This was honestly my problem with the film and what I tried to touch on when I said “upon repeated viewings.” The first time I watched it, I was super hyped as a Scorsese loving film geek…aaaaand I was disappointed. I thought it was an overly sympathetic portrayal of an edgelord to the point where it felt like porn for guys who reek of patchouli oil and have Joker and Venom sleeves running down their arms. I actually kind of saw why the media and everybody was like “this is dangerous,” but then I watched it some more and the more I watched it, the more surprised I was by the nuance.
The whole conceit of the movie is that Arthur’s tired of being kicked around and yet, he’s surrounded by kindness. This strange dude shows up in her apartment one night and Sophie’s first instinct is to ask if he’s okay, Gary was so nice to him he spared his life, and even Murray, confronted with a literal murderer on his show, attempts to get through to him. There are fine fellows throughout the movie and Arthur absolutely gets kicked around, but he’s also an unreliable narrator and it shows.
It shows in how he wants the entire world to coddle him for his inability to fit in and his mental illness, all the while finding the same traits in his mother worthy of punishment by death. It shows in the fact that he fantasizes about Murray Franklin as a surrogate father figure, yet, when faced with an interaction where Murray attempted to get through to him in a paternalistic manner, Arthur split on him and murdered him in cold blood.
It’s kind of a terrifying movie because you almost forget to be critical of the title character, but the more you watch it, the more the cracks start to show. It’s kind of interesting that the movie ends the way it does; with Arthur recounting his tale of woe to a shrink at Arkham, because it makes you wonder “is all of this a crock?”
I found it interesting the way Phillips played with canon and, despite it being such a detached, Oscar baity movie, you can see little elements from the books that found their way into the film. Thematically, the whole Murray Franklin show bit kind of brought me back to the Dave Endochrine (Letterman) appearance in The Dark Knight Returns and the way Joker sort of turns their desire to sensationalize him against them (by murdering them all). You’ve got the sad sack, struggling Stand-Up Comic angle from The Killing Joke, and, with the whole “unreliable narrator” angle, it does actually make me curious to see what they do with Harley in the sequel because, if she was sitting where the audience was sitting, while dissecting Arthur’s story, it’s not hard to see how she would sympathize with him and even fall for him.
I will say, off-topic, but it really pissed me off how Joker and The Batman sort of passed each other like two ships in the night. Because their visions of Gotham are so thematically alike and, even the tones are eerily similar. Phillips going for a very gritty, grimey vision of the Bernie Gaetz-era New York of the ‘70s and ‘80s through the lens of Scorsese, and Reeves diving headlong into the grunge of the ‘90s in a Fincher-esque manner (complete with a Nirvana-fueled soundtrack).
It actually actively pisses me off because everything fits except the cell phones and modern tech. Timeline? Pattinson fits little Bruce’s age range in Joker to a T. The atmosphere and the city? They feel the same. Thomas Wayne being a *********? With a little reworking and some reshoots, they could’ve easily tied that whole Falcone/murderer angle from The Batman in with Joker’s Trumpian mogul depiction of Thomas Wayne and I’d have bought that guy having a reporter murdered 100%. Not to mention the fact that incel Joker and 4chan Riddler just feel like they should be in the same universe. Normally, I’m all for detached continuity and letting filmmakers do their own thing, but that’s one that still puzzles me.
