(3 / 5)
Feel-bad movie of the year.
The Joker’s absolutely heart-wrenching backstory is only strengthened by Joaquin Phoenix’s excellent performance.
Phoenix’s Joker is the best i’ve seen since Heath Ledger (sorry, Jared Leto!) and is unique compared with other incarnations. Coincidentally, his character starts out in a similar situation to Phoenix’s role in the 2017 film You Were Never Really Here, caring for his elderly mother.
They did well to push the narrative as far as they did, and it was better than the trailer suggests. There were some clever moments in the storytelling. Comparing it to a traditional Batman movie you really miss having a few other characters around to change the tempo and create more interest. Another thing I missed was that Gotham City doesn’t look like Gotham at all. It was filmed in New Jersey so it doesn’t have that big dark metropolis feeling.
All-in-all it was decent but it loses marks for the points above, coupled with the fact that it’s too tragic to watch more than once. And they really should have gone easy on the dancing scenes.
Joker premieres in Sweden on 4 October.