The Elvis Presley of Jokers is here. Take a bow, Phoenix

What is dangerous? A mind that has found its home in depravity and believes the fall into abyss is the rise to a higher calling. Todd Phillips’ Joker is disturbingly nihilistic and shreds the conventional belief system of good winning over evil to idolise perversion by taking it mainstream and making you feel empathetic about it while you savour the guilty pleasure. That is why the film, even as a towering tribute to one of the most iconic comic characters, is dangerous and without precedent.

Joker is a rare cinematic masterpiece that you simply can’t shut out from premiering on your conscience. If you’ve seen it, you’re a part of the belief it has managed to spawn with its deeply disturbing and edgy portrayal of a comedian who’s life in his own words is a tragedy until he discovers himself, and thrusts a raging, maniacal anti-hero on to the world that had kicked it into its flagrant existence.

The first few minutes into the film and you know this joker ain’t Heath Ledger or Jack Nicholson. That, this ain’t Marvel or even DC, which owns the franchise. That this is in no way Scorsese or Nolan either. Joker is wildly different and creates its own niche. It is dark, grisly and unsettling and takes its own time to mellow while giving the absolutely mind-numbing Joaquin Phoenix a shot at inevitability.

Phoenix rises to own the space given to him by Arthur Fleck. He flexes the Joker into animation with his cadaverous laugh, stoned eyes, twisted smirk and a shrivelled breast window-dressing his bony rib cage to a horrified world purging anything unconventional and extraordinary to hold on to the charade of the normal.

His Joker is by far the most delirious in belief that he is the one who’s wronged and sets out as the hero to avenge the undoing of a cruel world where humour is lost on its inhabitants and sustenance by walking over the guy next door is justifiably condoned. It is for this very reason, Phoenix’s Joker is more diabolical and devastating than Ledger’s portrayal of the lunatic villain.

Ledger as the agent of chaos was disregarded by the people of Gotham who refused to press the kill switch in the terse boat scene in the Dark Knight Rises. Even Nolan who otherwise stunned the world with his broodingly dark portrayal of Gotham City didn’t risk handing over the mantle of triumph to evil.

Philips, however, risks all to revel in an unhinged commoner trying hard to fit in in spite of a prejudiced world disowning him repeatedly, and without remorse. He makes Nolan look like an angel and treads where nowhere else has dared to go. And boy! He makes it look like a walk in the park. With Joker he creates a monster who not only oozes evil but vilifies everything heroic. He puts us on the court stand and questions us: Why shouldn’t he find retribution for what the world threw at him?

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 fuckin’ deserve!

The Joker

The effect is hypnotic. You feel sad for poor Fleck. Then, the empathy for him starts thudding on the walls of your besieged heart. And, finally it spills over into raucous rooting for the perverse clown when he starts emptying his madness on to the streets of Gotham piled with garbage, and its kind in flesh and blood.

Critics panning the film for not lending any chance to a hero and offer closure to this incandescent madness is pitiable. This is Arthur Fleck’s story. It’s his world. It’s his rules. By putting him in the path of Bruce Wayne, the director makes him tower over the city, which his father represents, and gives a keyhole view of the ghoulish nightmare that is about to unfold on its streets. But they won’t get it. They glossed over this nuanced face-off that anchors the origin story of Joker.

Joaquin Phoenix is magical in his soliloquy. He is wearing his act like skin. You can’t separate one from the other. His coming of age — from a day-dreaming retard in a decrepit tenement to a narcissistic degenerate with an entire city as his playground — is as stark and convincing as his graduating from the slow waltz inside his room to his impromptu jive on the stairs across his apartment after a gruesome kill. The scene where he takes his blood and smears it into a wide arc resembling a morbid smile on his battered clown face makes him the Elvis Presley of Jokers in the cinematic verse.

Sometime next year, when he steps out to collect the Oscar, maybe he would be telling the presenters, “when you call me on the stage, can you introduce me as the Joker?”

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