LogFAQs > #973389005

ArchNemo posted...

The problem is that people want to act like this is a great message about how you shouldn't treat mentally ill people badly and that they need more help, but at no point does Arthur come across as likable. Sympathetic maybe, in the sense that you might pity him and feel bad for him, but at no point does he come across as a normal person with issues who you otherwise might want to get to know. He's a stalker, a murderer, and always comes across as completely unhinged.

A better way to make this point would be to make Arthur someone audiences would like as they get to know, and at the end have him kill himself, maybe on TV, to make audiences go gee, he seemed pretty nice and it sucks he went through that, we should do more.

But as it stands the message comes across more as "the dangers of not helping mentally ill people" rather than "help mentally ill people because most of them are just like you but have issues they can't help"

And again, maybe that's fine as an origin story for the Joker. But as a "character study of a severely mentally ill person" it's a horrible message.

I think we just have fundamentally different ways of viewing the world. There's not a single point in the movie where I wasn't sympathetic towards arthur, Andy doesn't start the movie as a murderer. He's unwell, but not a criminal. That only happens after he's continually failed by the system.

So while I see how you can construe "this is the dangers of not helping the mentally ill" as a theme I still think the much, much stronger theme is "the mentally ill need help and without that help they'll suffer."