“Mental”. “Crazy”. “Mad”. For the longest time now, mental health has been considered to be a matter of shame and ridicule. Todd Phillip’s ‘Joker’ breaks it all. With a well-crafted character of Arthur Fleck, played extremely well by Joaquin Phoenix, the movie talks about the dark lives faced by people with mental disorders who are shunned away by the society. Showing the reasons that made Joker the villain he is, the movie tells us how every anti-hero has a story to tell.
Phoenix has used an assorted range of facial expressions, his chilling laugh, and a realistic physicality to make the character look as authentic on the screen as possible. The character development is gradual and the audience see how it is the small blows that bring about such a huge transformation in a person. Above everything else, what is impressive is that the character is stand alone and isn’t defined against Batman.
According to Mikhail Faulconer of Saint Louis University, what makes the movie most disturbing to the audience is that there is no hero to save the day at the end of it. Joker is abandoned, ignored, deceived, and robbed and left there with no hope offered. This, unlike usual movies, shows the audience the brutal reality of life and may not be something everyone is comfortable taking in. The movie also ignited discussions that it justified and promoted violence. It was argues that the explicit violence by the character could incite crime in the masses. Phoenix had a quick response to these, “If you have somebody that has that level of emotional disturbance, they can find fuel anywhere.”
The film shows us what happens when we treat mental health too lightly. Don’t treat it like a joke, it seems to say, lest you become a ‘Joker’ in its hands.
N Malavika Mohan