Joker

Rating: 10/10 (12 October 2019)

The Joker. Purchased those tickets expecting the return of Batman's most famous villain? Laughing whilst killing cops? Robbing banks? Burning down hospitals? Well prepare for quite a dissatisfying 120 minutes because this time, Joaquin Phoenix is not playing as the Joker we know, he's playing as someone much more than a maniac and representing something much more than lunacy.
Joaquin Phoenix's superb acting and taunting yet victorious music by Hildur Gudnadottir go hand - in - hand and alas produces an almost disturbing and, at the same time, wonderful piece of art. But what enthralled me more is the film's embedded symbolism.
Do try to decipher the meanings behind the film and not just merely watching it because by then, what is in our sight takes us away from what is not. How one decipher those meanings may differ, meanings are subjective, but do take notice on the common ground that we can all agree on. For the first time - or for the first time that we realise - the crazy mad clown killer represents the unfortunate, the underrepresented, the disabled, the labelled-as-unhinged...the people. Throughout the first half of the film, Joker is seen as an invalid that no one cares of. Then there is the Wayne who proclaims to be the cure for Gotham, the cure for the madness that people like him (the upper classes) have created, a satire to those who now rule, but never govern. Now watch as the clown that everyone laughs at becomes the person they have always needed, but never knew. In the end, the society's shadow rises as the symbol and the centre of a revolution, an upbringing of the left behind. For once, people realise that maybe they are no different from that clown, the clown that has had enough of the lies, ignorance, and the fake promises of the ruling classes that Wayne represents.
One -- I hope -- can realise that this is no ordinary DC film, this is a story of a joke that is our society and a clown who has become weary of laughing.