Failed comedian and murderer Arthur Fleck is struggling with the dual identity as he is incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital while he is awaiting trial, meeting the love of his life in Lee Quinzel will change everything.
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Two years after commiting the crimes is when we pick up with Arthur and get to see his current situation of being in Arkham and the plan for his lawyer Maryanne Stewart to argue that he has dissociative identity disorder and claim that his Joker personality was responsible for the crimes.
He is a form of entertainment for the guards and Jackie Sullivan who leads them, they poke fun at him and ask him to tell them jokes. Sullivan is the reason for Arthur meeting Lee when he manages to get him into the B ward to join in with singing and watch films. The meeting with Lee will make Arthur realise that he does not want to be medicated anymore and manages to stop taking everything he had been given.
The relationship between the pair is told and shown a lot thorugh performance and song, blurring what is actual reality and what is taking place in Arthur’s head. As a viewer this is rather confusing and complicated at times, which is one of the reasons the film falls rather short.
The thing is though they went for a musical aspect and rightly so with Lady Gaga joining the film, and it has different homages to many different decades of musicals. An attempt to blur those lines a little bit further. As we enter the courtroom drama side to it all, I was hopeful that it was going to pick up the pace and transform into another style and type of film. Again that is an aspect that falls short as well, which I guess is the main theme that is consistent.
Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga are both fantastic with impressive performances, but as I have already mentioned everything else that the film attempts to achieve just doesn’t quite work out, which is a shame as it does contain some very bold and interesting choices.
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