Self-assured, confident and a showman, Joker-aka Arthur robbed of all meaning-is now pure symbol and will proceed to have meaning thrust upon him. Backstage on the chat show, Arthur, now under layers of paint, assures Murray Franklin, his hero and pseudo father figure, that he believes in nothing. But not before emptying him of all that made him decent and courteous, two things that he asked of people. Arthur is a nobody who will have power thrust upon him. Gotham is a seedier, darker version of the New York of the time. Joaquin Phoenix in and as Joker | Warner Bros. If this scenario seems vaguely familiar to the present day, consider it intentional. But his act will give them ample opportunity to laugh at him and, ironically, land him on the big stage, right next to the who’s who, whom he will soon leave far behind and, abandoning himself likewise, transform into the Joker, a symbol and vessel for the pent up frustrations and seething discontent of the masses. It is clear that the world will never laugh along with him. He scribbles copious notes at stand-up gigs but evidently lacks the talent to become one. He works at a rent-a-clown joint and dreams of becoming a famous stand-up comedian. He lives with his mother in a grim apartment under the gloomy skies of Gotham city. But unlike the rioting crowd that cheers the Joker on the streets or the horrified audience at the chat show, the film makes us witness the slow and painful erosion of a person who believes that his purpose is to bring joy to a cold, dark world.Īrthur is poor and mentally ill. Violence fosters the protagonist’s growing identification with the symbol, his increasing understanding of the dangerous power it lends him and his eventual embrace of it.Įverything in Arthur must go to yield place to the Joker. Violence is the stuff that this origins story is made of. The two of them are poles apart and the distance between them is bridged by violence. Since the film features intellectual property owned by DC Comics, the transformation manifests in the form of the Joker emerging from the ashes of Arthur Fleck. Joker, directed by Todd Phillips, is a feature-length requiem for the disappearance of a man and his inadvertent yet inevitable reduction to a symbol.
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