Joker got a standing ovation at premiere that lasted for eight minutes.
The film tells the story of initially mild-mannered clown Arthur Fleck’s descent into violence and villainy on the crime- and poverty-ridden streets of 1981 Gotham. Critics noted the movie’s debt to gritty ‘70s cinema, including Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. And much of the praise has focused on Phoenix’s performance. “This is Phoenix’s film,” declared The Hollywood Reporter, “and he inhabits it with insanity by turns pitiful and fearsome in an out-there performance that’s no laughing matter.”
The review from Time Out read, “This is a truly nightmarish vision of late-era capitalism arguably the best social horror film since Get Out and Joaquin Phoenix is magnetic in it.”
David Ehrlich of Indiewire said that while the film was “exciting” but raised fears that the sumptuous, sympathetic portrayal of the descent into violence for a mass-market was “incendiary”.
