Summary
We see a 40-something man at a dressing table putting on clown makeup as a newsperson on the radio says that the governor is declaring a state of emergency. As the newsperson talks about garbage, poverty, and general squalor in Gotham City, the man forces a smile in the mirror.
The man stands outside of a large music store dancing and holding up a sign, while someone plays the piano. When a group of kids knock the sign out of his hand and run off, the man chases them down an alley. The boys hit him with the sign and beat him up as he lies on the ground, groaning.
The scene shift to the man, whose name is Arthur Fleck, laughing hysterically in a way that almost seems like weeping, in front of a social worker, a woman who looks at him with concern. She stares at him as he asks, "Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?" She agrees that the city is going through a very difficult time and asks him if he's been using his journal. She asks if he brought his journal, and he begins to fidget, before bringing it out.
She looks through the journal, which he tells her is a journal for his observations as an aspiring stand-up comedian. On one page, she finds a note that reads, "I just hope my death makes more cents than my life," and reads it aloud before asking him if seeing a social worker is helping. Arthur tells her he felt better when he was locked in a mental hospital and we see a flashback of him hitting his head against a door. He asks the social worker to increase his medications, but she tells him that he's already on seven different medications. "I just don't want to feel so bad anymore," he tells her, frowning.
On the train, a young boy looks at Arthur from the seat in front of him. As Arthur makes funny faces for the boy, the boy giggles. The boy's mother turns around and tells Arthur to stop bothering her kid, and Arthur erupts in maniacal laughter. He hands the woman a card that says, "Forgive my Laughter: I have a Condition," and explains that his condition causes him to have sudden, uncontrollable bouts of laughter.
Arthur returns home to an apartment that he shares with his mother, Penny. She asks him if he checked the mail, as a news story on the television warns of a new breed of "super rat" that is taking over the city. He gives his mother dinner in her bed as she talks about the fact that a millionaire for whom she worked for many years, Thomas Wayne, will not return her letters. Penny tells Arthur about someone who is running for mayor and how he will be able to save the city, as a talk show, Live with Murray Franklin, starts. Penny and Arthur watch together.
As they watch, Arthur has a fantasy about going on the late-night talk show. Murray Franklin tells jokes about the rat crisis in Gotham, as fantasy Arthur laughs from the crowd. When Arthur yells out that he loves Murray, Murray interviews Arthur, saying there's something special about him. Arthur tells Murray that he still lives with his mother and Murray says that he too lived with his mother before he made it. "I've been the man in my house for as long as I can remember," Arthur says, "I take good care of my mother." The audience applauds, as Arthur tells the audience that he was put on Earth to spread joy and laughter.
The fantasy continues as Murray invites Arthur down onto the stage. In an aside during the commercial break, Murray tells Arthur that he would give up all the trappings of show business to have a kid like Arthur. They hug, and we see Arthur watching the television show.
The next day, Arthur is stretching, preparing to go out to work as a hired clown. One of his coworkers, Randall, talks to Arthur about the fact that he got beaten up the other day, but Arthur insists that it was just a bunch of kids. Randall gives Arthur a gun and tells him that he can use it to protect himself. "I'm not supposed to have a gun," Arthur says, but Randall insists. As Arthur leaves the room, Randall makes a joke at the expense of a little person, Gary, working for the company.
Arthur goes to talk to his boss, who tells Arthur that he likes him even though the other guys think he's a freak. He then reprimands Arthur for disappearing the other day when the boys stole his sign. Arthur tells his boss he got jumped, but he does not believe him and tells him to give the business owner his sign back. Arthur's boss threatens to take the price of the sign out of Arthur's paycheck if he does not return it, and Arthur just smiles at him vacantly.
We see Arthur kicking a dumpster violently after work. He returns home, finding no mail in the mailbox. As he gets in the elevator, a woman calls for him to hold it, which he does. She and her daughter get on the elevator, and she comments on the fact that the building is so awful. She mimes shooting herself in the head. As they all get off the elevator, Arthur calls to her and mimes shooting himself in the head, and she smiles and walks away.
As he gives his mother a bath, Arthur asks her why she thinks Thomas Wayne will help them if she worked for him 30 years ago. "If he knew how we were living, if he saw this place, it would make him sick," she says. Arthur lies to Penny and tells her that she shouldn't worry about money, since everyone is telling him that his standup is ready for big clubs. "Don't you have to be funny to be a comedian?" she replies.
Later, while watching television, Arthur plays with the gun. As old footage of black singers in a Fred Astaire film play on the screen, he points the gun at the television, then at a nearby chair. He stands and dances to the music, pretending that he is dancing at a club. He fires the gun and then scrambles to turn up the television, as Penny calls to ask what happened. "I'm watching an old war movie!" he yells.
Analysis
The film lands the viewer immediately in the bleak and dystopian world of Gotham, a city that resembles New York City, and is riddled with crime and poverty. The bleakness of the situation in Gotham seems past a point of no return. Director Todd Phillips shoots the film in blues and grays, a muted palette that reflects the nightmarish atmosphere of the city, its darkness and danger. Crowds flood the street and buildings look weather-beaten and grimy. The visual world of the film suggests that this is not a feel-good film, or one that looks optimistically on human life.
Within this horrific world is the eponymous character, a hired clown named Arthur Fleck. Fleck's bright green wig stands out in the grime of the city around him, but he is hardly a beacon of light. He is a depressive and an outcast, who is often abused in his position as marketing clown, and who struggles to smile, when that is one of his main obligations as a clown. Even when he laughs, Fleck's face maintains a sort of sobbing frown, in which one cannot quite discern the boundary between laughter and tears. Fleck is the image of a sad clown, a mentally-ill man who wants so badly to get the world to laugh along with him, but cannot escape the darkness of his own psyche.
As we learn more about Arthur, we begin to see that a great deal of his pathos seems to have to do with paternal abandonment. Every night, he and his ailing mother, Penny, watch a late-night talk show. In a fantasy, Arthur dreams about being called on to speak from the audience of the show by the host himself, Murray Franklin. In the fantasy, Arthur is celebrated for taking care of his mother when his father could not. Murray even says to Arthur that he would give up his glamorous life to have a kid like him. Arthur loves Murray so much because he imagines him as a kind of paternal figure that he has never had. Thus we begin to piece together some more clues about Arthur's often illegible and unruly emotional life.
While the Joker is typically portrayed as a maniacal supervillain in the Batman movies, Todd Phillips imagines him as a victim and symptom of an unjust and evil world. He is impoverished, mentally-ill, and forced to take care of his ailing mother. Even when he procures a weapon, it is not his choice. His coworker, Randall, gives him a gun insisting that he should have one to protect himself on the cruel streets of Gotham. Arthur knows that, given his mental state, he is not allowed to have a gun, but he cannot resist the power that the gun makes him feel. In Phillips' vision, Arthur is a victim of his own mental illness and of society's injustices, not simply a mastermind looking to do harm.
Additionally, Phillips shows us that Arthur Fleck is not only a victim of his own mental health but also of his economic and professional situation. Arthur must provide for both himself and his mother by working a demeaning and difficult job in which he is treated poorly by his disrespectful and condescending boss. The conditions that push Arthur into the desperate state that turns him into a violent psychopath have to do with class inequality and the way society mistreats those at its margins. In this sense, Phillips is making a statement about the ways that inequality and structural violence hurt people and create dissent and evil. This subverts the image of the comic-strip villain and shows us that morality and politics are far more complex.
