“Joker” gave me mixed feelings. 

Though an incredibly well-done film boosted by Joaquin Phoenix’s acting, “Joker” flops completely when attempting to send its message about how society shuns the mentally ill.

Director Todd Phillips’s version of Gotham City will be unfamiliar to regular moviegoers. Unlike the semi-trashy version seen in Christian Bale’s “The Dark Knight” trilogy, this version’s Gotham takes place in the late 20th Century and is much more rotten and filthy, physically and politically.

Protagonist Arthur Fleck/Joker (a very underweight Joaquin Phoenix) works as a clown and has a mental illness that forces him to uncontrollably laugh from time to time (pseudobulbar affect), and he is often beaten up or regarded as crazy by strangers for one or the other. I would say a bit more about the plot, but because this film’s conflict is more of a slow burn on Fleck’s already weakening sanity rather than an explicit good vs evil conflict, I’ll spare any extra details that may reveal important plot details.

I haven’t been very specific about what this film does correctly, but it’s basically everything except sending a proper message. Each set is well detailed, the difference between more affluent areas and run-down alleyways is more than noticeable.

The film’s score is deep and resonant, always keeping pace with the story’s own seriousness. 

As for acting, the camera keeps its focus on Fleck for a majority of the film, and Phoenix does not disappoint.

Although Fleck’s characterization as a mentally ill person and development into Joker is all fine and dandy, Phillips’s message could have probably come across much better had this film not been about Joker. Because the culmination of Fleck’s mental illness is becoming a notorious supervillain, the overall message is changed to “If society shuns a mentally ill man, that mentally ill man will become a supervillain.”

An approach unassociated with any popular character, or any already-existing character, would have significantly increased the quality of the film’s message.