Joker

The Weight of the Laugh

It starts with a sound totally out of place for a comic book movie. A dry, choking, painful sound that looks like it physically hurts. When we first see Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck, he's stretching his mouth into a twisted smile, making a tear roll down his cheek. I'm not sure I've ever seen a film lay out its agenda so plainly in the first five minutes. This isn't about a criminal genius; it's about a man literally breaking down under a city that doesn't care.



Todd Phillips directing this still feels like a bug in the system. The guy known for the frat-boy madness of *The Hangover* suddenly making a dark, 80s Scorsese tribute? Sounds ridiculous on paper. And honestly, how much *Joker* borrows from *Taxi Driver* and *The King of Comedy* sometimes feels like straight-up movie plagiarism. But whether that's a problem or a strength just depends on your tolerance for homages. What Phillips really does is use the standard origin story framework as a Trojan horse. He sneaks a grim character study into theaters, disguised as IP.

Phoenix's physical acting just sticks with me. He dropped 52 pounds for the part, an intense diet that left him looking like a bare outline of a person—all sharp ribs and angry angles. But it's more than just the weight loss; it's how he carries himself. Take that talked-about scene after the subway killings, when Arthur's in a filthy public bathroom. The script originally just had him frantically washing off his makeup. Instead, Phoenix started dancing. A slow, terrifyingly elegant tai-chi of insanity. He extends his thin arms, his body unfolding like it's breaking out of a shell. It's really unnerving, mostly because it's the first time in the whole movie Arthur seems okay with himself.



Naturally, you can't discuss *Joker* without mentioning all the chatter around it. The conversation was overwhelming before it even came out. *IndieWire*'s David Ehrlich famously called it "incendiary, confused, and potentially toxic," and plenty of others worried it might stir up dangerous, unhappy people. I went into the theater in 2019 expecting something irresponsible. (Honestly, I think the studio loved the drama—nothing sells tickets like the idea of danger.) But watching it now, without all that immediate public uproar, it feels less like a weapon and more like a reflection. It doesn't ask us to forgive Arthur's violence. It just asks us to see the broken systems that let people like him slip through the cracks.

Casting Robert De Niro as late-night host Murray Franklin is the film’s smartest inside joke. After playing rebellious loners who wanted to tear down the system his whole career, De Niro's now grown into the smug, comfortable establishment itself. When Arthur finally gets on Murray's couch, the room's tension is insane. You know exactly how it’s going to go down. The camera just waits, caught in the harsh studio lights, for everything to break.



By the end, *Joker* leaves you feeling grubby. I mean that in a good way. It doesn't give us the neat, happy endings we're used to from comic book movies. There's no win here, just tragedy smeared in cheap makeup. We get the monsters we create.