Joker (2019)
By The Gorilla
This review contains spoilers
I ran away from the zookeepers, King Kong-ing my way through the city—kissing a blonde lady on the cheek as I was running by, then jumping and swinging from the lamppost to the top of a moving cab. I jumped down the car, climbed a wall of a big house all the way up to the roof, and disappeared into the darkness.
As the shouts of the nerdy zookeepers came from the street below, I saw a cinema one block away. I quickly climbed down the house and hid there. Only one movie was being screened, Joker (2019), by Todd Phillips, but I was in no position to be fastidious. For months I had been avoiding the new iteration of the laughing man like the plague, but tonight was the night I was going to watch it.
When the movie was first announced a couple of years ago, with the great Joaquin Phoenix starring as the titular character, I was so excited I unwittingly took out the Panda, my girlfriend, to an expensive restaurant I could not afford. When I saw the bill, all of my hair turned white and I briefly considered picking up the Panda and fleeing. But I'm an honest, albeit now pale, Gorilla, so I didn't.
I beat my chest a lot that night, as the Panda dyed my fur back to its black, shining splendor.
To add insult to the injury of that night, the first teaser for the movie came out, then the trailers followed, and my interest was gone with the wind. They all just seemed to promise an unfocused, character-study made to appeal to teenagers who feel attacked by wind blowing in their faces. Teenagers who think calling themselves “crazy” makes them cool, who go on 9Gag, REDDIT, and 4chan lamenting their parents’ lack of understanding for the tragedy their life is; who complain about girls only wanting jocks.
Yeah, count me out.
But then life brought me into that theater and I had some time to spare. So I bought my ticket and sat down in the dark room. A couple of rats were in a corner munching on a crust. Judging from the questioning looks the male kept on giving to the female, they were probably out for their first date. A man sat alone in a corner. I scratched myself and made a quick phone call to the Panda, just before the small lights around the screen dimmed.
Joker tells the story of Arthur Fleck, a lonely and mentally disturbed man in the Gotham City of 1981. He lives with his loving, but equally unhinged mom, as he struggles to become a stand-up comedian—a venture even his cuckoo mum thinks is crazy. Despite his dream, Arthur’s social inadequacy and ever-growing delusions isolate him further, inevitably turning him against a cruel and cynical society that only wants to trip him at every turn. And what do you get when the unwanted child of Erika Kohut and Holden Caulfield finally snaps? You get slaughter with a touch of: “Oh, but I thought we were together!” “I don’t even know you, creep. Get out of my living room and stop watching my TV!”
When I was first introduced to Arthur, I felt for his perils, as he is pitted against everyday struggles that most of us can experience and always loses against them. He is a kind, awkward man incapable to understand the people around him—he is the underdog. Easily affected by the rudeness and cynicism of others, he is often the end of someone’s insult or malice. He gets tricked by his colleague at work, loses his job, discovers the terrible secrets of his childhood, gets let down by the social system, and gets humiliated by his hero (Robert De Niro).
God damn it Arthur, here, you can have my banana!
And yet, he is no victim. Like Don Quixote, he fights back and complains. Damn does he complain. He is a loser and a loner, but he is set on a path to bloodshed. Just like Popeye, he takes and takes till that's all he can stands, cuz he can't stands n'more. When that happens, a massacre ensues, and the viewer is left pondering whether or not this was inevitable from the start.
The film is greatly and devotedly acted, with a Cinematography that stands out for all the good reasons, an evocative score, and some pretty bold directions for a movie aimed predominantly at comic-book fans. Phillips is not afraid to make the main character increasingly unlikeable during the last act. Thanks to his confident hold on the story, we never look down on Arthur but with him. We experience Arthur’s life solely through his eyes, and understand—like in every good Greek tragedy—that Arthur’s own nature is his biggest, undefeatable foe. Surely, society doesn’t make it easy for him but neither does it for other millions of people living in Gotham, and yet he alone commits the biggest atrocities on screen, he alone enjoys causing suffering and mayhem.
The more Arthur changes, the more he finds himself, the more self-confident he becomes, the less we feel close to him. By the end of the movie, I knew less about him than when I started. He’s an enigma. He is unsympathetic and petty. I finally saw his tendency to self-pity, but it was too late: he had already started killing. He was a sociopath who most likely would have murdered regardless of reason; just his unfortunate life sped up the process.
It all reminded me of The Killing Joke (1988), a great graphic novel that similarly explores the origins of the villainous clown. In this story, Joker tries to convince Batman that anybody can be turned crazy and murderous – insanity is just one bad day away. But Batman isn’t convinced. He captures Joker, and, while punching his soul out, expounds his own theories about life: “Ordinary people don’t always crack […] Maybe it was just you, all the time.” In the Joker, the filmmakers very wisely never put the whole blame for Arthur’s actions on one sole factor—mental illness or society. Instead they show how it is a mixture of both that caused the birth of the Joker. But maybe it was just him, all the time.
In sum, Joker achieves great technical heights, while posing a few interesting questions along the way about the role of nature and society in the birth of the modern middleman.
But it just didn't do it for me. My Joker is still Heath Ledger, and I just couldn't connect with the story. It wasn't my casket of bananas, though objectively, it is a very good movie!
As the credits started rolling, and the only human spectator left the room, I heard the zookeepers talking with the clerk at the box office. I was trapped, but calm: it was almost time. When the zookeepers tried to come through the door, I put my whole gorilla weight against it and waited, while they were shouting on the other side. Twenty minutes passed by when I finally heard a familiar roar. Then screams, thuds, bangs, and people fleeing, followed by heavy silence.
A knock on the door. “All good in there?” asked the Panda. I opened the door and greeted my black and white hero with a meek nod: I wanted to be taken care of.
“Are you OK? Were they mean to you?"
I nodded.
“Aw, I'm sorry. Work was crazy today, just got off now,” she added, offering me a banana and a scratch on the forehead. “Did you like the movie?”
“It was good, but it didn’t leave me much,” I said. She nodded in response.
We leisurely walked back home in silence and had a very romantic Panda and Gorilla nap.
The Gorilla watches movies, The Gorilla thinks, The Gorilla does reviews. He is very opinionated, which sometimes drives his girlfriend, The Panda, crazy. He also likes alcoholic bananas, back scratches, and long naps in the sun.
