Sam

Fell in love with this movie so much that I used it for my year 11 assessment. I loved it THAT much that I was willing to watch it over and over on repeat and dissect it - something which would usually ruin a film for anyone, yet it made me appreciate the fine details so much more.

So many critics have it wrong. Joker is not a film in which we are expected to sympathise with a maniacal serial killer, but it's a film in which we are expected to sympathise with a vulnerable human being who has been pushed to the very edge. The film is about a "mentally ill loner" and a society that as a whole has lost its way, abandoning those who it does not understand, those who it fears, those who it deems lesser. The real reason why Joker should be confronting is not because of its few instances of gore and violence, but because it is not so far a fall from our own world, a world in which the rich and those who can call themselves ordinary will walk over those beneath them. The film addresses the stigma which is still associated with mental illness, that those who live with it every day are "freaks". When viewing the film in fact, I had noticed that even the audience was a fine example of this, finding humour in Joker's alter ego - Arthur Fleck's spontaneous laughter condition, as if it was something that was placed in the film to be laughed at. The film and the response to the film are a prime example of the human condition: what people don't understand, they will either fear or laugh at.