Spoiler tagged:
Who laughed when Gary couldn't reach the door lock and had to ask for Arthur's help in letting him out?
I mean, it's Joker, he laugh's all of the time, wants to be a stand-up comedian, but the film is not a comedy and none of it is funny in the least bit ... except this one scene, which definitely got a snort and chuckle from me. It WAS funny.
Speck
It's only if you find humour in everything that dwarfs and/or midgets do, otherwise, the poor man was petrified thinking he was going to be killed next, and I was concerned for him. But luckily, Arthur let him go because he'd been kind to him the whole time they were colleagues, unlike the gun guy that he stabbed in revenge for getting him fired.
Yeah, I didn't find it funny, either, just horrifying and tension-filled as you did, Foebane.
One of the things I loved about the film was how much of it could have been funny but for that unsettling, creepy vibe that they maintained.
That scene has perfect comic timing. With a little twist, the idea of a guy three beats after a violent murder needing to ask the murderer for help to leave could be played with humour, but here, that humour was swallowed up by the dread of the guy who wanted to just get out and the fact that we know how unpredictably homicidal Arthur is.
That happened a lot in the film. I thought it was directed - pacing and shot choice - almost like a comedy, but because of what we know about the characters and the situation, you just can't laugh. Which, to me, was a perfect storytelling technique, because it's basically the other side of the Joker's worldview. He finds it funny. If the Joker watched Joker, he'd laugh his butt off.
If only you could take off your bigot-radar. I have no problem with people of different stature, for whatever reasons / affliction. I also don't laugh at people with disabilities, in wheel chairs, with facial disfigurements, or different skin color. Please put your judgements away and get back to talking about the story here.
It's called a "situation" that involves people interacting, beyond the brutality of the murder that Arthur just committed, with the attributes written into their character.
After all, they could have done that scene with Gary just getting away. The filmmakers purposefully locked that door, so that Gary needed help. There could have been more than one thing they were wishing to portray here.
I believe one of those things was dark humor. I'm sure I wasn't the only one to see that (and further replies below show that).
I'm confused: what did I say that makes you think I was calling you a bigot? I don't think I did; I certainly wasn't trying to. I was replying to Foebane, as well, not you, so even if I was calling somebody a bigot (again: I wasn't - not intentionally), wouldn't I be calling Foebane a bigot?
shareI was replying to Foebane72's words who said "It's only if you find humour in everything that dwarfs and/or midgets do".
The results are in though. I went to another movie board with people I trust a lot more and the consensus is that the humor in that scene was almost certainly as the filmmakers intended.
It's okay if others did not find it to be funny, but to denigrate someone who did (apply bigoted characteristics that were not actually evident) is out of line.
Chris
I figured that was probably something that happened; thanks for clarifying.
The humorous element in many scenes in the film has such a warp to it that I couldn't laugh. The horrifying nature of Phoenix's character prevented it, because everything that "should" be humorous just instilled dread, and that emotion overpowered the impulse to laugh.
Furthermore, I wonder if you get other kinds of dark humor.
I laughed at all of his his knock knock jokes, the part where he dances and misfires a gun (I also found the joke before that - "you're a good dancer! You know who is not?" genuinely funny). Then when he kissed that old doctor lady, his naive hallucination of guesting in a Murray show in the beggining and my favorite - "those guys couldn't carry a tune to save their life!"
Plenty of genuinely funny moments in the movie imo. The scene with a midget scared shitless? Somewhat funny but not that much.
The Joker character isn't funny.
He finds things that we think are terrible, gross, etc funny. That's part of him thinking life is a joke.
When he was doing his standup, he wasn't trying to be funny, he was trying to be terrible.
He would find that funny.
Get it?
i LOL'd when Joker fucken put a smile on kid Bruce Wayne through a fu**** fence !!
omg that's future Batman and he let a stranger touch his face like that #fail
Wasn't funny
shareI did laugh! But the scene itself would have been better if he did kill the dwarf because it was set up like a horror movie, and it broke the suspense in the dwarf getting let out. Of course it would go against the films idea that he's only going around people that in some way have been bad to him or have let him down.
shareHe should have killed him for not being able to open the door.
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