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“ I have a condition” reads the printed cards that Arthur Fleck hands out when people around him are disturbed by his involuntary and prolonged bouts of maniacal laughter. The card states that these episodes may be due to physical or neurological issues. As the film proceeds we see that both are contributory factors in the creation of the character who eventually calls himself Joker.

While everything about the production side of the film is superb, it is Joaquin Phoenix鈥檚 towering performance throughout that makes the film special.

Arthur ( Joaquin Phoenix) works both as a party clown and as a stand-up comedian. He’s not very adept at either. His environment, both at home – looking after his elderly and confused mother Penny (Frances Conroy) – and in Gotham City 1981, corrupt, violent and garbage strewn, doesn’t help his demeanour either. That and the fact that social services, and his meds, are being stopped.

Todd Phillips’ film is a stand-alone origin story, owing little to most of the comic book iterations of The Joker and nothing to the DC Cinematic Universe. Previous small and big screen versions have depicted him as either a Ken Kesey type camp prankster, a disfigured and embittered gang leader or just as an already evil psychopath. The screenplay writer, Scott Silver, has already explored urban angst and fighting the system in 8 Mile and The Fighter. Phillips and Silver’s Arthur is damaged goods from the first time we see him putting on white face-paint and contorting his mouth into rictus ‘smiles’. “Is it just me, or is everyone out there crazy ?” he asks.

While everything about the production side of the film is superb, it is Joaquin Phoenix’s towering performance throughout (he is rarely off screen) that makes the film special. Those bouts of laughter alone are amazing. Within any one episode he displays delight, confusion, anger, more confusion, hatred, pity and self-pity. From Pagliacci to many film clowns we have seen the sad face within. Arthur takes it up to 11, and we never feel Phoenix is overdoing it. We witness the incremental death of Arthur the human, and the slow lumbering towards a more violent alter-ego.

It is one brilliant actor bringing a story and a persona to life.

In You Were Never Really Here, Phoenix played a disturbed, taciturn and overweight hit-man. Here, his Arthur is whip-thin, almost cadaverous, and he can switch from inchoate ramblings to motormouth. When he capers, unshirted, in front of the mirror at home, it evokes another loner and loser, Travis Bickle. The Scorsese connection doesn’t end there. Arthur’s mother’s favourite TV celeb is chat-show host Murray Franklin. Murray is played by Robert De Niro, and it’s like seeing his Rupert Pupkin from The King of Comedy all grow’d up. Arthur appears three times on Murray’s show, first as an audience member, then in a video of him failing as a stand-up, and finally, in his new suit and new make-up as a guest. “Call me Joker”. But it’s no joke.

When Arthur, in clown gear, first commits a violent crime, it is almost in self-defence. Accidentally, it creates a new Gotham-wide protest movement of clown faced activists chanting ‘Kill The Rich’. Fully embedded in this 1981 set grown-up, violent film there are issues about social care, media and people power, corruption that are all too familiar today. But above all, it is one brilliant actor bringing a story and a persona to life.