Joker Review

So I just watched Joker. The feel good movie of 2019.
Joker is a film by director Todd Phillips based on the DC Comics character of the same name. 
It stars Joaquin Phoenix as the titular protagonist and some other people as everyone else. Really it doesn’t matter as this is Phoenix’s movie. I don’t think there’s a scene where he's not on screen. In that way this is a character piece in the purest sense. The plot definitely plays second fiddle to the arc that Phoenix goes through in this movie. 
The main character Arthur Fleck is a disturbed individual with various mental illnesses. He lives in a pre-Batman Gotham City, a city so grimy it’s literally covered in garbage. He holds a job as a for hire clown with aspirations in stand up comedy. He lives alone with his mother and harbors a crush on Zazie Beets who lives across the hall.
At its core this movie feels like a more overtly sad version of Martin Scorsese’s King of Comedy. While Scorsese colored his world with satire and dark comedy, Phillips takes a more incessantly bleak approach. There is no joy to be found here. Everything from the characters to the setting to the famous Joker laugh is completely void of mirth. Even Arthur’s fantasies are depressingly pathetic. Very rarely have I seen a movie this relentlessly nihilistic.
That’s not to say that’s a bad thing. I would never call this movie pleasant or even satisfying, but that’s not the point. This is a movie that asks you to sympathize with a monster. Arthur Fleck does horrible things. Yet you understand and even empathize with him. At the end your left to ponder why. 
I think people could take various things from this movie. It touches on class division and mental illness. What I took from it was a reminder of individuality. No matter how strange or different a person maybe it’s important to remember that they are a person. They are a culmination of experiences complete with all the problems that come with that. While that doesn’t necessarily excuse people’s actions, I think in this age of online anonymity and political division it’s easy to forget there’s an individual on the other side.
It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s an interesting one. I give Joker 54 out of 65 scissors.