I have to admit I didn't want to go watch this movie in particular. The idea of an origin story for the Joker seemed silly to me because he is a bad guy and should be celebrating a bullet to the head, not celebrity status. Anyways, even with my coworker saying the movie was not worth seeing and this is how a murderer gets created, both my Wife and son were too eager to go. Boy has been gone all weekend to another comic con, this one in Dallas, so he was not going to join us.
I found the movie very engaging, right from the start. The guy that turns into the Joker is a guy the audience is hoping can turn it around. I felt a sense of sympathy for him, he is not automatically a bad guy, He is doing the best he can and trying to find his niche in life, but life keeps shitting on him. We learn later he was abused as a baby by one of the mother's boyfriends and he was even tied to the radiator for a time. The mother is not all there as she spends her time locked up in their apartment and always hoping for her one time boss, Mr. Wayne, to help them and she does let out a kernel I want to believe as true, she claims in a letter that her son is his, but he denies it and insists she is just a crazy lady. This would mean that Bruce Wayne and the Joker are actually half brothers, which is crazy, in that universe, at least.
As a grown man, he is trying to become a comedian, but is currently employed as a clown. He is not complaining to anyone as to the status of his life. He does seem to fantasize quite a bit and then he has a condition when he gets nervous or overwhelmed, he starts laughing out loud oncontrollably which always makes everyone around him nervous. There is a scene where he gets beat up by a pack of street boys who steal his sign (he is working outside a store with one of those signs you twirl in the air) as a prank. They lead him down an alley and then blindside him as they all gang tackle him. This almost seems to want to repeat in the subway when three guys are attempting to get the attention of a girl. He ends up saving the girl but again finds himself on the floor taking a kicking again by "guys" much older and well-to-do. This time though, he isn't without a weapon and promptly brandishes the gun, killing two of them instantly while on the floor and the third one he hunts down as he tries to escape when the subway stops. This then starts a movement of the poor not putting up with antics of the rich and people start dressing up as clowns as they gather to protest.
In the end it does get a little confusing because you realize that a lot of what we are "seeing" is just Arthur fantasizing, such as the girl down the hall being a love interest. We see her walking with him in one scene and she is even in the hospital supporting Arthur as he sits with his mother, and only in the end when he "breaks into her apartment" (who leaves their door unlocked?) and she freaks out do we realize all those scenes with an almost tenderness and love have all been just fantasies.
There was really a lot more going on in the movie. Robert de Niro plays a late night host who the mother and Arthur are obsessed with and there are some good scenes with him. Arthur is also seeing a psychiatrist once a week or so but he realizes she is ineffective one time calling her out that all she does is ask the same questions every week. He embarks on a philosophical thought at one point "in my whole life, I didn't know if I even existed..." which once he accepts himself turning more and more into Joker he proclaims the answer "but I do, and people are starting to notice."
Usually, in a movie as a character finds himself, we tend to see a good guy coming around and start doing great things. This one went in the opposite direction, what was a wounded puppy looking for kindness from anyone in his cold dark world manifested and created a monster. Only upon accepting his role as a destroyer of liars and cheats does he feel "happiness" for the first time in his life. I would not be surprised to see this movie nominated for a Best Picture film, it had that dirty realness to it.
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