Yada yada, blah blah!

 Joker (ஜோகார், Tamil; 2016)

Before Joaquin Phoenix came out in the 2019 DC comic film as the legendary Joker, there was already an award-winning Tamil movie with the same name. Unlike the DC version, this one is a low-budget production. And like the former, both are political and social satires of the system that we are living. More often than not, in our societies, we give people the liberty to speak a little bit too much. Some talk just because they want to be heard. Others vocalise just because God gave them a mouth. We tolerate many because we pity them; we know it is unkind to be cruel against the mentally challenged. We let them just blabber, but the problem is that mental illness can be contagious sometimes. 

With the advent of social media, there is no limit to how much stupidity can spread like wildfire and profound wisdom.

Unfortunately, life is not so straight forward. Muddled somewhere inside the pile of insanity is what is supposed to be the truth. Because of all the murmur of uncertainty and the noise of distortion, real facts remain buried in the rubble.

There was a time when only the learned would be allowed to speak, and the rest would listen. One needed a certain amount of intelligence to put forward their opinion. With the democratisation of speech and empowerment to express thoughts, everyone gets the opportunity to get their 2-cents worth of view across. Do we call this giving the oppressed a voice to speak? Is the converse the rule of elitist? Is the former pushing for chaos and the latter a precursor to leftist's wet dream of creating unthinking automatons?

This bizarre movie starts with a man who is living in a debilitated hut. Starting his day answering calls on his cheap mobile phone answering to the name of President of India, rubber-stamping his letter with the Republic's emblem and pushing his weight around his neighbourhood. Slowly we realise that he is delusional. He has a comatose wife at home who became so after a freak accident caused by the government machinery's corruption. He tries to obtain a court order to allow euthanasia on his wife but repeatedly fails. The whole film just shows the vulture of politicians and his sycophant businessmen and hyena henchmen who hawk on Government projects to maximise profit and pay back the minimum to the gullible public.

Without a cerebral matter, imagine even ants can organise such complicated colonies, complete with armed forces, reserves for a rainy day, and even sick bays to care for the infirm. Why do we need politicians to guide us through? Seriously, mankind should have stopped at the oldest profession of all time, not start the second oldest, which is close to the first! 

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