Pagliacci

"... that really good art comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable"

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people keep asking about how the joker movie was but 
really it's not a movie you can talk about meaningfully
to someone who hasn't seen it yet
it's that involved and tightly wound and self-contained that
to discuss it you need to go into detail and dissect
which 1. would involve spoilers and 2. some experiences just
aren't really translatable in words, especially if you're
trying to avoid spoilers. 
it's like if your dog has been shot,
or you've had a leg amputated you 
could talk to someone else whose dog
was similarly shot or wounded, or had
lost their leg as well, you could
talk to them about the experience
and compare notes but to someone who has never had their dog shot
or never had a dog or lost 
a limb it would be pretty difficult to describe the experience
qualitatively without disclosing that your dog has died or that you are one limb less now
it's one of those things
you have to go through to understand
and here's the thing, everyone will have 
something different to say about it
and that's part of its genius and intrinsic value
is that it will be polarising 
and stir up dissent, it will start conversations about
topics we usually avoid. it will make us ask questions
questioning others, questioning ourselves, evaluate our paradigms
it leaves us with questions
and the value of it stirring up unique and wildly differing reactions from different 
people is that you can learn based on your reaction to the film
something about yourself. it can
tell you something about yourself
you didn't know before.
that's a gift. something rare. not every film can do that, you know