The Murderer as Everyman

I had little incentive to see Todd Phillips’s Joker when it first appeared in the fall of 2019. A. O. Scott of The New York Times called it “weightless and shallow.” Richard Brody of The New Yorker said it was a film marked by “a rare, numbing emptiness.” I was never a great fan of Marvel or DC Comics and their monopoly on films about superheroes and supervillains. Batman, in particular, seemed humorless in all his incarnations. His butler, Alfred, when played by Michael Caine in Christopher Nolan’s three Batman films, was far more appealing. So I was prepared to leave Phillips’s Joker behind. But I had long admired Joaquin Phoenix and his quirky performances, and I have always been nostalgic about Batman’s Gotham City, a funhouse mirror of Manhattan, where I, a Bronx native, have been living on and off for the past 50 years.

The film I watched at a Cineplex on West 23rd Street was not “a story about nothing,” as Scott had declared with such disdain. It was a disturbing tale of our time, depicting the numbing darkness of an America that had itself become a surreal cartoon, where billionaires live in gated, fortresslike manors while millions struggle to survive. Batman’s father, Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), is the DC Comics version of a superrich American, and when he refers to Gotham’s rabble as “clowns,” he seems to summon up Arthur Fleck, who morphs into Joker in the middle of the film.

Arthur is a party clown and a novice standup comic who longs to be discovered by Murray Franklin, a late-night show host played by Robert De Niro. Arthur lives in a shabby apartment with his mother, Penny Fleck (Frances Conroy), who is both disabled and delusional. Having once worked as a housekeeper at Wayne Manor, Penny has been writing to Thomas Wayne, asking for help. When Arthur happens to read one of these letters, he confronts his mother, who confesses that she and Thomas had been lovers and that Arthur was their secret child.

In the film’s most poignant moment, Arthur goes to Wayne Manor and stands in front of its unwelcoming prisonlike gate. He tries to entice the young Bruce Wayne (Dante Pereira-Olson)—his supposed little half-brother and the future Batman—by performing magic tricks, but the churlish butler, Alfred Pennyworth (Douglas Hodge), cruelly sends him away. Undaunted, Arthur goes to a benefit at Wayne Hall, hoping to confront his father. He sneaks in, wearing an usher’s uniform. Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) is playing on the big screen, and we see a curious resemblance between Chaplin’s Tramp and Arthur Fleck. Both are clowns, both members of the downtrodden underclass. Both films depict worlds in which the rich are devourers and the poor have no choice but to rebel. But where Chaplin’s comic character is touching and inventive, Arthur is a failed comedian in a failed town. All social services have been cut in Gotham. Arthur is denied his meds. Whatever creative spark he had is gone, his growing mental instability having led the way to violence.