Joker is designed to make the audience squirm, digging deep into subconscious perceptions of good and evil through a screenplay and performance bathed in anger, aggression, sadness and betrayal.
Few films have divided critics like Todd Phillips’ Joker on release. Comments have ranged from “the year’s biggest disappointment” to “a hypnotically perverse, ghoulishly gripping urban nightmare.” Audience reactions have been equally mixed, with many hailing Joker as one of the best movies ever made, while others have expressed concern at its themes and content.
In Joker Phillips opens an uncomfortable door to the deadly power of isolation and the devastating impact of declining mental health while also exploring themes of bullying, humiliation and loneliness, making it a divisive cinematic experience tied to individual tastes.
Joker challenges us to take a second look at a world where our concepts of good and evil are starkly defined. Society often buys into age-old ideas of nice and nasty while shying away from the grey areas between both. Yet, in reality, we all know that a good person can do bad things and that the concept of evil is far more psychologically complex than we choose to accept.
For example, we know that those we label as evil were once innocent children exploring their world, yet we rarely ask why their world turned sour or why their eventual actions occurred. These grey areas challenge us and our simple societal labels. Here, Joker is controversial for its bravery in encouraging us to examine uncomfortable realities we often choose to ignore. In Phillips’ film, we are challenged to embrace the darkest truth: a good man who is failed by society can become a villain.
If Joker makes you uncomfortable, it’s supposed to, as it asks you to empathise with Arthur (Phoenix). Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix take the most sinister comic book character ever created and remove the mask, uncovering the human beneath. Arthur is a man who lives in a dangerous, polarised world where many are sidelined and silenced as they search for security and belonging. If this sounds familiar, it should! Arthur’s world is no fantasy; it’s the one we live in today.
Joker is designed to make the audience squirm, digging deep into subconscious perceptions of good and evil through a screenplay and performance bathed in anger, aggression, sadness and betrayal. It is a complex portrait of the true horrors of our modern world and those who fall through the safety net once designed to catch them in a society built on instant judgment and social alienation. Joker is a bold, daring, devastating, and beautiful film that challenges us all to explore the psychology of a killer clown whose deadly smile hides a screaming, lost soul.
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