Joker: A Review(Spoilers)

Holy Mind F#%K Batman…

The unreliable narrator is what makes this film worthy of a review outside of the mainstream. With most narrative films, one could expect 3 stories intertwining to create a world ladled with conflict — the cornerstones of any watchable blockbuster or tent pole movie. The Joker is simply this but with so many inconsistent accounts of what happens through his eyes, one could not really assume that any of it happened at all.

My personal take and opinion is that he is and had become that influential and powerful a figure… like a cultist forcing his hand into the hearts of the downtrodden to become that, which is most funny to him, a symbol of evil with no real purpose behind what he had achieved. The joke is on us, where no agenda had been propagated or wanted, just a mad clown of a criminal in the making and his non-plight-plight to reap vengeance on what he deems as most unfair about his life. It all seems a coincidence that things would have worked out against us as an audience. Most fans believe this, but the film-makers may have something else to say. We as fans would prefer something conclusive instead of having so many possibilities play out before us.

Director Todd Philips mentions, very much like my own paraphrasing that the film is about introducing possibilities. In saying so, the film is not as complicated as most of what the fuss would have been about. The tempest of the film’s glory juxtaposed against the Joker within the film and his “voice of the working class,” appeal that seems to resonate long and hard within the supposed urgency to understand this apparent tale of misunderstood struggle, is left by the wayside when attempting to be too much — we find nothing in the context of the grander picture.

Fourth walls are broken when Robert De Niro takes center stage and has the limelight flipped on its end, as Arthur Fleck appears on his show to enact his own brand of comedy. Arthur’s obsession with Murray Franklin is introduced early and is paid off near the end as he mounts his last vestige of hope through the murder of his idol.

The movie plays out to a over-hyped compensation of the third kind, where the source material, though realized, is not met of its nuances. My advice, take it for what it is and nothing more… a character study of a very interesting subject, and forget the hype.