Trash is piling up in Gotham City. Plunged into a recess of political gridlock, societal malaise, and civil unrest, the city is steeped in refuge. Waste management services are on strike. Black bags of Gotham’s waste line the streets. Arthur Fleck counts himself amongst the discarded. He’s trash personified; tossed out alongside his creepy cackle. According to Arthur, he hasn’t had a happy day in his life. A simmering hotpot of childhood trauma, deep-set depression, daddy issues, hallucination-prone psychosis, sexual repression, and rage-onset tendencies, Arthur just ain’t a happy camper. And yet, he’s told to smile, to grin and bear it, to play nice.

If you thought The Dark Knight was grounded and gritty, wait until you get ahold of Todd Phillips’ Joker. For those keeping score at home, this is a comic book movie with zero big tentpole action sequences, little to no special effects, no Batman, and is still one of the most thrilling entries to ever spawn from the pages of pulpy serials. Rather than follow the usual script for a supervillain origin story, Phillips pursues instead an unrelentingly somber character study that brushes with mental illness, toxic masculinity, gun violence, and vigilantism. His film makes for bleak, timely commentary, laying out a blueprint for the brand of madness that manifests itself in tragedy. Joker is focused on the run-up to the inevitable American tragic and the self-propelled news cycle such creates. In Phillips’ film, isolation and societal rejection combine to make a breeding pool for white male domestic terror.

Late-1970s Gotham makes for a fascinating petri dish to examine that issue with Joker aspiring to mimic the gritty environs and delirious character studies of that era of filmmaking. Though thematic and aesthetic parallels can be drawn to producer Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, Joker is also inspired by the films of Sydney Lumet and Stanley Kubrick as well as the works of Ken Kesey and even Kurt Vonnegut. Having Robert De Niro play Murray Franklin, a successful talk show host, creates a tempting inroad to Scorsese’s other works, which works as a wink for those seeking in-universe easter eggs.

That would not be the only connection Joker shares to a broader universe (Thomas Wayne is a critical character in the film, even if his presence is more symbolic than anything) but the story does a great job of isolating itself from the larger tapestry of the DC Extended Universe. No matter the state of the greater DC brand, Joker boldly keeps to itself and remains content to tell the tragedy of a deteriorating psyche without the clutter of interconnected B-plots and mid-credits tie-in scenes. Insofar as Joker is a comic book movie, it is only so in the loosest of terms as this is plain and simply about a man desperately unable to cope. A man who just so happens to be the Joker. Joaquin Phoenix embodies the man more than the mantle, tackling the role with the kind of career-defining gusto that evidently is required to play the Clown Prince of Crime (thankfully, the days of Joker as a Soundcloud rapper with face tats and a grill are long behind us.) A failure in most rights, Arthur Fleck is a clown for hire, posted up in children hospital wards, or assigned to sign-spinning duty outside jewelry stores going out of business. He aspires to fulfill his dream of stand-up comedy, encouraged by his mother’s (Frances Conroy in the perfect Frances Conroy role) belief that he was put on this Earth to make people smile. That proves to be a bit of a stretch as Arthur is shown to be a severely unsettling figure to be around, particularly because he suffers from pseudobulbar affect, also called emotional incontinence, which manifests itself in outbreaks of inappropriate laughter in times of high stress or emotion. This shows itself in unfortunate times, Arthur often weeping whilst he cackles like a madman. This all makes for an all-time depiction of the “Joker laugh” that has Phoenix braying like a hyena while in very obvious emotional distress, a groundswell of the undeniable greatness that is this performance.

Arthur’s personal life is as decrepit and hollow as his professional one but a spark of interest from neighbor Sophie, played by the always captivating Zazie Beetz, offers him that touch of humanity and empathy he so badly craves. Unfortunately, she errs on the side of anarchy herself and as the city slides towards rejecting those in its upper class, Arthur’s urge to express himself through violent means and malice grows. To embody the malnourished physicality of a man-child, Phoenix dropped a significant amount of weight for the role. With ribs and shoulder blades poking through his thin skin, the seasoned actor takes on a monstrous look, like a serpentine creature trying to break out of its shell. Phillips is more than content to sit with the showstopping performance, be Phoenix effeminately dancing or just chaining cigs. His movements are like that of a marionette who eventually takes command of its own strings. He owns the screen and we are but his voyeurs.

Some have deigned Joker’s attempt to illuminate its titular psychopath as “edgelordy” or “insincere” but I see that as backlashed humbuggery. This movie is the real deal. Dare I say sophisticated. Flying in the face of what we have come to expect from the comic book movie overlords, Joker is the best and the brightest of what the genre can represent, giving us a real glimpse into the humanity beneath psychosis and reckoning with how society creates its own monsters. Mark Friedberg’s naturalistic production design and Lawrence Sher’s dirty cinematography grounds the drama in a heightened state of reality, giving Gotham a stained grey palette, intensifying the strained character of the city and its effect on its inhabitants.

Many will wonder how Joaquin Phoenix’s performance stacks up against his Mistah J brethren and the comparison isn’t easy. While Heath Ledger ruled as a tic-fueled gangster in a purple suit to the tune of a fancy gold Oscar, his take on the character remained shrouded in mystery. Jack Nicholson’s campy turn as the deranged criminal is iconic in its own right but equally boxed into its villainry. And the less said about Jared Leto the better. By contrast, Phoenix’s turn as Joker is flesh and blood; the man behind the monster. It’s the first time we’ve gotten a sympathetic look at “how he got those scars”. The answer is decades of psychological abuse and emotional neglect. Taking all that into account, it’s hard not to argue that this is the best film version of the Joker we’ve yet seen but despite your personal preference, there’s no denying Phoenix’s take will go down in the history books.

Deadly serious, Joker Trojan horses very few laughs into its midst but when they land, they do so with a mighty blow. This is not a funny movie, nor are the issues on display comical in any sense and yet Joker deals out punchlines nonetheless. In our age of the proliferation of domestic terror, mass shooting splattered across headlines like revolving doors, Joker assesses society’s fraught structure, the cyclical nature of violence, the damage we allow to be passed onto those less fortunate and more at-risk, and treats it to a punchline. And that’s okay. Why so serious?

CONCLUSION: Todd Phillips’ deliriously provocative Joker is a risky endeavor that shirks the load-bearing staples of comic book movies past to focus on a richly-textured character study of a lost soul. Joaquin Phoenix is instantly iconic as the damaged king of the villains in this grounded story of how madness manifests itself.