Austen Riggs Center

Todd Phillips’ Joker is, indeed, a farce, as suggested by Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” that plays over the closing credits. Not in the sense that the movie is silly; its emotional intensity is almost unrelenting over the course of two hours, notwithstanding classic slapstick allusions (like a scene where they watch Charlie Chaplin) and chase scenes (including the one that closes the film). The main character’s uncontrollable laugh-cry that gets vaguely chalked up to a “neurological condition” is probably the best illustration of this unrelenting quality – even the moments of levity, when we would normally laugh with the main character, are suffused with the uncanny and with sadness.

Austen Riggs Center clinician and Director of the Erikson Institute, Dr. Jane G. Tillman, responds to the New York Times article “Suicide Survivor Guilt.”