Joker: Folie à Deux
★★
It has been a half decade since Todd Phillips introduced Arthur Fleck to the world, and you’d be forgiven for remembering more about the conversations surrounding the film than the actual contents of the movie itself. There were genuine concerns that it could spark real-life copycat violence; theatre chains increased security, there were even brief talks of pulling the film entirely. Then, of course, nothing happened, the film set historic box office records, and it managed to nab a shocking eleven Academy Award nominations.
The fear wasn’t completely unfounded, though. Phillips’ “Joker” served as a sick rallying cry to the worst kind of self-pitying incel men, calling on them to take up arms against a society they believed had overlooked them. Ask Todd Phillips back then and he’d tell you that wasn’t his intention. Ask him now, and he’d probably just show you his follow-up.
To its credit, “Joker: Folie à Deux” directly confronts the kind of media-illiterate social outcasts who found themselves identifying with the tragic clown. In a twist of expectations, Phillips’ sequel does not double-down on its success, rather it explicitly puts the first film on trial, going out of its way to spit in the faces of the loyal Joker fanatics who refuse to see the pathetic loner beneath the makeup. It means to alienate and actively anger the original film’s most vocal fanbase. It’s a bold move on paper, I’ll give it that. But Todd Phillips should’ve taken to heart the lesson he learned five years ago: you cannot have your cake and eat it, too.
“Folie à Deux” is markedly worse than its predecessor. Phillips, having abandoned the safety net of a Scorsese ripoff, is in complete freefall here — his dizzying lack of direction outmatched only by his impressive inability to pull off literally any one single idea to adequate results. The film’s stylistic ambitions are greater, its thematic scope is wider, and yet it cumulatively feels smaller, flimsier and hollower. It makes “Joker” look like “Taxi Driver.”
Taking place only a short time after the first film’s conclusion, Phillips’ sequel finds Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) an inmate of Arkham Asylum, a mostly nonverbal skeleton of a man abused by guards and admired by his fellow prisoners. When he attends a music therapy class in the Asylum and meets the mischievous inmate Lee Quinn (Lady Gaga), an obsessive Joker devotee who claims to have watched the made-for-TV film of Arthur’s story “hundreds of times,” Fleck finds his spark for life reignited and his Joker persona resurrected. Through music, the pair’s bad romance spins them beyond the prison gates and into Arthur’s trial, where a central question looms: are Arthur and Joker two identities, or one and the same?
The aim of this question is to, as blatantly as possible, strip the die-hard fans of their god, and confront them with the pathetic mentally-ill loser they’ve glorified. The other aim, I suppose, is to offer pretext to an extensive recap of the first film’s events. It is truly, genuinely baffling how much of “Folie à Deux” is committed to just people sitting in a courtroom going over what happened in the last movie. A collection of familiar faces summarize their little storyline in Joker’s origin, the court discusses, they reach a verdict…movie over. I’d have felt more personally offended by this waste of time were it able to stir such a forceful emotion within me, but the most potent feeling throughout was sheer boredom. It is dull, monotonous droning, and the laziest possible way to write a sequel.
The only glimmer of life is the film’s much-discussed musical elements. Visualizing Arthur’s renewed passion — be it for violence, fame or Lee’s love — these classic Hollywood numbers turn the “Joker” sequel into a full-blooded movie musical. Sometimes, it’ll simply be Arthur or Lee singing in a naturalist environment, other times they’re transposed into lavish theatrical sets. Take a good look at these sets when they’re on screen, they won’t stick around long. No, most of the musical numbers in “Folie à Deux” are visually unappealing and blandly constructed, confined to mundane locations with minimal flair — not nearly the grand song-and-dance throwback it promises. Where the film positions itself as a clever genre twist, it actually uses music purely as a cosmetic touch-up; it has no bearing on anything that happens, very rarely are story and character communicated through song, and the track selections themselves are puzzling in their incongruity with the material. Like essentially everything else in the film, the choice to make this a musical feels like an idea only halfway to execution.
Phillips seems unable, or unwilling, to take any of his ideas further than the conception stage. The torment Arthur experiences at the hands of a gruff prison guard (Brendan Gleeson) is evidently in the movie solely to reiterate his victimhood. Similarly, Gaga’s Lee exists specifically as a stand-in for hardcore Joker fans and to be Arthur’s loving partner-in-crime, but neither use for the character gives her anything of substance to do. Meanwhile, Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) is the district attorney fighting for a conviction, and his (not-yet-Two) face is only here to remind audiences that, yes, this is in fact a DC Comics property.
The real half-drawn ideas come in the film’s home-stretch; a collection of sudden, out-of-place moments that feel more at-home in Wattpad fan-fiction than a multi-million dollar studio blockbuster. I wouldn’t dare spoil the film’s ending, it’s a gleefully idiotic conclusion that everyone has the right to experience firsthand.
Meanwhile, to their credit, Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga try to keep this house of cards from completely falling apart. Phoenix returns to the role that won him an Oscar with another transformative performance, in many cases more subdued and in some ways more exaggerated. Commitment is a tough word to use alongside the actor given recent news about his tendency to drop out of projects at the very last minute, but when he’s settled into a role like this, Phoenix’s dedication is unmatched. He completely goes for it. For its faults, “Folie à Deux” is tolerable for the guiding force of Joaquin Phoenix’s allure. Lady Gaga brings a similar magnetism to her interpretation of Harley Quinn, but is let down by an underwritten role that too infrequently utilizes her abilities. It is a testament to her skill as an actress that she manages to mine any emotional pathos whatsoever from such a blank-slate character.
Truly, it is just remarkable how little fat is on this bone. As in 2019, Phillips has crafted a hollow technical showcase that coasts on striking compositions and an atmospheric score, but possesses none of the bite or nerve it’s convinced are its greatest strengths. A muddled and reactionary meta-commentary on its own filmmaker’s jumbled messaging, “Folie à Deux” takes pride in pissing off its fans, and in return gains no new supporters — so afraid of committing to any of its ideas that it essentially sits in stasis, its tedium broken up only by some of the most half-conceived musical sequences in recent memory. Even Gaga can’t save a script this self-conscious. The courtroom Judge that essentially puts the previous film on trial is modelled to look like Martin Scorsese, so that’s the kind of stuff we’re dealing with here. What a joke.