Whatever the venerable filmmakers may say, comic book films are no longer considered “low art” today — at least, pictures of the level of Todd Phillips’ Joker (Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival is something, yes it means). By placing Batman’s nemesis at the center of the story, the director tells the story of one madness, forcing the viewer to sympathize with the (anti)hero. Or at least understand it better.
Gotta be funny for everyone
America, Gotham City, early 1980s. Dirt on the streets, unemployment, lack of prospects. Around — all the same faces, exhausted, tired, as Gary Jules sang in the song «Mad world». «Is it me — or is the whole world going crazy?» Arthur Fleck asks his therapist. He does not yet know that his treatment program will soon be curtailed and he will be left alone with his ever-increasing madness.
Arthur is a part-time clown. Works as a clown, dreams of a career as a stand-up comedian. She spends her evenings watching the comedy show of her idol, Murray Franklin, and writes desperately unfunny jokes. No one believes in him — not even his mother, to whom Fleck is painfully attached («Doesn’t it take to be funny to be a comedian?»).
But she, mother, always insisted that Arthur’s destiny is to bring joy and happiness to this world, and he stubbornly follows her testament, slipping, falling and rising again. And the city, ruthless Gotham, each time beats him backhand, in the stomach, and, bending over the body stretched out on the cold ground, laughs mercilessly.
Most of the time, Arthur struggles with gloomy thoughts or indulges in fantasies that smoothly flow into crazy ideas.
Arthur gets up again and again, recovers, puts on make-up, stretches his face into a wide smile. In his arsenal — a clown nose, a green wig and a whole bunch of neuropsychiatric diseases. When Fleck is scared, uncomfortable, angry or embarrassed, he bursts into inappropriate uncontrollable laughter (this laughter is not only a reflection of internal pain, but also, it seems, one of the symptoms of affective lability).
Most of the time, Arthur, if not struggling with gloomy thoughts (“How are you at work? Have you had negative thoughts? Yes, all my thoughts are negative!”), Then he indulges in fantasies, smoothly flowing into hallucinations and delusions, and balances on the fine line separating his miserable existence within the framework of the conventional norm from real madness.
But the world is pressing on him — and one day it will. The twisted spring will straighten out, and the deeply unhappy, wounded, insecure Arthur Fleck will turn into the main anti-hero of the Batman universe — the Joker.
Always wear a mask
Congenital vulnerability of the psyche, serious childhood trauma, unbearable cruelty of the surrounding world and numerous pokes of fate (severely beaten on the street, unfairly fired from work, ridiculed by an idol), betrayal of the closest person — could Arthur, with all these inputs, not become the Joker? Could. But he became one.
For the first time in his life, having stood up for himself and dealt with offenders not without pleasure, Fleck accidentally launched a wave of protest and became a hero of resistance. All his life tormented by the question of whether he really exists, Arthur finally got an affirmative answer to him. And he made a sharp U-turn on the symbolic stairs: throughout the first half of the film, the hero climbed it over and over again, hoping to get out of the abyss that was absorbing him, and at the end he descended triumphantly. To a place where there is no going back.