Letting Things Play: The Editing Art of Joker

Todd Philips’ Joker (2019) was a sensation. The film broke all box records, clocking a billion dollars worldwide. It was the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. However, the morality of the film sparked heated debates. While most saw it as a dense character study with a hermeneutical attempt to humanize and empathize with the mind of a mentally ill sociopath, there were many others who claimed that the film valorized and eulogized white male violence. Where I stand, I believe that by treating people like monsters, they will behave like monsters. Criminals too are products of their circumstances, and we cannot blame individuals for their actions till we aren’t in their shoes. This isn’t to say that we should be apologists for their actions – that would only further disrupt the social contract – but in understanding their world, we can find better ways of rehabilitating them. Todd displays immense maturity and insight in writing the morally grey, morally non-absolute character of Arthur Fleck (or, the Joker). It is for this reason that I think Joker is a tremendous and path-breaking film. Writers Scott Silver and Todd Philips write like psychologists, getting deep into the dark recesses of the mind of a complex criminal. In the writing, they take an observational point and watch the character from a certain spiritual distance, to not allow their own moral prejudices cloud their judgement (or rather, their understanding).

The film is a psychological thriller set in the 1980s, following the transformation of socially dejected, lonely and ostracized Arthur Fleck into the clown-faced menace of the Joker. Arthur almost goes through a journey of self-realization through his madness. The film deals with larger ideas with themes such as abuse and trauma, mental illness and social support systems, and the corrupt, selfish politics of a majoritarian state. Arthur is a product of a social system that is fundamentally iniquitous, unjust and insensitive, leading to angst, desperation and severe loneliness. It is the system that created the Joker. Todd creates a world that is grimy, realistic and textured. One can almost smell the solidity of the earth when watching it.  Perhaps the most powerful scene for me in the film was when Arthur goes to the Murray show, and speaks about how society had become hard, unkind and unbearable towards people like him. 

Director Todd Philips began his narrative film career in 1993 with the sex comedy Road Trip, following which he directed and wrote several comedy films, including the successful The Hangover trilogy. Prior to that, he directed three critically acclaimed documentaries. Based on his filmography, Joker was a significant deviance from his previous work. It earned him three Academy Award nominations, for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. He attended NYU Tisch School of the Arts to study film but dropped out for financial reasons. Editor Jeff Groth is ACE Eddie nominated, known for his work on War Dogs, Entourage and The Hangover Part III. He has been a frequent collaborator to Todd. Groth received the script a year and a half before shooting began, and this gave him the opportunity to offer his creative voice into the story. He began seeking inspiration for the script. The four films that ended up guiding Joker were Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, Network and The Master. Groth also studied how they were edited.

The film follows a post-classical approach towards editing. The basic editing philosophy and approach was – Letting Things Play. Good editing is about knowing when not to cut, and Jeff Groth seems to have mastered that. The film has a lot of less editing, by virtue of which shots are held unsettlingly longer than the average beat, without being overly manipulative of the performance. Groth told Film Supply, “The first goal of the editing was to stay out of the way. The edit wasn’t intended to distract from the performance. It was never about manipulating it, or building beats that wasn’t there in his performance…” The performance in the film has been given priority, over any editing gimmicks or dancing bears, or even sequential shots that stimulate an illusory Kuleshov effect. Every frame has been accurately cut to the blink of an eye, and such perfection even makes its way into the design of the title. The title design has a specific colour that harks back to the 70s and 80s. Those were put on film and scanned back so that they don’t have a digital edge, thus they have a little bit of a colour bleed that they would get from an optical print.

In an interview with Variety in 2020, Groth says that with a film like Joker, you know where you’re going to land at the end. The film is a slow burn transformation, from the mania of Arthur to the outright anarchy and madness of Joker. Therefore, for him, the film was more character-driven than plot-driven – an analysis of a mind that eventually loses it when it’s unable to conform to the falsities of the world. The performance was everything, and Groth didn’t use any specific editing techniques. The only technique he followed was to follow the emotional arc and experience of Arthur as he unfolds into a monster. The editing needed to be wise instead of clever – it needed to be subtle, nuanced and heart-rending, and prima facie allow Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as Joker unfold itself over the progression of the story, much like a slow burn. The edit was handled with extreme care to reflect the mind of Arthur Fleck and his transformation. Phoenix had an ability to transform his face and body, just about slightly in every shot in the scene. A conscious effort was made to not manipulate any of that, to follow it in a certain perceivable continuity, and to remove cuts from certain things that deterred audiences from witnessing what Joaquin was doing. Todd and Groth would go back through scenes to see where they could potentially remove edits. They would let long shots play out to let the whole thing breathe. Since Joaquin improvised a lot on set, that gave the editor a lot of options to play with and there was a lot of experimenting on the edit table. This further reinforced the basic approach of letting out the leash on Joker, making sure reactions and scenes and the overall emotion was consistent throughout the film. Groth tells Film Supply, “Instead of traditional rules and beats, we were able to use the performances as the North Star within the edit.” When a question was asked ‘what do we cut to?,’ the answer was always – Joaquin.

Cutting to a temp track/reference music made a big difference to the entire editing process for Groth. It added a layer of emotion for him to follow the journey of the character. Groth temp tracks every project, using it as a guide to find a natural rhythm in the edit. In this film, he used six tracks by composer Hildur Guðnadóttir that she put together before the shoot, that perfectly encapsulated the tone of the film. They had also collected five or six songs even before they began shooting. The lyrics of the tracks were so powerful, especially, in my opinion, Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life, that they not just influenced the edit, but also the shooting. Groth tells Variety, “There’s a certain rhythm that was coming in off those tracks, and [gave a good] feel for any given moment.”

While performance took precedence over self-conscious editing, in certain scenes the visual intensity was created through cinematic techniques in cinematography and in the editing. Long and wide shots were used to show that Phoenix has his whole body engaged in this whole thing, to show the physical effects of his mania. Long shots also were used more philosophically – to look at his condition from a birds-eye view, almost non-judgmental, analytic and objective. Many sequences are shot as if the audience is meant to do a character study and exegesis of a complicated mind. Close ups were used to show the emotional effects of the trauma, pain and predicament on him. 

Certain cinematic techniques that Groth uses is to cut the shot when it’s least expected. During the train scene, for example, Groth uses the train’s fluorescence lighting to amplify the power of the cuts. As the metro’s lights blink in and out, several cuts occur in those moments of flickering darkness. This was used to disorient the viewer, and “make this sequence something of a fever dream for Arthur” (Shift Cutaway). Another instance is when Arthur’s boss is hollering at him, we slowly pan to Arthur’s smile as it becomes menacing. Groth holds on to this shot a bit longer to make the audience feel uncomfortable. Thirty minutes into the film, when Arthur gets fired from his job as a clown for bringing a pistol to a children’s hospital, he boards a train home, but he must face the wrath of Wall Street bullies. Groth’s editing rhythm ratchets up the tension to a boiling point. This is the scene when the audience gets their first glimpse of the Joker. Groth has a knack for character introductions and its dramatic charge.

In a blog on Film Supply, Groth describes the non-traditional workflow he used to edit Joker. Initially, Groth began editing the scenes as they came in. However, later he realized his approach must shift to more getting into the head of the character, understanding his inner monologues, and editing from there. He would have to edit the film less like a technician, more like a writer, or better so – a psychoanalyst. Since the audience needed to watch Arthur’s progression from where he starts to where he ends in his character graph, Groth decided to edit the film in order. Therefore, the first week or two of shoot were difficult for Groth, as the context of the story hadn’t emerged yet for a linear edit workflow.

One of the most challenging scenes to edit for Groth was the Murray Franklin Show. There was intense pre-visualization done for this scene, and footage from four television cameras along with three or four movie cameras. He used the television camera footage as the master shot, to mimic how a viewer would have seen it on a broadcast. To create the Gotham of the late-70s in the film, the film used modern visual effects to extend the look beyond traditional art direction. Leading post-houses were brought in to make the film look more like an older New York. In portions where Groth needed more time at the end of a scene, he used the VFX work to extend the shot, to give the audience more “of a full-frame visual at the end” (Film Supply). 

The team’s commitment to authenticity and performance shined through in every aspect of this film, revealing a nuanced portrait of a criminal who had been written off as a two-dimensional cartoon character in the past. This was seen in the use of music and sound design as well. The music was cut out in large portions of the film to not distract from the performance. The sound design too was used to dramatize the film. The screeching brakes, whoosh of passing trains, buzz of the lights, sparks off the third rail, create an anxiety-inducing symphony. The mood and atmosphere guided everything. There are moments in the film when Arthur straddles the line between real and imagined, and edit, music and sound come together to amplify this experience and make the audience live the life of Arthur Fleck.

Here are the Dramatic Blocs for the subway scene, when Arthur Fleck truly turns into the Joker, after encountering the Wall Street bullies. He has just lost his job at the children’s hospital and is on his way home. In the train, he sees three men harassing a woman, and he begins to laugh painfully. They approach him, and mock him for his condition, before they begin to intimidate him. They push him to the ground. He finally retaliates by killing them –

TRAIN SCENE DRAMATIC BLOCS

NONCHALANCE

Arthur Fleck is in the train back home after losing his job at the children’s hospital. He is nonchalant.

SUSPICION

He sees a woman being harassed in the train by three men. Arthur chuckles.

PROVOCATION

He begins to laugh manically, upset and provoked by what he sees.

APPROACH

The men ask him if something’s funny. He doesn’t respond, continues to laugh. They approach him threateningly. 

INQUIRY

They mock him, and then ask him again – what’s so funny?

CRUELTY

They snatch his bag and fling it across the train. They begin to hold him and beat him up.

DEFENCE

He tries to defend himself by kicking himself loose, but he receives a strong blow and falls to the ground.

VIOLENCE

They kick him uncontrollably.

RETALIATION/MURDER

Arthur retaliates by shooting the main guy in the head. He then shoots the second guy in the chest, finally chasing the last guy. The train stalls, Arthur follows him out of the train and kills him as well.

These Dramatic Blocs of the scene are articulated through masterful blocking, cinematography and editing. Jeff Groth almost alternates between Close Ups/Mid Close Ups and Wide Shots/Medium Shots. This disrupts the audiences’ Visual Pattern Recognition System, creating more dramatic and visual intensity. The camera is breathing/hand-held throughout, adding another layer of dramatic charge to the scene. In fact, when the scene gets more dramatic, the camera whip pans and shakes more, amping up the intensity. In terms of blocking, director Todd Philips makes Joker look weak in the face of the bullies by keeping him seated for most part of the scene. We see the Wall Steet bullies walk towards him almost intimidatingly. They beat him up and sock him in the head, which makes Arthur fall to the floor of the train. Low-angle shots are used on the bullies to make them look larger than life and threatening. The cuts increase as the scene progresses along. As I mentioned earlier, Groth uses the flickering of the train lights as cut points. Groth cuts in the moments of darkness into unexpected and more intense shots. The flickering of the lights increase as the scene progresses. 

Bibliography and Works Cited

Dodson, Avram. “Cutting like Crazy: Manufacturing Madness with Jeff Groth, Editor of Joker.” The Cutaway, SHIFT, 16 Dec. 2020, cutaway.shift.io/cutting-like-crazy-manufacturing-madness-with-joker-editor-jeff-groth. 

Huls, Alexander, and See more posts from Alexander. “A Look behind the Scenes of ‘Joker’ with Editor Jeff Groth.” Frame.io Insider, 3 Dec. 2019, blog.frame.io/2019/11/21/exclusive-interview-joker/. 

“Joker: Behind the Scenes with Editor Jeff Groth.” Filmsupply Blog, 27 May 2021, blog.filmsupply.com/articles/joker-behind-the-scenes-with-editor-jeff-groth/. 

Brodsky, Katherine. “How 'Joker' Editor Jeff Groth Helped Transform Arthur Fleck.” Variety, Variety, 3 Jan. 2020, variety.com/2020/film/spotlight/todd-phillips-1203455699-1203455699/. 

“Joker (2019 Film).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 May 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joker_(2019_film)

“Todd Phillips.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2 May 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Phillips.