Spoilers for Joker, obviously. Also, a very minor, relatively vague spoiler for The Shield.

After all the conversation around Joker, some of it truly ridiculous, I decided I had to see the film for myself to judge. I’d heard a wide range of opinions on it going in: It’s bad; it’s pretty good but not great; it’s great; it’s a dangerous movie glorifying incels; Noah Berlatsky:

live look at Noah Berlatsky's "Elements of Storytelling" class pic.twitter.com/3EGy3ntOMC

— Lucky Pierre Erecto (@RuckCohlchez) October 19, 2019

I was expecting something in the “pretty good but not great” vein– a solid B. I read reviews of varying opinions and was “spoiled” on quite a few things (which I don’t think affected my enjoyment of the film); I expected a film with strong elements but also obvious flaws that dragged the story down. What I got instead was a film that got better as it went on and that in the end I found very good– perhaps even great.

Joker is an intersection of multiple stories: A tale of mental illness; a man looking for acceptance from a father figure; a tale of the deprivation of austerity and the fomenting of class war; a King of Comedy-style tale about an aspiring but woefully unequipped comedian; and, of course, a supervillain origin story. (Some of these tales may overlap.) Given that, the story actually does a good job of weaving these disparate threads together and making them part of the same overall narrative. That narrative, of course, is the descent of Arthur Fleck into the Joker, the tale of a man marginalized by a number of elements that, while never especially called out as being such but which are fairly clear as the movie portrays them, are in sum a culmination of the financialization and neoliberal austerity that was beginning to be a two-party American (and beyond) project around the time the film is set– whether those elements are systematic, like the cutting of social services, or individual, like Thomas Wayne, a human personification of the greed and callousness of capital and finance. (New York City, of course, was the hub and in many ways proving ground for these policies; it’s the effects of their implementation, and the callousness displayed by the wealthy in response, that leads to the civil unrest in Gotham City in the film.)

I wasn’t sure about how I felt about this story being made into a comic-book movie (other than that possibly being the only way it gets made), but I think that choice actually is really effective, as the familiar setting allows for a lot of shorthand exposition. We already know what Gotham City is; the name “Thomas Wayne” tells us everything we need to know about who he is and his role in this society. Oddly, while I think it generally works as a supervillain origin story, I don’t know how I feel about it being the Joker’s– although, perhaps, my perception is clouded by the many Jokers past, particularly Heath Ledger, whose take on the character was such a chaotic force of nature that giving him a backstory would have cheapened the effect. In any case, I acknowledge all these limitations are largely outside the scope of the film and a product of the necessities of big-budget studio filmmaking, so I tried to evaluate and engage with the film for what it was.

And it was engaging. I think Drunk Napoleon reminded us a few weeks ago that Howard Hawks’ definition of a good film was “three good scenes and no bad ones,” and this definitely had more than three good scenes. I have to add– while I don’t know if it had bad scenes, there were some I found predicable, though that was perhaps mostly in the earlier scenes. The further into the film we got, the more I found myself engaged. (Even the moments where Phoenix’s performance could’ve gone too weird or over-the-top to be plausible ended before they hit the breaking point.)

But what most kept me going in the film was the narrative thrust. I don’t watch many current movies, admittedly, and if I did I might feel differently. (Admittedly, I don’t think this film is all that deep, but then I don’t think it has to be to work.) What I do feel is similar to what I felt about The Favourite, a movie I really enjoyed for two reasons: Every scene advanced the plot or escalated the stakes, and every character in every scene wanted something. Joker doesn’t quite display that level of discipline, but it has a clear narrative thrust and forward momentum both in the plot and in Arthur’s transformation. Every step happens believably as some fragile thread of his reality gets unwoven, from losing his job to losing his mental health services to being humiliated on late-night television (admittedly, this is probably the least plausible part of the story, but it’s still believable if unlikely) to finding out the truth about his parents (well, two versions of the truth) and what kind of man Thomas Wayne is, until one more indignity on top of the others– after doing a good deed, no less– leads him to an impulsive decision, one he follows up on swiftly and with intent, and one he finds himself astonishingly at peace with. Thus begins Joker’s shedding of his Arthur Fleck mask, of his attempts to perform the behaviors of civil society.

Something that came up in our site’s Shield discussions (of course that show would be referenced) was a comment someone made (I believe it was ZoeZ, although I could not find the actual comment) comparing Shane to Frankenstein’s monster, demanding Vic recognize the ways in which he created the person Shane is now, how Vic’s actions led to Shane’s actions. Joker strikes me similarly. Much of Arthur’s drive is the journey to be recognized: as a comedian; as a product of a system of deprivation and austerity and capitalism; as the son of the father who continually denies him. As a human being who matters. In a certain sense, Arthur Fleck becoming Joker is very much like Walter White becoming Heisenberg: Two men who demand that their lives make an impact on the world, for good or ill; two men who demand recognition; two men who are much more at peace with themselves the more they embrace their dark sides. (Arthur is even more desperate than Walter, who had plenty of opportunities to take the other road; in addition, Arthur’s first step to being reborn as Joker isn’t a conscious decision like Walter’s, but a reaction, a not-unreasonable response that becomes unreasonable as Arthur finds he likes killing.)

I’ve seen criticisms that it doesn’t offer any solutions or deep thoughts on Society, but I don’t think it needs to. I think it offers a look at what people might do in a Society such as this one– they’re not rallying around Joker killing three finance bros if finance and wealth wasn’t crushing Gotham underneath its boot. And in that, it is very effective. (I think a lot of folks don’t appreciate the audacity of getting a “KILL THE RICH” movement depicted on screen in a big-budget film.) I think expecting a film to provide societal solutions is an unfair weight to put on it; this is storytelling, and it’s quite effective as such. I don’t expect a film to provide answers; I want a story, not an argument, and Joker tells the story of how people might plausibly act in these conditions and circumstances, in particular one particularly unhinged and beaten-down person.

That said: Did I find it thrilling seeing mass resistance to capital’s project to dismantle society depicted on screen, especially as many such mass demonstrations are happening worldwide in real life as we speak? You betcha!

Also, I don’t know why Todd Phillips is complaining you can’t do comedy anymore. Joker is funny. Not all the time, but when it’s funny, it’s hilarious. Granted, Mrs. C and I probably laughed more than anyone else in the theater, due in part to just how dark some of the comedy was, but damn, those laughs were real and legitimate. Unfortunately, writing this several days later, I don’t remember them all, but I laughed out loud at least a half-dozen times, I think starting with the “gun in the children’s hospital” scene. (Then again, maybe the movie’s not as funny if you’re not the kind of person who cheers when the clown-mask protesters surround the cops after they shoot a guy on the train.)

Speaking of comedy: The two comedians we hear in the club are Gary Gulman and Sam Morril. I’ve seen the Comedy Central special Morril’s “parking a car” joke comes from. It’s good; he’s funny! I’ve heard great things about Gulman but I’m not as familiar with his work.

I didn’t think it was perfect. Some of the choices were a little on-the-nose: a couple of moments where the score heavily underlined Arthur’s thoughts and feelings; the flashbacks when Arthur is visiting Arkham; Arthur’s final “joke” to Murray Franklin, a little too clear a statement of purpose for his state of mind at that point, in my opinion. For that matter, I thought the Murray Franklin story was probably the weakest narrative thread of the film, a little contrived and not really necessary as part of Arthur’s descent, but I also understand its plot necessity in creating a spectacular moment for Arthur to be fully born as Joker and for the city’s protesters to rally behind him. (Robert De Niro himself makes a great avatar for the politics and power which give the film its backdrop and lead to the civil unrest therein, given his stature and past work with the CIA.) Perhaps tightening or shaving down this plot in a way that it doesn’t require so much screen time would have helped– the movie does check in a shade over two hours as it is.

In the end, Joker is a disparate number of elements, some individually which work better than others, but on the whole I quite liked it. It moves pretty well; it plausibly chronicles Arthur’s degradation; Phoenix is great (for me less for the tics and for the palpable way he sheds Arthur’s discomfort as he becomes the Joker); it’s gorgeously shot (and I can’t emphasize enough how nice it is to see Gotham City pop with color after years of grays and blacks and grays); it’s very funny when it tries to be funny; it makes you sympathize or even empathize with Fleck as he goes further and further down the rabbit hole of the monstrous; it still manages to elicit disgust with some of his actions even as you do so; and it contains some of the most explicit depictions of the deprivations and depravity of capitalism and the power of direct action against it I’ve ever seen on a mainstream big-budget film. The fact that I haven’t even covered a number of story and character elements in this review speaks to how much is going on here. I went in expecting this to be pretty good, not great, and it substantially exceeded my expectations, remaining consistently engaging and giving me a lot to think about and talk about afterward. If all that doesn’t make a good film, what does?