Joaquin Phoenix's visceral performance as the downtrodden street clown who transforms into the Joker was hailed by critics as "sensational" and "unnerving" on Saturday (Aug 31), as his pitch-black supervillain origin story premiered at the Venice film festival.
Phoenix reimagines one of cinema's most recognisable villains in the film, with the story of Arthur Fleck, a vulnerable loner struggling to survive in the rage-scorched streets of Gotham.
Todd Phillips, known for frat house comedies including the Hangover trilogy and Road Trip, set the film in the 1970s as a nod to the brooding cinematic character studies of the time, like Taxi Driver and The King Of Comedy.
Instantly identifiable for his green shock of hair, white face paint and unnaturally stretched grin, the Joker has been played by a host of Hollywood stars including Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger, who won a posthumous Oscar for the role in 2009.
But Phoenix said he did not "refer to past iterations" of the character, who first appeared as a mischievous Batman foe in comics in the 1940s.
Phoenix researched political assassins in his efforts to pin down the elusive Joker and said he had an idea of a "particular personality, a particular type".
Trailers for the movie, viewed more than 80 million times so far, show Phoenix as Fleck, a vulnerable man working as a street clown and being a victim himself, harassed and assaulted on a subway train.
Phoenix described the cackle he created for the character as "something that's almost painful... It's a part of him that is trying to emerge".
"I didn't think I could do it. I asked Todd to come over to audition my laugh," he said, adding the process was "really uncomfortable". —AFP
