Joker: A very fine film #Review

Right off the bat, let me just say this: Joker is the finest film I have seen in a long, long time. I almost didn’t watch it because the character has graced the cinemas and TV screens many times in the past decade. Each of these creations shows him as wild, unbelievably unhinged and living at the edge of human existence; a most disturbing character. I wasn’t prepared to put myself through the utter darkness of a Joker experience once again, especially since I couldn’t see the novelty to it.

 How wrong I was!

The film is as much a societal exploration as it is a psychological one. It’s an origin story that shows the viewer how the circumstances surrounding us contribute to who we eventually become. Making ends meet as a joker, tenderly taking care of his ailing mother and trying to make it in the world of stand-up comedy while struggling with a very particular health condition; he starts out as a gentle guy who eventually cracks when constant, callous mistreatment gets too much, drawing out his lethal darkness.

When I was growing up in India in the 1980s, a number of mainstream Bollywood films showed the hero turn into an anti-hero to avenge atrocities or single-handedly fight a system that otherwise wouldn’t give him his rightful justice. As the country moved into the 1990s and economic prosperity, the tone of films changed completely. I bring this up to point out that films can be a sign of the times we are living in, channelling collective thinking into creative output.


Healthcare systems under stress, a near consistent conversation on rising inequality over the past years and the sense of being left behind by some are very much today’s concerns. Joker marries these aspects beautifully, even if serving as a very scary warning for the need to have greater consideration for those at the fringes of society. And when a critical mass of people begins to identify itself as disfranchised, the film shows that a character like Joker is no longer a crazy killer, he is their hero. One person’s murderer is another person’s revolutionary, in other words. At least, that’s where the film leaves us, when there is still some method to Joker’s madness.

Even for those who are not into Batman, there will be no gaps in understanding the film, but for those who are, the Wayne murders of course have a special meaning. The back story is so loaded, it adds fantastic texture to the whole Batman-Joker equation and how that karmic cycle begins. I don’t know if these aspects have been covered elsewhere, but they were sure new for me. This entire time, we have believed Batman to be the hero and Joker the villian. But this film makes us see the story in a very different light. And perhaps even more interestingly, it can lead you to consider how even if you (Bruce Wayne) are in fact born as the privileged few who seem to get away with anything, that doesn’t need to be the destiny you make for yourself.

This is much like Joker, who is pretty much expected to lead a life as a regular person but is catapulted into his own power (however off the rails that maybe) that’s for all to see, by a series of circumstances. In some esoteric lines of thought, there is a concept called ‘Shamanic Initiation’, where the shaman has to go through the suffering of the people before he or she can become the channel that will lift them out of their own depths. In that vein, Joker’s suffering is so long-drawn out, intense and ultimately unbearable that he finally transforms into something he wasn’t earlier, becoming the unlikely star, stirring into an almost new life as the Waynes breathe their last, complete with the stretched out Joker smile.

I want to watch the movie again.

P.S. I am not endorsing the character (violence is never the answer), merely still trying to understand it.