Empathy is key. Indeterminate spaces created that I appreciated a lot

Rating: 10/10 (3 October 2019)

I like sophisticated fiction that creates spaces of uncertainty within them. Whilst watching Joker, I kept on thinking of Fight Club, and I wondered why? Because it's not really like Fight Club - but it is. How one character relates to the world. And then there's the creation of the fictional character in Zazie Beetze's apparition, for Fleck. So, that's one indeterminate space that I really appreciated the whole text as creating. I found it also particularly telling that there is a scene where Fleck admits his original three murders to an admin worker, and it's references Raskolnikov's own admission in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment beautifully, here. That text is a masterpiece of exploring existential being in a society, and so the reference was not lost on me.
I had empathy for Fleck, and the filmmakers did this wonderfully well. Those many reviewers that judge Fleck as a 'pathetic' and 'sad' 'incel' figure have already objectively judged him, I feel. Empathy at that point of judgment renders empathy not really possible, in my opinion. Much is missed out on. A much more interesting question is how are those actions reached, empathetically? Todd Phillips has given us a very good exploration, that references, and the text is richly complex. I had a good time here.