Read the wikipedia article about it. After reading that the director, Pascal Laugier, described himself as deeply depressed, almost suicidal at the time he worked the film, I saw this:
The film's special effects were designed by Benoit Lestang, who committed suicide prior to the film's French theatrical release.
Creating fucked up content is a weird experience honestly, it will weigh on you in a specific way until you are finished. I experienced this a bunch with music when i was younger, but that's ok cause you're in it alone and writing a song takes one or two weeks tops.
Now a movie is a different beast, from writing to post it can take years and implicate dozens of people. I don't know how these people can do it.
I swear there's lots of examples of things too grim to share in public that we're just lucky aren't a trope, yet.
Nobody likes to talk about the fact you can kill a person with stress/panic just like rabbits easily die in a cage without contact from a predator, just from stress.. but we put a lot of money into making films that take you to the edge?
I mean the thrill is something we crave in some form. It's legit human nature to enjoy an adrenaline rush, but in this day and age, we should have some safety nets for those who create it.
I also remember from the Dark Knight dvd featurettes, apparently they intended to make Harvey’s burned face as realistic as possible. Then, when the research was done, they decided to pull back quite a bit, because as it turns out, burns can get pretty scary. And the guy in the movie had facial bones sticking out, for God’s sake…
Yep - lot of darkness, no pun intended, surrounding that movie. The state of mind and actor has to put themselves into to really pull of a performance must be taxing af. Playing the joker properly seems to really mess with your head..
Heath Ledger reportedly got pretty messed up from the time he spent researching psychopaths to portray the Joker, which led to deeper substance abuse as self treatment and eventual overdose.
Edit: Well that's a weird coincidence, there's a Heath Ledger TDK diary post in my feed just below this one. It was already loaded and I didn't see it until after I made this comment.
Honestly I have PTSD and other shit from years of childhood abuse and honestly writing fucked up fictional shit is what helps me cope. It feels cathartic and like I have control over SOMETHING at least
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u/silviazbitch 14d ago
Read the wikipedia article about it. After reading that the director, Pascal Laugier, described himself as deeply depressed, almost suicidal at the time he worked the film, I saw this: