Joker

Title: Joker

Director: Todd Philips

Writers: Todd Philips and Scott Silver

Incels. Misogyny. We live in a society. SJWs. Gun control. Third-wave feminism. Woke culture. Cancel culture. Culture wars. White supremacist violence.

These are just a few of the current hot-button issues and social media keywords that have absolutely nothing to do with the new Joaquin Phoenix movie, Joker.

Not that this has stopped anyone on social media from associating the movie with this or that cultural movement, but the truth is the movie has little on its mind other than letting Phoenix dance down a flight of stairs, baiting the Oscars and taking the odd, weak, mild, aimless jab at income inequality and the plight of the mentally ill.

Ever since Western civilization decided that the most appropriate amount to pay for news and information is zero dollars, pretty much every online media is now at the mercy of advertising revenue, which is in turn dependent on clicks, and every business has by now figured out that the single easiest, fastest and most effective way to get clicks is to package and sell anger, outrage, fear and anxiety. Hence the cynical attempt the label this a controversial, dangerous movie.

When it is actually just, well, a bit of a mess.

All the hot-taking and alarmist yelling obscures the fact that the movie at the center of all this is essentially “Taxi Driver” with clowns, featuring a mentally ill man whose life rapidly goes downhill on account of his illness until he turns to violence, which ironically (and predictably) turns out to be the one thing he can do that earns him social approval. There are some obligatory scenes linking the movie to the wider Batman story and mythos, but frankly they are entirely unnecessary and detract from--rather than add to--the focus of the movie. Add both “Superhero Movie” and “Deconstruction of a Superhero Movie” to the list of things this movie is not.

Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a middle-aged man living with his mother, who has a condition that makes him burst into uncontrollable laughter at awkward times. He works part-time as a clown, dreams of one day making it as a stand-up comic and fantasizes about a relationship with his single-mother neighbor. From this bottom-of-the-pole position, Fleck’s life promptly bids whatever tiny shreds of happiness it still had a not-very-fond farewell, flips his hopes and dreams the bird and leaps off the proverbial and dramatic cliff: He’s beaten up, loses his job, has the funding for his medication cut, and is finally assaulted again on a subway by three wealthy, 1% Wall Street bros before finally lashing out.

That feels like it should be some kind of turning point in the movie, but Fleck’s life goes on being ever-more horrible than before, with the added complication that he’s now under investigation by a pair of policemen who are bizarrely laid-back for guys investigating a triple homicide. There’s a vague B plot about how the murders spark an Occupy Wall Street-slash-Anonymous in V for Vendetta masks (only it’s clowns) anti-rich movement, but it just kind of happens in the background without linking to the fact that Fleck was despised for being meek and trying to get by, and lionized when he turns violent.

Phoenix has received a lot of praise for his performance, and I’d agree it’s sporadically magnetic, but a little uneven. The move doesn’t seem to quite know how it wants to show Fleck’s turn from downtrodden loser to violent sociopath. At times, it’s portrayed as a kind of evil butterfly crawling out of its chrysalis, with Fleck becoming surer, sharper and more charming the more he loses his grip on reality, but at others he reverts to awkward insecurity or frothing rage, so you’re never quite sure what the film-makers want to say or what the point of it all is.

Frankly, I didn’t feel there was anything either inventive or insightful about either the treatment of mental illness or the growing inequality of wealth. Much like the Batman tie-in of the plot, the twists (Spoilers!) that Fleck is actually adopted and was abused as a child or that his relationship with his neighbor is entirely imaginary fantasy don’t add to our understanding of either theme, and just feel kind of thrown in there because.

In the end, it’s just a kind of turgid downer, a pretty simple downtrodden man-goes-bonkers tale slathered in grease paint with the name of a beloved comic book character slapped on the poster.