The movie The Joke focuses on a man named Jahn Ludvik. Ludvik got kicked out of his college and the communist party due to a joke he made in a letter to his love interest Margaret. She reported the joke to those in power, resulting in the expulsion of Ludvik and him being placed into a mine in what the movie called a reform militia. Those who voted him out, Ludvik considered his friends. After many years Ludvik comes back to Prague with the intent of getting revenge.

Ludvik’s entire purpose in life was to get revenge for what his ‘friends’ had done to him. Throughout this movie Ludvik’s actions seemed to only be motivated by spite and hatred, he was so focused on that hatred that he lost who he actually was. After meeting another old friend from the college/communist party, he learned that man was also kicked out of the party but wasn’t as hell-bent on revenge as Ludvik was.

This man seemed to forgive those who exiled him and ended up in a band at a protestant church. This became his purpose in live and he changed as a person. Ludvik, on the other hand, was still stuck on revenge and thought that his friend was foolish for not wanting to exact revenge. Ludvik decided that seducing the wife of one of his accusers would be the best revenge. He ended up learning that his accuser could care less about his estranged wife, Helena, and was paying more attention to younger women.

After learning this, he had lost his main purpose in life. Ludvik ditched the wife he was using for revenge and was now faced with needing to find a purpose and relearn who he was. He found himself in a kind of limbo between who he was and figuring out who is actually is. Ludvik ended up joining his old friend in his band, playing the clarinet. In the ending scene, we see Ludvik beating up the wife’s assistant and said “It wasn’t you I wanted to beat up.” This interaction might have been cathartic for Ludvik even though the assistant wasn’t the main focus of his revenge. We are left to assume that Ludvik continued to play in the band and go back to his job where he met Helena, possibly with less of a need for revenge. This seems to be a movie that looks at the exacentalism of learning who you actually are.