A call for social connection

Rating: 10/10 (18 October 2019)

Everybody is talking about it and there is a reason behind that : the movie is just poignant and stunning.
Joaquin Phoenix's act is so sharp and so accurate. He easily could've fallen into a simple caricature of the joker or in a manichean vision of Gotham but instead he constructed his character by giving every layer of his personality the debt and the subtlety it deserves. Big up for that ... no wonder it raised so many discussions about mental health- which is such an important and red-hot topic.
The movie raised also a more global topic, the one about social connection. It shows us how dehumanizing modernity can be and highlights the desperate need for kindness and empathy in our contemporary world. The social pressure being so hard everybody feels the need to put on a mask just to exist, to be seen. As he says « the worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don't ». In a way it puts a framework for rethinking the values behind our « living together ».