JOKER is the Year’s Most Unsettling Film That You Should Definitely Watch (Spoilers)

It’s been a while since I saw Joker, and I still don’t think I have my thoughts completely in order. I mean, we all know who the Joker is, but director Todd Phillips and actor Joaquin Phoenix have delivered something truly different from the portrayals we are used to. The film was incredible. It was unsettling, poetic, and beautifully cinematic. It’s also become one of my most quotable films of the year. Many critics are giving it a bit of a bad reputation because of its glorification of violence. I wouldn’t disagree that violence is glorified by the characters, but I do disagree with the censorship. The movie sets out to be disturbing, violent, and even though the Joker is a comic book character, the film is very real. It makes important statements about mental illness and society. It’s something many of us can relate to from experiencing mental illness in our own lives. The violence is terrible but not necessarily worse than the horrors we hear about in the news. So, continue on for my two cents about the film and why I think that the critics are focusing on all the wrong things.

Gotham City is not part of our world. It’s not New York City, it’s not supposed to be part of our timeline. That may seem like pretty basic knowledge for some, but it’s easy to forget that these incredible cinematic and comic book universes don’t really take place in the world as we know it. It’s important to register that as a critic when you look at what happens in Gotham City during the film. It is atrociously violent, full of murder and rage, and there are no good people to be found. The movie shows us villains the entire time. Traitors, rule-breakers, liars, thieves, killers… It’s got them all and no character holds a high moral standard—at least none that the director bothers to develop. And I think that’s the point. Gotham City is vicious, overdramatic and dark. It’s the perfect world to tell a story like this which shows the audience an image of the world we could live in if humanity were to go down the toilet, so to speak. In this sense it’s more of a warning, an art film depicting that when the gap between the rich and poor becomes larger, the ones who are left behind will not always remain sheep. There are wolves waiting to pounce and revolutions waiting to happen if the world continues to go down a dark path and the film isn’t hopeful that things will change. We know Bruce Wayne is alive and will become Batman, but if this is to be seen as a prequel to Batman, then we know that Gotham City isn’t going to lose its darkness anytime soon.

One of the most prevalent themes of the movie is how we as a society do not prioritize mental health or make services available for low-income citizens. It also relates to how we treat drug addiction. We try to make people fit in and when they don’t, they find their own way to belong. For Arthur, this is stopping his medication and giving in to his own fucked-up sense of humor. Society never treated him well or included him, so he makes space for himself: “The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don't.” This quote from him speaks volumes. As a society we’ve tried to speak up about the importance of finding help for mental illness but we still judge people who outwardly display their illnesses. All is well and good if it’s swept under the rug. Throughout the film, we see Arthur struggling to hide his illness. He laughs when he is not supposed to or his laughter seems fake. He tries to insert his laughter in areas of conversation that he believes people think are appropriate. When he watches a comedy show he doesn’t understand the cues like the rest of the audience. He has spent his life laughing at all the wrong moments. By the end of the film, he laughs genuinely for the first time and he won’t tell the therapist what’s funny because he has stopped trying to make jokes that other people will laugh at. Now, he knows who he is, and he is confident with his own fucked-up self. This is the corner we push people in when we tell them that they are not normal because they are sick.

After watching the film, there was a consensus of people asking themselves if what they just saw was real. I feel like sometimes with a film like this (especially when the director has been so vague about the meaning) each person has to come up with their own interpretation of what they saw go down. To me, Arthur getting into his fridge was a symbolic death. The death of Arthur and the birth of the Joker. Perhaps the part that he made up in his head was the glory he received while on the police car at the end of the film, which Phillips has implied. As we see with his girlfriend, Arthur definitely makes things up, so I don’t think that’s to be doubted. Perhaps he never even went to Arkham Asylum to find out about his mother and just killed her, using her lies as a made-up excuse to justify his actions. Maybe there was no chance that Thomas Wayne was ever his father, but he wanted to believe that he was. The Joker is as unreliable of a narrator as they come. Phillips obviously doesn’t want us to know everything that is happening, either. He never shows us what actually happens to the Joker’s pretend-girlfriend, Sophie, after he breaks into her apartment. The one piece of the film that Phillips seems to highlight as being honest—that the Joker imaged his relationship with her—is one of the least explained things in the entire film. But perhaps that is the magic of that scene, leaving yet another question unanswered. The ambiguity of the movie makes it even more unsettling.

From Phillips commentary, it seems like the Joker could be anyone. One of the most interesting theories is that the Joker depicted at the end of the film is actually a follower. He was another guy in clown makeup who decided to take on the persona of his hero. This leaves a lot of room for future stories. There could be many Jokers. There could be many origin stories for the original Joker. Or this could be his story, but edited just as he likes so that it’s dark and gritty and dramatic. Working in this extended DC universe has given a lot of opportunity to Phillips and Phoenix. Their Joker doesn’t have to exist in any other DC medium. He can be their own interpretation with no concrete past, present or future. This is why in many ways this film is an indie masterpiece wearing the skin of a blockbuster. These types of dark, violent, controversial stories are told all the time, but rarely are they so synonymous with popular culture and rarely do they draw such a huge audience. One of my favourite YouTubers, Let Me Explain, details this in his Joker video and asks the question: would people have been so upset at this movie winning awards at Tiff if it kept the same script and characterization but wasn’t associated with the Joker and DC universe? It’s an interesting point to make. The controversy about violence being taught through film and video games gets much bigger if the source material is more popular. This is a given, but perhaps the increased visibility can teach us better ways to live our lives and be responsible citizens rather than what most critics are arguing—that it encourages people to become terrorists.

I think it’s important to reflect on these questions when we watch such divisive films. Like politics, people often believe there is a right or a wrong, a black or a white. But if we look at Joker for what it is—a fantastically filmed, acted, scored, and written motion picture—rather than letting the violence deter us because it’s disturbing, we can appreciate the bravery it takes to create something incredibly honest about where society is heading. Honesty in art is incredibly important. Art is how people view the world, develop culture, depict history and learn from it. So, no, I don’t think Joker went too far. I think it was hard to watch and unsettling, and that makes it all the better.

Rating: 5/5

A bonus favourite quote: “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? […] You get what you fuckin' deserve!”

What did you think of Joker? Was the violence too over the top for a mainstream super villain movie? Do you think these sort of revolutionary movies, but from the point of the villain rather than the hero, are going to continue making waves around the world?

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