Great social commentary with dangerous content

Rating: 8/10 (5 October 2019)

You don't get to see this type of movie very often in theaters nowadays. And seeing almost 2,000 reviews two days after the movie had landed seems to support that opinion. What's the hype really about?
Here you have a tough movie detailing the life of a mentally unstable person living in a collapsing society. Does that seem like a movie which can create buzz? That looks, at least to me, like a movie made for narrower audience. But once you combine this setting with the Joker persona, you have something extraordinary with capacity to start debate and controversy. And we can ask ourselves why is that? Is it only because this movie hit cinemas at the right time detailing delicate themes of modern era? Or is there something peculiar in combining Joker and prevailing illness and loneliness?
Many people have already rightly pointed out similarities between Joker and Scorsese's Taxi Driver. In both cases we are following stories of mentally sick man surrounded by awful conditions. Manner in which the topic is dealt with is similar as well: very graphic and open. But here similarities stop. These are two very different movies having totally different objectives.
First, Taxi Driver elaborates on a guy having some sort of superiority complex and problematic, if not even sick, approach to women (madonna-wh**e complex from Freudian psychology). Joker gives us insight into a person who has been bullied, underestimated and made use off his entire life. Plus, everybody knows who Joker really is. He's crazy, enigmatic, smart and influential.
This knowledge takes us additionally into entirely different direction since in Taxi Driver we couldn't really tell with high confidence what's going to happen with Travis. That's the brilliance of Taxi Driver. It tricks you and makes you guess since Travis seems to think and act pretty sound but still showing signs of deteriorating mind. Brilliance of Joker is that the guy who is to become Joker, *undoubtedly* mentally unstable and violent, doesn't trick us like Travis but makes us sympathize showing his side of the story.
Joker is thus more than a story about an underdog. I'd say, contrary to popular opinion, that Joker is more a social commentary than a character study. For a movie to be a character study we'd have to see more description of characters inner dynamics (Travis writing his diaries in Taxi Driver). Besides, Joker is who he is because he is socially very relevant. He's got followers and has become an idea. What we're really witnessing is *not* underdog becoming a winner but society collapsing and loosing its way. Joker is a winner only because society became a loser.
So there's really nothing to admire about Joker. I personally look at him as a sign of what might happen to a society of individuals in which:
"Everybody yells and screams to each other. Nobody is civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy. "
And that is why I see this movie as a great social commentary, especially during times in which entire world has been struck by tragedies, horrors and mutual distrust.