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Review: Joker- Folie à Deux (2024)
A surreal interpretation that feels almost too close to the real political insanity of our times
“Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy. They do not attack people because they want to, but because of their size and strength, mankind has no other choice but to defend himself. ”
Without knowing it, I had started to mildly disagree with this Ishiro Honda quote. What I admire about this Joker sequel is that it dramatized and made something real that had only been a vague sense of unease at the back of my head. After I watched the movie, a lightbulb went off in my head. Of course! There are people who are consciously destructive. Evil can be innate, a feature of personality, not just a form of mental illness created by trauma.
Thus, the movie walked me through a much overdue re-think (in light of contemporary politics but also a strain of dementia in the family) over what I thought I knew about psychology and criminality. Some criminals, unlike what Honda observed, attack because they want to destroy. They like destruction. They find it thrilling.
The Ishiro Honda quote (about his giant-bird monster Rodan) I began with continues:
