Why Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker movie is dividing critics

A new film starring Joaquin Phoenix as the comic villain the Joker has been labelled both a “true masterpiece” and “irresponsible idiocy”.

Joker tells the origin story of one of the DC Universe’s most dangerous villains.

Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a clown who fails to realise his dreams of becoming a stand-up comic and is driven to violent criminality, says the BBC.

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And many critics have liked the film.

The Observer gives Joker a full five stars, saying “it’s a film that invites us to love the monster”.

Empire also gave the film five stars, calling it “bold, devastating and utterly beautiful”.

Director “Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix have not just reimagined one of the most iconic villains in cinema history, but reimagined the comic book movie itself”, it said.

NME gives the film 5/5 and calls it an “instant classic” and a “melancholic psychodrama punctuated by splashes of shocking violence”.

And the LA Times says Phoenix “delivers the kind of meticulously detailed psychotic breakdown that he does better than just about any American actor now working”.

But the reaction hasn’t all been positive.

Time magazine criticised the film for “aggressive and possibly irresponsible idiocy”, adding that Todd Phillips “may want us to think he’s giving us a movie all about the emptiness of our culture, but really, he’s just offering a prime example of it”.

The Wrap is also less than impressed: “Does Phillips come up with anything more interesting in Joker’s backstory than ‘because mental illness and child abuse’? He does not.”

And The Telegraph says a Venice Film Festival screening left critics trying to “work out if the film was a sly critique of meathead fascism or a feature-length recruiting advert for it”.

Robbie Collin writes that while the filmmakers don’t think the Joker is “a hero to be glorified and emulated… I worry that someone out there will”.

But Collin admits: “I was glued to Phoenix, loved wallowing in the neon murk, and left the screen in semi-dazed awe of Phillips”, adding “cinema should not be squeamish about reflecting the world as it is”.

Phoenix is already being tipped for an Oscar for his performance in the film, says Sky News.

IGN says Phoenix’s performance is “riveting, fully realised, and Oscar-worthy”, while the Evening Standard says “an Oscar nom is on its way already” to the actor.

Despite worries about glorified violence, the signs are good for awards buzz - the film received an eight-minute standing ovation from the audience of critics at Venice Film Festival.