JOKER: WHO'S THE CRAZY ONE?

As I write this on October 10, it is World Mental Health Day. The two lovely fellows you see below (musician Ed Sheeran and Britain's Prince Harry, in case you’ve been living on another planet), preface a serious message about caring for and supporting your friends and neighbors with some light-hearted banter about the abuse they’ve suffered as “gingers” (redheads). You can see the Instagram message here, and go no further if you’d like. I won’t hold it against you.

Ed Sheeran and Prince Harry: Gingers for Mental Health

Because the real subject of today’s blog post, dear readers, is JOKER, Todd Phillips’ latest redefinition of the DC Comics villain and Batman’s nemesis, played to the mesmerizing hilt by actor Joaquin Phoenix. It’s appropriate that I undertake to review this controversial film on a day devoted to mental health, not only because Arthur Fleck, the man who becomes the Joker, is obviously insane, but also because the point of the movie is our society is slowing moving in that direction as well. What we ignore in the least sane of us becomes a problem for the community at large—mass shootings, terrorism, drugs, extremism, even just apathy and isolationism.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Writer/director Phillips (whose experience is primarily with comedies like OLD SCHOOL and HUNGOVER) shaped his film as an origin story for the villain that faces off against the Batman of Christopher Nolan’s DARK KNIGHT films. That Batman was tormented, haunted by the death of his parents and unable to escape the darkness within himself. Heath Ledger’s Joker was similarly tortured by his abusive past, but Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix take that step further, implicating not only the personal circumstances that led to Joker’s “creation,” but also Gotham’s role in it.

Arthur Fleck had a horrific childhood, much of which he doesn’t remember, but which has left him damaged. One of the symptoms of his mental illness is an unfortunate compulsion to laugh uncontrollably when stressed or fearful. He’s bullied by just about everyone, even at work in a clowns-for-hire company. If he’s not bullied, he’s avoided for his emaciated looks and “weird” behavior.

Incidents pile up, increasing the pressure on the fragile structure of fantasy he maintains to get through the day. When he intervenes as several drunken young businessmen harass a woman on a subway, the men turn on him and proceed to beat him down—until he pulls out a revolver a coworker has given him after a similar mugging and starts shooting, still in his clown makeup and laughing hysterically all the while. The fact that he saves the woman (and himself) is quickly forgotten. Innocent Young Men Murdered by Manic Clown becomes the headline, but Gotham’s unemployed and exploited see another lesson in the clown’s act of desperation. They make the altercation a wider example of the poor and downtrodden fighting back against the bullying rich. 

Other old assumptions are turned on their heads. Bruce Wayne’s father Thomas, always portrayed as a good-guy philanthropist in every other version of the Batman story, is cold and even cruel in JOKER. Arthur believes Wayne to be his father, based on lies told by his mother (for whom he serves as caregiver). But when he confronts the rich businessman, Wayne debunks that myth by telling him a devastating truth without benefit of sugarcoating. Arthur’s castle of illusion begins to sink into the sand of deception on which it was built, leading to chaos and increasing violence in the last third of the film.

Oddly, the chaos is not in Arthur’s mind now. The more he inhabits “Joker,” the more confident and less delusional he becomes. For example, he longs to be a standup comedian, and, at the midpoint of the film, he’s given his chance to perform onstage at a little club. It’s a disaster; the jokes are unfunny, his stage presence bizarre, and, worst of all, the stress brings out his inappropriate laughter. 

Later in the film, his idol, late night show host Murray Franklin (Robert de Niro in a brilliant piece of casting—the actor has no discernable sense of humor himself), runs a video clip of the performance on his show and mocks him. Then Franklin’s assistant calls Arthur to invite him on the show. But by now Arthur has almost completely attained Joker status. He is no longer the frightened, abused, child-like being he once was.

**SPOILER ALERT**

And when he arrives on Franklin’s stage, he is in full Joker mode—makeup, burgundy suit, green hair, confident, full of intention. (In fact, before the show, he asks Franklin to introduce him as Joker, because that is what the host called him on the air when mocking him earlier.) He says he knows Franklin has only invited him to make fun of him. Then he openly admits his crime in shooting the men on the subway, shocking both host and audience. Finally he asks a question (he calls it a joke): “What do you get when you take a mentally ill person and ignore him all his life? You get what you deserve.”

I won’t tell you what happens next. Perhaps you’ve heard; perhaps you can guess. The act on the stage precipitates the end of the film—rioting in the streets, an attempted rescue of Joker by his demented “followers,” his eventual incarceration in Arkham Asylum. If you are a DC Comics fan, you know this isn’t the end of his story; it’s the beginning.

The Joker celebrates his birth.

This interpretation of the Joker character has ignited a firestorm of controversy and a corresponding ashfall of dissatisfied reviews. Most of them center on the idea that this is some kind of apology for Joker’s evil-doing. It is no such thing. This is not justification for murder and mayhem on a large scale; it is explanation, which I think we could all use. Phillips does not ask us to root for Arthur Fleck (and by extension Joker) so much as understand him. The suggestion is that if we understand, we can do something to divert others like him.

Joaquin Phoenix’s astounding performance can only be viewed in this context. You cannot look away from the pathos and eerie fascination of the character he has created onscreen, a character fully formed out of the writers’ backstory and Phoenix’s artistry. Arthur Fleck is a human being with an eternal soul, which he eventually trades for survival in this world—as the newly invented Joker. The transformation is stunning to watch.

But the real message is for us. With every new mass shooting, every new act of terrorism or extremism, we ask: Is it the guns? Is it mental illness? What can be done? And in the end, we throw up our hands and answer, Nothing. Nothing can be done.

It’s interesting to me that Joker wreaks all his havoc on Gotham with a six-shot revolver that was given to Arthur Fleck. Arthur hardly knows what to do with it at first and tries without success to give it back or get rid of it. But he hardly needs an AR15. The people around him all his life and the citizens of Gotham give him all the help he needs to become an agent of mass murder. And as we leave the theater after witnessing his final act of violence, when we’re certain Arthur has disappeared and only Joker remains, the strains of Murray Franklin’s theme song follow us up the aisle:

Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life.

Cheers, Donna