The Truth About Joker's Most Fascinating Scene

When you're working with an actor as talented as Joaquin Phoenix, you learn to expect and welcome the unexpected.

In a wide-ranging interview with Slashfilm, Joker cinematographer Lawrence Sher offered some insights into one of the film's most intriguing scenes. Basically, no one knew it was coming.

We're going to be discussing a few important plot points here, so consider yourself warned: if you haven't seen Joker yet, there's going to be a handful of potential spoilers ahead.

During the scene in question, Arthur Fleck is clearly struggling in his own mind as he rattles around his kitchen, unable to sleep. He begins obsessively cleaning out the contents of his refrigerator, and anyone who's ever suffered a bout of insomnia will undoubtedly feel for him up to a point, anyway. Later on in the scene, something entirely odd happens: Once the fridge is emptied out, Arthur crawls inside, shuts the door behind him, and... well, he just stays in there.

It's a unique and entirely brilliant way to shine a light on the inner workings of Arthur's tortured soul. And Phoenix reportedly totally improvised this highly memorable moment. As Sher tells Slashfilm,

"When he climbed in the refrigerator, we had no idea he was going to do that. We set up two camera positions, and Joaquin just thought about what he would do if he was a massive insomniac. Again, we lit it so he could go anywhere, and the first and only time he did it, we were mesmerized. I remember thinking, 'What is he doing? Did he just crawl in the fridge?'"

The answer to that question is: Yes, he most certainly did. And of course, the shot was so utterly bizarre it remained in the final cut of the film.

Phoenix was given a massive amount of creative freedom as he developed his interpretation of the character … and that creative freedom proved to be the key to Joker's success. Sher says his biggest fear while shooting was inadvertently interfering with the actor's process. In fact, during the early days of Joker's shoot, Sher confessed he was rather intimidated by Phoenix… and really, who wouldn't be?

Sher says he did his best not to step on the actor's toes: Keep watching the video to see the truth about Joker's most fascinating scene!

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