Who is your favourite Joker? This brutally brilliant origins tale should banish all memories of Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson and even Heath Ledger.

From now on, Batman’s grinning nemesis will be dancing through your mind with the dastardly grace of Joaquin Phoenix.

He could even take the odd turn through your nightmares, too.

Phoenix starred in my favourite film of 2018, the criminally under-rated crime drama You Were Never Really Here.

Now he’s in every frame of my best film of 2019. If he doesn’t take home an Oscar the villains will be sitting on the Academy.

The film arrives with the DC movie franchise in the midst of an identity crisis – do they return to the brooding tone of the Batman films or stick with the knockabout comedy of Aquaman?

Joker swerves that question by abandoning the comic books entirely. There’s not a stitch of spandex as director Todd Phillips takes his inspiration from the gritty crime dramas of the 1970s.

We meet Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck dressed as a clown in what looks like late 1970s New York.

Phillips has called Arthur “a man with music in his body”, but here his movements are stiff as he twirls a sign to advertise a closing down sale.

When a gang of hoodlums grab his sign, Fleck chases them and ends up battered and bloodied in an alleyway.

Arthur, for now at least, is a victim. In Gotham City a gulf has opened up between the super-rich and the downtrodden masses. Those in the middle turn to businessman Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), who is running for mayor on a platform of zero tolerance and zero empathy.

Arthur hopes to find a way out of poverty through stand-up comedy, right, like his hero Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro).

In an obvious homage to Martin Scorsese’s The King Of Comedy, Arthur imagines himself on the stage with Murray as he sits in his crummy flat nursing his sick mother (Frances Conroy).

Arthur isn’t well either. After being released from a mental ward he is on seven forms of medication.

He also suffers from a dastardly form of Tourette’s, causing him to break into an uncontrollable cackle.

Things look up when he begins to romance the single mum (Zazie Beetz) who lives across the hall. But his luck runs out when he loses his clown job and the city lays off his therapist.

Arthur is angry and off his medication. And when a gang of Wall Street bullies jump him on the subway, he decides to fight back.

Our first glimpse of the Joker is in a brilliant
sequence where a topless, frighteningly skinny Phoenix breaks into a horribly graceful dance in his apartment.

Not only does it seem like he can hear Hildur Guðnadóttir’s sinister score, he seems to revel in his insanity.

There will be more murder before he embraces his evil alter-ego in another hugely disturbing scene.

Arthur, now recognisably the Joker, dances down a flight of steps to the opening bars of Gary Glitter’s Rock’n’ Roll Part 2.

In America the tune is played during triumphant moments in sports arenas. But could there be more to the controversial song choice?

Arthur is now a beast in make-up, a predator hiding behind the mask of an entertainer.

Don’t expect Batman to swing in to save the day. This looks like a superhero flick, but really it’s a monster movie.

• Batman

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