I don't know yet. There's a lot there and I'm a little stunned. Reviews criticized it for pushing a narrative about the mentally ill and social services that isn't a well thought through platform, but for Pete's sake it's not a frapping political platform in the first place. It's a super-villain origin story, and a very dark and heavy one. But then ... he's the Joker. It would have to be.
But part of what I thought was that it was a little bit like Wife's story. The protagonist, Arthur Fleck, suffers from mental illness; so does Wife. He has chronically bad luck; so does Wife. He reacts to things with emotions that are out of phase with the emotions of the people around him; so does Wife. He has a very difficult and slightly creepy relationship with his mother, to whom he is nonetheless deeply attached; so did Wife. His mother has emotional problems of her own, and is either delusional or very badly used by others; so was Wife's mother. In fact, I almost thought I could summarize the movie for Son 1 by saying, "Take your mom's story; make it even worse; give her a slightly different set of diseases; and have her end up as a supervillain." (I chickened out in the end, and didn't say it.)
At one point, though, we look over his shoulder as he is writing in his journal, and we see a sentence that I'm sure she could agree to:
"The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don't."
Yup. I've watched that be Wife's experience, and I've also been the one expecting her to behave as if she didn't. It's tough.
I guess it's good she never became a supervillain, huh?
Sent from my iPhone
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