A mirror that nobody wants to look at.

Rating: 10/10 (7 October 2019)

I'll let other people focus on the incredible cinematography, nuanced acting, superb writing and detailed score. It's all amazing in my vastly unqualified opinion. What I'd like to offer my thoughts on is the underlying, cultural importance of this stunning, Kafkaesque caricature of life in an often solitary bubble that we somewhat ironically refer to as civilisation. It is the story of a man stripped to nothing but the subjective will to power without restriction, Ã la Nietzsche's 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'. The introjected values that tether Arthur Fleck to society are diminished when they are not reflected in the behaviour of others that continuously overlook and mistreat him on account of his illness. He is relentlessly denied autonomy, agency, self-determination and subjectivity by a cold and abusive world until his climactic metamorphosis as this nightmarish, maniacal overman. I think the violence in the film speaks to a part of the viewer that we actively suppress because of our own introjected values and conditions. We leave the cinema and go about our day accepting that we've just witnessed an exciting, moving and deeply upsetting fiction. Yet in our dissonance between the aroused exhilaration and disgust, we are forced to acknowledge the very conditions that keep us in check within our role in society. It is a kind of thought experiment which ultimately highlights a very clear truth; society has a responsibility for it's own mental health, even more so to those that we have neglected and let down to the point that they break catastrophically. The upset and outrage inspired by the film is sort of the whole point. A film or videogame can't inspire violence in the meek, passive members of society who's sensibilities and expectations tell them that what they are seeing is horrific and unsettling. That's absurd. Equally, it can't inspire disturbing behaviour in those with the capacity to go out into the world and commit such acts. That darkness was already there, and it was foreshadowed by a lifetime of trauma and neglect. No, Joker doesn't beckon the bogeyman and instruct him to wreak havoc on the world. It simply holds a mirror up to society, showing us that the bogeyman is already here. We don't like what we see in our dire reflection because we were comfortable here in our faux, utopian soft play of ignorance and dismissiveness. It comes as no surprise that the establishment are already railing against this message, because they are the most comfortable of all. Let's not forget that we live in a world where pivotal books such Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War and Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower are still routinely removed from libraries. Yet, this bosom world in which we nestle is a fiction in itself. We value society because it offers protection, but what about the times when it fails? What about the neglected and the marginalised? Those that do commit radical acts of violence have ultimately been let down by the very social contract that promises to protect them, and it is on all of us to do something about it or accept our responsibility for the consequences. Joker is more than just a very important and timely admission of our shortcomings. It is a call to action; Not for revolution or civil unrest, but for compassion.