By Karl R. De Mesa
Can you imagine the bathroom scene, where Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker dances to himself after he has just committed his first murder on a subway, without the cascade of ominous, foreboding cello notes?
Neither can I. The fact that it was mostly adlibbed, that director Todd Phillips and Phoenix frustratingly coming up empty-handed, had decided to scrap the beats they had planned to initially use that day, just adds to its hair-raising quality. To get out of their rut, Phillips then decided to play what Hildur Guðnadóttir had written for them. The rest of the interpretative dance was Phoenix’s thespian magic, but the platform for that leap of creative faith was all Guðnadóttir’s music.
Phoenix had been grappling with a way to close the distance of how Arthur might transform into the Joker. And here was music by Guðnadóttir as the perfect bridge.
Early last February, the 37-year old mother from Iceland took home the 2020 Oscar for Best Original Score. Which would make her the first Icelander to win an Oscar and just the fourth woman composer to win at the Academy overall.
The score and soundtrack for 2019’s Joker is a briefing for a descent into madness. And boy did she make a compelling companion piece for Phillips’ movie.
Gotham, under her cellist bow, pulsates with the occasional lumbering drums and percussion, as strings fill in the gaps. There is something haunting threading its way not just into Arthur’s already unhinged mind, but into the streets, the veins and arteries of the city, its facades and sewers unkempt and overrun with rats, rubbish strewn pell mell, even as human filth commit crimes in any shadowy alley.
People were warned that Philipps movie was not just a violent and dark take on the comic book villain, but did they listen? Many were shocked when they came out of theaters, thoroughly disturbed at the downward spiral of Arthur Fleck, a deep and unflinching look at the tribulations of mental health and how society both shuns it and is repulsed by it.
“The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don’t,” goes one of the most memorable lines in the movie. Guðnadóttir doesn’t try to fill that scene with any cloying overplay but instead opts for a few drawn out notes that denote not just an elegiac tone, but the realization that Arthur is keening for something that he knows he’s irrevocably lost, something that he barely knew he had possessed in the first place.
While “Hoyt’s Office” sets the disturbing tone of pretty much the entire score, it really pales in comparison to the scale and sturm und drang of the final track “Call Me Joker.” While Arthur’s theme was established by the lone cello in the first track, there is now only an echo of that man that started this journey down to Gotham’s Gehenna.
It’s not even Arthur anymore by the time he cajoles talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) to call him Joker, it is something (some-thing) that has overtaken him. Was it the environment of Gotham’s inner city urban decay that was responsible? Was it meeting the callous, dismissive billionaire Thomas Wayne? Was it the fault of Arthur’s social worker, herself simply a symptom of the broken system of city governance? How about Arthur, does he bar any responsibility for what he has become? The answer is yes. Yes to all of the above. And you can hear it, that deluge of how he finally embraces the pain that his bipolar disorder type 1, coupled with severe mania with psychotic features, and his involuntary Pseudobulbar affect (that uncontrollable cackle) brings.
While there does certainly seem to be a certain lack of cohesive flow in the tracks, it is entirely forgivable considering Phillips had asked Guðnadóttir to start composing based just off the script. The Oscar-winning output is a testament to how much this composer can eschew the traditional, narrow trappings often brought about by classical music training. She credits this to her collaborative work with bands, especially noise and drone outfits Throbbing Gristle and Sunn O))). Likely that’s the first (and last) Oscar-winner to have tracks with such influential noise bands.
“All I have are negative thoughts,” goes another Arthur-ism. Another profound and heartbreaking call for help that receives no sympathy embodied in two more outstanding tracks—aside from “Bathroom Dance” and “Call me Joker.”
The first one is “Bad Comedian” where things get slowed down as Arthur wrestles with his shame and mortification of bombing on-stage, that lone cello again cutting a stark path that never lets us look away from what is likely his most vulnerable moment.
Second is “Escape from the Train,” a standout because the main theme is almost entirely absent and one of the few very intense, very dynamic scenes that reflect the chaos of Arthur’s mind. Finally, here is the violence, darkness, and madness that pervades his mental space come to fruition, dragged into the mundane reality of a subway train. Gudnadottir has chosen almost all strings and dramatic percussion for this bedlam. The drums, oh the drums, martial and combative are what drive this one and you can already visualize the masks and the blood and the fists flying again.
When “Call Me Joker” finally closes the show, I am reminded of all the suffering that Arthur has endured to get to his dark catharsis. That’s why it’s my favorite track.
Arthur’s meeting with his social worker is a standout because it’s a moment that everyone who’s gone to the therapist has likely experienced. When Arthur rebukes her by saying “You don’t listen, do you?” it’s a criticism not just for asking the same questions without any actual sympathy for the answers, but it’s an indictment of the heartbreaking and frightening prospect that all sufferers of mental maladies face: it will always be like this, the rest of my life will be filigreed by my demons and ghosts, and nobody will listen.
Listen to “Call Me Joker” and know that Gotham is haunted, that Arthur’s cackle is the sound of every cry for help falling on deaf ears given a mask and a will to have the last laugh.
Listen to Joker’s soundtrack on Spotify.