Since this gritty, almost Indie looking film is setting an October box office records domestically and internationally with more than $750 million weekend opening, Philips can set the next all-too real world film in this comic universe in a mental asylum with Joker, Batman, Penguin and others creating chaos in a One Flew Over The Cukoo’s Nest-type setting while imagining themselves (in comic book world flashbacks) to be fighting on the grand scale of the comic book world that they are usually shown in the big tent pole films.

By R. Paul Dhillon – Editor-Founder DESIBUZZCanada

Writer-director Todd Phillips has made a powerful, disturbing and dangerous film and one that also comes across as a comic-book cash grab using an all too real-life character in one glorious origin story of the iconic DC comics character The Joker.

Of course, the Joker hails from the equally disturbed world of Batman, himself an emotionally challenged hero-villain.

Since this gritty, almost Indie looking film is setting an October box office records domestically and internationally with more than $750 million weekend opening, Philips can set the next all-too real world film in this comic universe in a mental asylum with Joker, Batman, Penguin and others creating chaos in a One Flew Over The Cukoo’s Nest-type setting while imagining themselves (in comic book world flashbacks) to be fighting on the grand scale of the comic book world that they are usually shown in the big tent pole films.

Since many of the characters in the DC Comics (and others including MCU) world is made up of mentally disturbed individuals in advanced stage of disturbing psychological behaviour so it’s fitting that Philips chooses to borrow (rip off) the main disturbing character traits and violent themes from two of Martin Scorsese and Robert Deniro’s iconic films – Taxi Driver and King of Comedy.

In fact Joker seems like a sequel to those films (or Trilogy like M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable-Split-Glass films) with Arthur Fleck (Joker), played to absolute horror by Joaquin Phoenix, to be the legitimate or illegitimate son of Deniro’s Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver than what the Joker delusions about in the film as being the illegitimate son of Batman’s father Thomas Wayne.

While the Joker creates a fully realised world of Batman comics including young Bruce Wayne seeing his parents Murdered in an alley after Joker unleashes his pent up rage and brings a tidal wave of violence to Gotham, the film is a dangerous cinematic exercise, some would even say crass commercialism hiding behind mental illness porn pretending to be art.

The film’s amoral take ala Goodfellas, Sopranos and other violent organized crime operas and attempts to legitimize Joker’s violence in the same vein as Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin from The King of Comedy, the society’s self created monsters, has a disturbing, mind-numbing payoff.

But Joker is a comic-book creation and not a real person per se and that is where the problem with the film is. So when the very realistic socially created Joker goes over the top in full blown cuckoo clock mode, the film quickly falls back into its comic book villain pedigree.

The film lulls the audience into feeling sorry for Arthur Fleck, Joker’s real name, for about three quarters of the film and even makes some of us cheer or feel good when Arthur kills three Wall Street criminals for pounding on him for their nihilistic pleasure. But then he becomes the fully evil-personified Joker, the bad-ass comic  villain, we feel icky inside because the extreme tonal shift from victim to villain is hard to take in this standalone Joker film.

This is the dangerous and disturbing achievement of director Philips and it leaves audiences unsettled and absolutely horrified, realizing that the film has been an exercise in manipulation.

Joker’s disturbing portrayal of a mentally disturbed man who overcomes the pain and violence of an equally disturbed world may be a powerful dissertation on the modern world and America-New York in particular but Arthur’s transition to the Dark Lord of Gotham, from the Real to the Comic, is a bloody head-spin that is dangerous and off-putting in an America full of bloody, murderous gun violence and rising tide of mental health.

Phoenix for his part goes beyond the call of duty, pulling out everything from his bin of disturbed characters, contorting his way to a complex portrayal of the Joker and he fully deserved to be the front runner for Best Actor Oscar come Awards season.

R. Paul Dhillon is an award winning journalist and the editor of the South Asian LINK newspaper and founder-editor of the online DESIBUZZCanada and DESIBUZZbc publications. He is also a renowned filmmaker with over 40 production credits on documentaries and feature films. His recent feature romantic comedy THE FUSION GENERATION was released in Canadian theatres in August 2019.