what little bit of control he had in his life. Arthur Fleck transformed into Joker in front of my eyes not in reaction to the pain and misery he lived with day-to-day; rather, he transformed into this monster through some dark, twisted effort to be resilient.
He's trying to feel something. To be noticed. He's trying to matter in the only way he can -- through dysfunctional, violent means. We know too many people like that in 2019 -- it's why we look for the exit when we go out to be entertained.
Juaquin Phoenix plays this transformation in remarkable fashion. Phoenix is awkward and uncertain as Fleck, while fluid and confident as Joker. Fleck is desperate to receive the attention of someone --anyone -- while Joker is desperate to be adored by many. The subtle transformation is completed in the final act as the Clown Prince of Crime takes revenge on someone who was once a father figure to Fleck. With this horrific act Joker grows up. He becomes his own man.
And the result is anarchy.
Co-writer and director Todd Phillips is Scorsese-esque in how he makes the grim, dirty Gotham feel like a character in the flick. And the director makes obvious comparisons to the economic and political divides in our country. (My favorite of which is when the man running for mayor -- slightly Trumpian in his view of the poor -- uses a restroom where urinal handles are plated in gold.) Much has been made of what Phillips has called an homage to Scorsese, and there are signs of that along the way. But Phoenix demands attention with this portrayal, so early in the movie I forgot about the similarities and just enjoyed his performance.
Some in the press suggest that Joker glorifies violence, or say the film portrays people who live with mental illness as violent. Neither is true. Joker is the study of one man suffocating under the collapse of the middle and lower economic classes. It's about one man who has his support system (which was limited at best anyway) dismantled without thought to how that might affect him. Joker is about one man so isolated and lonely that he isn't noticed, and he's had more than he can bear.
Joker is a movie for our times. And if we aren't more thoughtful as a society, Joker will be a movie about our future.
