But then we discussed it some more and I so I expanded on what I'd said, as follows:
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You understood that when I talked about living with mental illness, I was talking about my 30 years with Wife, right? Interestingly, I’ve been looking up reviews (or just articles) that specifically address the question of mental illness in the movie, and I’ve found two types.
(1) There are some that condemn the movie bitterly (or just sadly) for linking mental illness with violence: these writers all quote the statistic that people who suffer from mental illness are more likely than the average person to suffer violence (not commit it), and so they blame the director (who also wrote a lot of the script) for adding to the popular stigma around the disease. All of these writers appear intent on burnishing their credentials as Concerned Liberals, and they all sound like they have learned about mental illness from books.
(2) Then there are articles by writers who say up front “I have suffered from mental illness for decades” or else “I work with the mentally ill every day of my life.” These articles breeze past the link that the movie allegedly makes between mental illness and violence, because — geez! — it’s a supervillain origin story. Of course he’s going to end up being violent. He’s the Bad Guy. What they focus on with laser precision is how hard his life is, and how little anyone else in the world cares about him — how little anyone else in the world wants to deal with him at all or even to be around him, and how this invisibility and isolation make his already-difficult life twenty times harder — and they all say the movie NAILS IT! Yes, exactly that. That’s what it’s like.
There’s actually a point right near the end where he’s talking to another character about all the bad things that have happened to him, and about the crimes he has already started committing ... in response? ... as a result? ... post hoc ergo propter hoc? ... well, whatever. And the other guy gets kind of huffy and says, “I’m hearing a lot of self-pity from you. Do you really think your bad luck justifies the things you just now confessed to doing?” And maybe I didn’t hear the Joker’s answer correctly, because I’ve seen nobody else pick up on this part of that conversation. But I really believe that at that point Joker says, “No.” No, he doesn’t believe that his bad luck justifies his crimes. But he does see a connection that the bad luck nonetheless caused his crimes. His bad luck doesn’t make his crimes acceptable, but does make them happen. As I say, maybe I heard him wrong. (I’m getting old, you know.) And even if I heard him right he took a lot less time with the point than I have taken right now. Even if I heard him right, 75% of the explication I’ve just given is mine, unpacking what I think he said. But I think in that moment he showed that he may be mentally ill, but he’s not crazy. In other words, he understands the difference between right and wrong and knows that A does not justify B; but he’s also trying to make the point that — regardless what moral theory might say — you can’t expect anyone to suffer the things he has suffered without snapping and reacting the way he has reacted.
One clarification. In all this, I have to add that when I talk about “his bad luck” that’s a little like describing an elephant as “his house pet”. Really. This man has the most phenomenal bad luck you have ever seen. But then so did Wife, which means I believed it instantly rather than treating it as a weak plot device. But I have to warn you that at a certain point your ability to sympathize over bad luck shuts down from overload — or mine did in real life — and you start assuming that, statistically, nobody can have random luck that bad so she must have done something to cause it somehow, by pissing people off or whatever, so that they then treated her badly. Likewise him, the Joker. See, I really do hear an echo between them, even though Wife never became a supervillain.
Thanks be to God.
But could I have ever imagined her turning violent the way the Joker does in this movie? Based on the many bad things she suffered; and also on her (perhaps) diminished capacity (because of illness, physical or mental) to absorb suffering, roll with the punches, and bounce back? Sure, why not? That’s part of what I found totally plausible in the movie. And I chalk it up to good luck (for a change) that it didn’t happen in real life.
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Here are some of the reviews I found that agreed the movie portrayed mental illness well.
Happy viewing.
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