I’ve liked Batman since I was a child. So I had high expectation for the Joker film before it came out. And I was satisfied with it. I really loved the way they used colours in the film. It gave me a feeling that they really put effort in the film and that’s what a good film is supposed to look like.
I’m also interested in psychology, I think human brain is the most delicate and complicate thing in this entire universe, it’s fun to study how it works. The Joker is a character who has several mental illness, there is a lot to talk about. So I made this report to interpret how colour reveals the Joker’s mental state.
I took Freud’s ID and ego theory, and combined with three primal colours that were majorly used in lighting and costume. And surprisingly, they fit every scene in the film. The film making crew didn’t randomly use the colours, they deliberately designed them.
Let’s go to the specifics. Red means the ID which is a primal version of the character, or should I say it’s him in his subconsciousness. For the Joker, it’s passionate and violent who wants to break free. That why his outfit is mostly red rather than the original comic version of purple.
Neutral colours like blue our grey represent ego, which is a more common state of the character. He is relatively calm in his daily life. Most of the exterior scenes in this film are blue, they showed the audience day to day life in Gotham.
Yellow means the superego, which is how the society and world expect us to be. It has a higher moral standard. When the Joker was following his neighbour, there was a yellow taxi passing by, to tell him what you’re doing is wrong, stop it. And back to the therapy scene, there are yellow among the blue, it means the society wants the Joker to behave, don’t go mad and be a good boy.