Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Marc Maron, Frances Conroy, Shae Whigham, Brett Cullen, Douglas Hodge, Dante Pereira-Olson, Bill Camp, Glenn Fleshler, Josh Pais.

If comedy has become a matter for the subjective disguised as hate or even animosity that has been disguised by the mask of envy then so has all art forms, from the video game, to the novel and onwards to the relative study of looking back at an old master’s work of art, for some now is not a means of expression but a chance to decry and even destroy something without really looking at it with an eye of understanding. It is in this that the joke perhaps has become a by-word for abuse, and that the Joker is nothing more than evil dressed up in outlandish rags and a symbol of modern sickness.

As good as Heath Ledger was as the clown prince of darkness in The Dark Knight, there was always the nagging feeling that the brutality and mayhem was never truly understood; that the portrayal was of a man fighting a war that he would profit out of waging. Joaquin Phoenix’s version descends into a deeper understanding of psychosis and the betrayal of society by those who believe they are in charge just because they have the best of everything.

Much has been made of the violence, of the intensity of aggression in the film, and yet what perhaps we are missing is the reason why, the comprehension that anybody can snap in the way that Arthur Fleck finally does when he starts to see the world as one of corrupted disease; how many times have we been confronted by something that takes us to the very edge of our limits, one more push gnawing away at our minds, one more insult, one more ignorant gesture aimed our way before we unleash a Hell of our own. Yes, we should turn the other cheek, face our dementors with a proud face and be civil, but then so should society be fair, equal, not as consumed by thoughts of getting one over on those below just so we can ahead.

We only have to look to social media, a tool in many ways of good, of connection but also one in which many feel safe being a keyboard warrior and in which their spewing bile causes harm, can kill when the words are directed without a sense of reproach or care. It is in this world that people such as Arthur Fleck, one disadvantaged because of the abuse he has suffered as a child, the ridicule he faces by trying, initially, to do his best to make people laugh, becomes poisoned by society, across the gender divide, across race, religion and colour, there comes a moment when the mind will snap and reality is turned on its head.

Joker is more than a reflection of our times, despite being set against the obvious decay that New York City, as Gotham is based upon, suffered during the late 1970s and 80s, it is a character study of the modern times we live in, the degeneration of the collective will, the need to find ways to block out the social pain, the reason to look away when the uncomfortable becomes just a little too much to withstand; we all do it, nobody is immune because we have reached a point where, like Arthur Fleck, we laugh in the wrong places and we don’t know we are doing it, it is just a sense of the combustible which is threatening to strike out at any point.

Joker is a film of the age, it is not purely about the violence, there is more to this film that for example can be laid at the door of the Rambo franchise, this is a seeking of truth that we are all just one bad day away, one person’s dismissiveness of our right to live, to exist and have hope, from being someone as corrupted by the disease of malevolence as we are of being a victim of it.

An excellent film, Joaquin Phoenix gives a terrifying, frightening and so very human account of the character, one enhanced by the rigours he was willing to put himself through in order to show our own faces behind his clown mask. Simply brilliant!

Ian D. Hall