Finally we have a movie which tells a backstory about eternal enemy of Batman, the craziest mortal we ever have, Joker. Instead of being an action movie, Joker is said to be a psychological thriller movie, which narrates what made Joker Joker. Here, we would see Joker’s life as a mad and crazy man before he started making chaos in Gotham City. Hence, please don’t expect Batman’s appearance in this movie. Consequently, it’s a terrible idea to bring your children while watching this.
Before I start talking about the movie, I warn you regarding minor spoilers spread on the next paragraphs. However it should be okay since the entire plot of the movie has been a trending topic everywhere and we already know who is Joker since watched the first Batman movie.
Joker is originally named Arthur Fleck, a pathetic party clown who lived in Gotham city with his mother, Penny. At the starting scene, we would see him was being bullied by youngsters when doing his job, was helped by no one. The worst, his client’s store wanted him to compensate the caused damage instead of being sympathetic to his condition. He couldn’t control his laughing, sometimes annoy people near him, because of a reason. It’s been his disorder to laugh in an inappropriate time, which makes him have to take medicines and go to psychiatrist. The first incident in the movie led Arthur to the series of bad lucks. He was betrayed with his colleague regarding his owned gun, lost the job he loves, became an unsuccessful stand up comedian, and being attacked due to his uncontrolled laugh. Worse, his failed joke was roasted by his own comedian idol. However, he seemed start to find his own happiness after murdered his attackers. He felt happy for the first time on his life. His own taste of happiness makes him to do the theatrical dance we expected since watching the trailer.
For completion, the movie also explored the other things which made Arthur Joker. He isn’t just an unsuccessful and poor man according to his career. This movie also show his mother’s life, who is a big fan of Thomas Wayne, a billionaire mayor candidate of Gotham, made her care of Wayne more than Arthur. Later the movie would reveal the relation of Wayne, Penny, and Arthur itself, which also reveals plot of sorrowful Arthur’s childhood. However this plot is less elaborated from the point of view of Arthur’s risen memory. The revelation concludes that Arthur’s condition in the present is a part of his mother’s fault too.
The current condition of Gotham City takes part of making Arthur a Joker too. He wasn’t helped by anyone when people bullied him, and the city seemed not on the poor citizens’ side too. We would see how’s the difference of media’s reaction when the rich found murdered and when the poor died on the street. It’s not a good city to live in, especially when the government cut the funding for the social health service, made Arthur’s medication no longer facilitated.
Basically this movie is narrated from a perspective of a man who suffer mental illness, Arthur. The situation he faced made him complete crazy. While this movie was criticized to offense the party clown profession, it seemed controversial due to netizen’s reaction to justify the crime committed by an unlucky citizen. “The evil man is a kind man who was hurt by society, ” probably that’s what people tried to say after watching this movie. However, Arthur, who we watched throughout the movie is not a regular oppressed man. He became evil not only because he thought that he’s the unluckiest person in the world. He suffered serious mental sickness due to the tragedy he faced since his childhood, but didn’t get decent treatment from the society. It made him couldn’t think clearly, then consider his sorrow life as a comedy. His perspective is unchangeable after he discovered his own way to feel better, even after someone told him that not every bad person deserves to be murdered.
Regarding the storyline, since the second act we would find the scenes that we will find it out as unreal. The scenes may only happened on Arthur’s mind, mixed with the reality he faced. Hence we have to be thorough to determine the plot used in this movie, to verify whether a scene is really happened in the present, happened in the past, or only based on Arthur’s imagination. For instance, was the final gunshot in this movie really happened? There’s a theory which said that the entire movie only happened in Arthur’s mind. However, for me, the movie is a mixed plot of the reality and his imaginations.
To be able to narrate Arthur’s personality, Todd Philips really understand what made him a Joker. He seems to know Joker so well and so lucky to have Joaquin Phoenix stars Arthur/Joker. Joaquin’s gesture is set with very detailed, match the music scoring used here. His hurting laugh really convincing, a sign for upcoming thrilling plot, the unexpected one. Philips shots every life changing moment of Arthur in a lovable way, make this movie has an excellent cinematography. Knowing Joker pretty well from its comic (and perhaps entire DC universe too), he also did his chance to deliver a fan service for every DC fans, with showing one of the well known scene of the DC Universe in the end.
This movie is considered to be the best movie of the year. However for me some plot of the storyline still could be elaborated further, such as the perspective which unjustified the murder scenes. Still, this movie got 8 of 10 points from me.
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