“What do you get when you cross a mentally-ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?!”
Well, you get what you bleeping deserve: the infamous Joker himself in all of his inglorious villainy.
‘The Joker’, starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips, is a compelling villain origin story that may just win the Oscar for Best Picture in 2020.
After watching the film nearly a week ago, I was moved to take a closer look into the magic behind the camera.
Without spoiling the plot, the film revolves around the protagonist, Arthur Fleck, and his mysterious, tragic life. Throughout the entire movie we witness terrible strokes of misfortune sweep through him as the layers of his existence are slowly, painfully peeled back.
One of the defining characteristics of Arthur Fleck is his mental condition, which causes him to laugh uncontrollably when he feels intense emotions like happiness or sadness. Arthur’s job is to dress up as a happy clown and spread joy; He is fired after he drops a gun on the floor while performing for patients at a children’s hospital. Every encounter Arthur has with the outside world is unpleasant and awful, which sends Arthur down the path of destruction and violence.
The magnificent thing about ‘Joker’ is that it is startlingly real–the Joker was taken from the pages of comic books and translated into a real person with real stories, experiences, emotions, and circumstances. Seeing the Joker as a real person instead of a distant villain has certainly given me some things to consider, like what makes the difference between who becomes a hero or a villain.
When we are young, we understand from books, movies, and other media that villains are bad and that’s the end of it. As children, we don’t care why villains are bad or why people do bad things: we mostly assume that’s their nature or it can’t be explained. ‘Joker’ illuminates the life of the villain, and by the end of it, the viewer understands that villains are not as unrelatable or different from everyone as we may originally have thought. As children, we don’t understand the motivations of villains; our lives are mostly easy, simple, carefree. But as we mature and learn more about the world, we learn that some people can be terrible, some things can absolutely ruin your day, week, month, etc. We become exposed to the real pressures and ugly parts of the world. We see that the world can be crazy and cruel and sometimes, it can break us. Ernest Hemingway (the most bada** person to ever put pen to paper) wrote, “The world breaks everyone and afterward, some are strong at the broken places”. This thought came to mind when thinking of Arthur Fleck in ‘Joker’. Everyone has to deal with the ugly parts of life, and everyone is broken at least once, but nearly everyone learns how to handle the bad; how to balance the bad with the good. Some people never heal from the bad. Arthur Fleck is one of those people.
Is is that simple though? To say that some people choose the path of the villain because they are hurt so bad to the point where they will never recover? Or are there other factors that birth villains?
Loneliness is another essential ingredient to any villain. Try to think of any villain you’ve ever known, real or fictional. Don’t they always have some sort of tragic loss or pain in their life?