Joker (2019 film)

What do you get when you cross a mentally-ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash!? I'll tell you what you get: YOU GET WHAT YOU FUCKING DESERVE!

Forgive my laughter: I have a condition.

Joker is a 2019 American psychological thriller film. The film, based on DC Comics characters, stars Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker. An origin story set in 1981, the film follows Arthur Fleck, a failed stand-up comedian who turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City.

Directed by Todd Phillips. Written by Todd Phillips and Scott Silver

Arthur Fleck / Joker

The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don't.

• [written in notebook] The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don't.
• [written in notebook] I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.
• You know what’s funny? You know what really makes me laugh? I used to think that my life was a tragedy...but now I realize...it's a fucking comedy.
• You don't listen, do you? You just ask the same questions every week. "How's your job?" "Are you having negative thoughts?" All I have are negative thoughts.
• [to Penny Fleck] You know, you used to tell me...that my laugh was a condition. That there was something wrong with me. There isn’t. That’s the real me.
• Is it just me..... or is it getting crazier out there?
• When you bring me out, can you introduce me as Joker?
• [to Thomas Wayne] I know it seems strange, I don't mean to make you uncomfortable, I don't know why everyone is so rude, I don't know why you are; I don't want anything from you. Maybe a little warmth, maybe a hug, “Dad“, maybe just a bit of common fucking decency!
• I haven't been happy one minute of my entire fucking life.
• I had a bad day.
• For my whole life, I didn’t know if I even really existed. But I do. People are starting to notice.

Dialogue

Come on, Mur-ray. Do I look like the kind of clown that could start a movement? I killed those guys because they were awful. Everybody is awful these days. It's enough to make anyone crazy.

The film provides not only the socio-psychological genesis of Joker, it also implies a condemnation of the society in which a protest can only assume the form of a new tribe led by Joker. ~ Slavoj Zizek

Joker: Knock knock.

Murray Franklin: Who's there? [audience laughs]

Joker: It's the police, ma'am. Your son's been hit by a drunk driver. He's dead! [laughs; audience gasps; musician in band goes "wah-wah" on trombone]

Dr. Sally: [unsettled] Oh, no, no, no! No, you cannot joke about that!

Murray Franklin: [tense and somewhat spooked] Yeah, that's not funny, Arthur. That's not the kind of humor we do on this show.

Joker: Okay... Yeah, you know what? I-I’m sor-I'm sorry. I know. It's just, you know, it's been a rough few weeks, Murray. Ever since I...killed those three Wall Street guys.

[the crowd gasps and some of them murmur nervously]

Murray Franklin: [confused, but trying to stay in character] Okay, I'm waiting for the punchline.

Joker: There is no punchline. It's not a joke.

[the crowd gasps]

Murray Franklin: [a bit concerned and edgy] You're serious, aren't you? You're telling us you killed those three young men on the subway?

Joker: Mm-hmm.

Murray Franklin: And why should we believe you?

Joker: I got nothin' left to lose. Nothing can hurt me anymore. My life is nothing but a comedy.

Murray Franklin: So let me get this straight. You think that killing those guys is funny?

Joker: I do. And I'm tired of pretending it's not. Comedy is subjective, Murray. Isn't that what they say? All of you, the system that knows so much, you decide what's right or wrong. The same way that you decide what's [gestures to himself] funny or [points over to Murray] not.

Audience Member: Get him off!

Murray Franklin: [trying not to freak out] O-Okay, I-I think... I-I might understand it. You... did this to start a movement? To become a-a symbol?

Joker: C'mon, Mur-ray. Do I look like the kind of clown that could start a movement? I killed those guys because they were awful. Everybody is awful these days. It's enough to make anyone crazy.

Murray Franklin: Alright. So that's it then, you're crazy. That's your defense for killing three young men?

Joker: [smugly] No. They couldn't carry a tune to save their lives. [the crowd boos and jeers; Joker/Arthur grows frustrated] Ugh, why is everybody so upset about these guys?! If it was me dying on the sidewalk, you'd walk right over me! I pass you every day, and you don't notice me! But these guys... What, because Thomas Wayne went and cried about them on TV?!

Murray Franklin: You have a problem with Thomas Wayne?

Joker: Yes, I do! Have you seen what it's like out there, Mur-ray? Do you ever actually leave the studio? Everybody just yells, shouts, and screams at each other. Nobody’s civil anymore! Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy. You think men like Thomas Wayne ever think what it's like to be someone like me?! To be somebody but themselves?! They don't. They think we'll all just sit there and take it like good little boys! That we won't werewolf and go wild!

Murray Franklin: [still trying not to stay freak out] You finished? I mean, there’s so much self-pity, Arthur. You sound like you're making excuses for killing those young men. Not everybody, and I'll tell you this, not everyone is awful.

Joker: [coldly and quietly] You're awful, Murray.

Murray Franklin: [taken aback] Me? I'm awful? Oh, yeah, how am I awful?

Joker: Playing my video. Inviting me on the show. You just wanted to make fun of me. You're just like the rest of 'em.

Murray Franklin: [offended] You don't know the first thing about me, pal. Look what happened because of what you did. What it led to. There are riots out there. Two policemen are in critical condition, [Joker laughs] and you're laughing. [infuriated] You're laughing. Someone was killed today because of what you did.

Joker: [giggling] I know. How 'bout another joke, Mur-ray?

Murray Franklin: No, I think we’ve had enough of your jokes.

Joker: What do you get...

Murray Franklin: I don't think so.

Joker: ...When you cross...

Murray Franklin: I think we're done with your jokes, that's it.

Joker: ...A mentally-ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?!

Murray Franklin: Call the police, Gene!

Joker: I'll tell you what you get!

Murray Franklin: Call the police!

Joker: YOU GET WHAT YOU FUCKING DESERVE!!! [pulls out his gun and shoots Murray in the head, instantly killing him]

---

[Joker, in a police car, is laughing and chuckling at the chaos being spread to Gotham City]

Cop 1: Stop laughing, you freak. This isn't funny.

Cop 2: Yeah, the whole fucking city's on fire because of you.

Joker: I know... Isn’t it beautiful?

---

[Arthur is laughing loudly during a psychiatric examination at Arkham Asylum. He soon settles down, but still laughs]

Psychiatrist: What's so funny?

Arthur: [laughing and chuckling some more] I was just thinking...just thinking of a joke.

[shot of a young Bruce Wayne standing over the bodies of his dead parents as the camera pulls back and Arthur's laughter is heard]

Psychiatrist: Do you wanna tell it to me?

Arthur: [softly whispers] You wouldn't get it.

About Joker (2019 film)

We share each other’s grief and try to lighten each other’s burdens caused by that "one bad day." And so we continue to grieve with and support the survivors and victims’ families like those of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, shooting during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises that killed 12 and wounded 70 others. But, while their campaign against Joker and Warner Bros. may evoke our sympathies, it is counterproductive to their goal as it sets a bad precedent for activist groups trying to define the boundaries between free speech, hate speech and violence-promoting speech. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

This Joker’s genesis is determinedly mature and uncartoony, compared to, say, Jack Nicholson’s low-level crook Jack Napier falling into a chemical vat in Tim Burton’s Batman, turning him into the Joker with white skin, green hair and a rictus grin. ~ Peter Bradshaw

I think that it's important to really look at those individuals who are suffering from mental illness and really try to find some love and empathy for these people. ~ Emma Tillinger Koskoff

The film is set somewhere in the late ’70s in Gotham City, and Phillips makes no attempt to disguise it for anything other than what it is: New York City, the headquarters of most real-life villainy: the rich who rule us, the banks and corporations for whom we toil, the media which feeds us a daily diet “news” they think we should absorb. ~ Michael Moore

This movie is not about Trump. It’s about the America that gave us Trump — the America which feels no need to help the outcast, the destitute. The America where the filthy rich just get richer and filthier. Except in this story a discomfiting question is posed: What if one day the dispossessed decide to fight back? ~ Michael Moore

I don’t think the Joker had free will, given his life. He was a walking time bomb waiting to explode—all it took was some significant life stress, beatings up, losing a job. You’ve got nothing left.… The well-documented risk factors—this was [the character’s] destiny. No one is born into that kind of violence. ~ Adrian Raine

• We share each other’s grief and try to lighten each other’s burdens caused by that "one bad day." And so we continue to grieve with and support the survivors and victims’ families like those of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, shooting during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises that killed 12 and wounded 70 others. But, while their campaign against Joker and Warner Bros. may evoke our sympathies, it is counterproductive to their goal as it sets a bad precedent for activist groups trying to define the boundaries between free speech, hate speech and violence-promoting speech.
  However, though I am supportive of their goal, this is the wrong movie and the wrong strategy to promote the fight for gun control because it creates a diversion. First, the strategy is wrong because it feels uncomfortably close to passive extortion. Even though there is no call to boycott, they have cast a pall over the film that is meant to be damaging. No matter how Warners reacts, the damage has already been done. Even if Warners complied with their demands, the movie has been tainted in the eyes of the average moviegoer. A photo of a Warner Bros. executive handing them a large check wouldn’t change that. There’s therefore no incentive for the studio to comply. In fact, according to a Warner Bros. statement in response: “Our company has a long history of donating to victims of violence, including Aurora, and in recent weeks, our parent company joined other business leaders to call on policymakers to enact bipartisan legislation to address this epidemic.”
  Second, Warner Bros. and Joker are the wrong focus of attention, which further compromises the group’s goal. Despite their claim that “we support your right to free speech and free expression,” launching this campaign around a movie — especially one like this that strives to be more artistic than exploitative — can have a chilling effect on free expression.
  • Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Why the 'Joker' Gun Violence Protests Miss the Mark”, The Hollywood Reporter, (10/2/2019)

• This Joker’s genesis is determinedly mature and uncartoony, compared to, say, Jack Nicholson’s low-level crook Jack Napier falling into a chemical vat in Tim Burton’s Batman, turning him into the Joker with white skin, green hair and a rictus grin. (The look of DC’s Joker was originally inspired by Conrad Veidt in the 1928 silent classic The Man Who Laughs, a man whose face was disfigured into a grin by his father’s political enemies.)
  There is no reason why Phoenix’s elaborately backstoried Joker shouldn’t be as powerful as Heath Ledger’s mysterious, motiveless, originless Joker in The Dark Knight. But at some stage the comic-book world of supervillaindom has to be entered, and Ledger was more powerful because he wasn’t weighed down with all this realist detail and overblown ironic noir grandeur, and he wasn’t forced to carry an entire story on his own. This Joker has just one act in him: the first act. The film somehow manages to be desperately serious and very shallow.
  • Peter Bradshaw, “Joker review – the most disappointing film of the year “, The Guardian, (Oct 3, 2019).

• Joaquin Phoenix renders the iconic villain on an intimate, human scale in Joker, a disturbing film about one man's psychological destruction and a city's descent into criminal anarchy.
  • Justin Chang, “'Joker': A Piercing Psychological Portrait Of Batman's Notorious Nemesis”, Fresh Air, NPR, (October 3, 2019).

• Phoenix makes Arthur an exceptionally vivid monster. His performance is a symphony of scowls, howls, grins, grimaces and, of course, those endless fits of laughter. It's a big, grotesquely showy piece of acting, but you can't take your eyes off him.
  • Justin Chang, “'Joker': A Piercing Psychological Portrait Of Batman's Notorious Nemesis”, Fresh Air, NPR, (October 3, 2019).

• But as convincingly gritty as it looks, "Joker" falters in its attempt to conjure a backdrop of social unrest. We hear news of a rise in violent crime and anti-rich sentiment aimed at billionaire tycoons like Thomas Wayne, whose son Bruce Wayne will, of course, grow up to become Batman himself. But these stabs at political relevance feel mostly coy and disengaged.
  • Justin Chang, “'Joker': A Piercing Psychological Portrait Of Batman's Notorious Nemesis”, Fresh Air, NPR, (October 3, 2019).

• I think that it's important to really look at those individuals who are suffering from mental illness and really try to find some love and empathy for these people. For me, the themes in that movie were empathy and feeling sad and empathetic for that character.
  • Emma Tillinger Koskoff in Producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff on Emotional Themes of 'Joker': "I Know It's Very Controversial", by Ciara McVey, Hollywood Reporter, (11/23/2019)

• But what condition? Could it be pseudobulbar affect, which is neurological in origin and gives rise to uncontained laughing and crying? Under stress, Arthur certainly breaks into a hyena’s cackle, which stops as abruptly as it starts; he also weeps, and, in closeup, we follow the tracks of the tears on his clown’s white-painted face. (I haven’t seen such artful drips since 1971, when Dirk Bogarde’s hair dye melted, along with his soul, at the end of “Death in Venice.”) The film, however, takes no serious interest in what might be wrong with Arthur. It merely invites us to watch his wrongness grow out of control and swell into violence, and proposes a vague connection between that private swelling and a wider social malady. “Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?” he asks. Guess what: it’s both!
  • Anthony Lane, “Todd Phillips’s “Joker” Is No Laughing Matter”, The New Yorker, (September 27, 2019, published October 7, 2019)

• What is agreed upon, among those who have seen “Joker,” is the prowess with which Phoenix holds it all together. His face may get the greasepaint, but it’s his whole body, coiled upon itself like a spring of flesh, from which the movie’s energy is released. He’s so thin that, when he strips to the waist and bends, his spine and shoulder blades jut out from the skin; is he a fallen angel, with his wings chopped off, or a skeleton-in-waiting, halfway to the grave? Francis Bacon, I think, would have stared at Arthur with a hungry eye.
  • Anthony Lane, “Todd Phillips’s “Joker” Is No Laughing Matter”, The New Yorker, (September 27, 2019, published October 7, 2019)

• “Joker” is no superhero nor supervillain nor comic book movie. The film is set somewhere in the late ’70s in Gotham City, and Phillips makes no attempt to disguise it for anything other than what it is: New York City, the headquarters of most real-life villainy: the rich who rule us, the banks and corporations for whom we toil, the media which feeds us a daily diet “news” they think we should absorb.
  This movie is not about Trump. It’s about the America that gave us Trump — the America which feels no need to help the outcast, the destitute. The America where the filthy rich just get richer and filthier. Except in this story a discomfiting question is posed: What if one day the dispossessed decide to fight back?
  • Michael Moore, “‘Joker’: Michael Moore Writes Tribute to Todd Phillips’ ‘Cinematic Masterpiece’”, variety,(December 18, 2019 )

• For 42 years, I’ve studied the cause of crime and violence. And while watching this film, I thought, Wow, what a revelation this was. I need to buy this movie down the road, make excerpt clips of it to illustrate […] It is a great educational tool about the making of the murderer. That threw me. I talk about all of these factors in the class, and honestly, it’s really hard to get a true-life story that fits all of these pieces together, let alone a very dramatic and stylized movie that illustrates these factors quite strongly. That was really a revelation.
  • Adrian Raine in Julie Miller, “Leading Neurocriminologist Considers Joker “a Great Educational Tool”, (October 14, 2019).

• Physical abuse is on the list, as is neglect and malnutrition as a kid. Being brought up in poverty is a risk factor. He’s adopted, and kids who are adopted are two to three times more likely to become criminal…certainly twice the rate of violence is well established. If you’re wondering why that is, it’s because with adoptions, the baby is separated from the mum for time—and that is breakage of the mother-infant bonding process in a critical period that we know affects personality development down the road.
  • Adrian Raine in Julie Miller, “Leading Neurocriminologist Considers Joker “a Great Educational Tool”, (October 14, 2019).

• [T]he link between mental health problems and violence is, of course, controversial. We don’t want to stigmatize mentally ill people as being dangerous people. But we do know that mental illness is a significant predisposition to violence, which we have to recognize so that people can be treated.
  • Adrian Raine in Julie Miller, “Leading Neurocriminologist Considers Joker “a Great Educational Tool”, (October 14, 2019).

• Mentally ill people don’t go around serial-killing people—plotting a homicide or a bank robbery or a burglary. No, they react on impulse emotionally. It’s impulsive and emotion-driven.” And in the film, Raine pointed out, all of Arthur’s violence seemed authentic to him because it was “reactive aggression.”
  • Adrian Raine in Julie Miller, “Leading Neurocriminologist Considers Joker “a Great Educational Tool”, (October 14, 2019).

• I don’t think the Joker had free will, given his life. He was a walking time bomb waiting to explode—all it took was some significant life stress, beatings up, losing a job. You’ve got nothing left.… The well-documented risk factors—this was [the character’s] destiny. No one is born into that kind of violence.
  • Adrian Raine in Julie Miller, “Leading Neurocriminologist Considers Joker “a Great Educational Tool”, (October 14, 2019).

Cast

• Joaquin Phoenix – Arthur Fleck / Joker
• Robert De Niro – Murray Franklin
• Zazie Beetz – Sophie Dumond
• Frances Conroy – Penny Fleck
• Brett Cullen – Thomas Wayne
• Shea Whigham – Detective Burke
• Bill Camp – Detective Garrity
• Glenn Fleshler – Randall
• Leigh Gill – Gary
• Josh Pais – Hoyt Vaughn
• Douglas Hodge – Alfred Pennyworth
• Dante Pereira-Olson – Bruce Wayne
• Carrie Louise Putrello – Martha Wayne
• Hannah Gross – Young Penny

External links

• Official website
• Joker (2019 film) quotes at the Internet Movie Database
• Encyclopedic article on Joker (2019 film) at Wikipedia
• Media related to Joker (2019 film) at Wikimedia Commons
• Full Cast Credits at IMDB