Joker: Folie à Deux
The “Joker” films might be two of the most inexplicable things to ever come out of our modern obsession with comic book adaptations. Todd Phillips likes the iconography and cache of The Joker as a character, but as a cover for him to try his hand at “serious drama.” I’ve watched the original film a couple of times since my first viewing, and what I’ve found is that, the more I watch it, the less I care about Arthur Fleck as we go along. We don’t have to like a character, but we should empathize with him, and no amount of Hildur Guðnadóttir’s haunting, mournful score will make that happen, even though Joaquin Phoenix throws himself into the role.
Phillips and his co-writer, Scott Silver, feel like they want these films to be dark comedies about the injustices of a society that glorifies violence, that marginalizes the mentally ill, and finds an inflection point in the middle. I think there are moments in “Joker: Folie à Deux” that point to that, and they are the best parts of the film. But Phillips’s vision of Fleck’s world is oppressively bleak, and Arthur is, to be honest, a passive character. I’m glad he didn’t go the opposite direction and portray Arthur’s mental illness as funny and wacky, but Arthur often feels like he’s the acted upon rather than acting himself in this film, in particular. Regardless of what you think of previous versions of the character, Joker is always identified for his penchant of chaos and acting out of a desire to bring Gotham to its knees. Part of the problem in this film, of course, is that there’s no foil for Arthur’s “Joker” to act against; there’s no counterbalance. That just leaves Arthur, and he just doesn’t have the juice to carry this film where Phillips wants to see it go.
For his sequel, Phillips has decided to introduce his own Harley Quinn, and have her played by Lady Gaga. Lee, as the character is called in the film, and Arthur meet in Arkham; Arthur sees her in a music class as he’s being escorted to a meeting with his lawyer (Catherine Keener), who’s trying to play the mental illness/split personality card at Arthur’s trial for the murder of the five people he killed in the first film. (They don’t know that he killed his mother.) Something opens up in Arthur when he sees Lee. For the first time, he feels seen, and he wants to make it known to everyone.
There are some conceptual ideas that are compelling in this film. The main one is that it is designed as a musical. Musicals are designed to allow the characters to give voice to their emotions in a way that society doesn’t necessarily allow, and that is definitely the approach that Phillips is taking here. There are no original songs here- Arthur and Lee are pulling from classics- and the impact, for me, was closer to the darkly comedic tone it feels like Phillips wants us to approach these films with. That includes the opening sequence, which is animated in the old Looney Tunes style, and has Arthur hosting his own show, and his other half- the Joker- taking over. That is the most vibrant sequence in the entire film. Even during the musical numbers, Lawrence Sher’s cinematography is as drab and dull as it is throughout the first film, and the rest of this film; only a number between Lee and Arthur during a fire has any visual interest. The rest is that same, oppressive darkness that a filmmaker like Phillips wants us to read as “edgy,” but is honestly flat and uninteresting.
Let’s get into the Harley and Joker of it all. Gaga’s Harley is the most interesting thing in the entire movie. From the memes, from the discourse, and from the animated (and live-action) variations on the character, I’m sure most people already understand the traditional dynamic between Harley and Mr. J that is played. To their credit, Phillips and Silver at least begin to invert it here in ways that might have made the film work had it followed through at key moments, especially near the end when the truth about Lee is revealed, and Arthur is left as what he is, a sad, troubled man who will relish his moment in the spotlight, but ultimately just wants to be happy. That is fundamentally the problem at the heart of Phillips’s films; he lifts Arthur on a pedestal for people around him to follow, but also wants us to empathize when Arthur tears that down, as well. It’s a contradiction that doesn’t work, and is not aided by how he continues to lean into the trope of how the mentally ill are prone to violent outbursts, when they are more likely to be the victims of violence. Phillips’s Joker is meant as a sympathetic outsider, but for my money, Vera Drew’s “The People’s Joker,” which Warner Bros. tried to suppress before it was eventually released, captured that idea more empathetically, and in far more entertaining fashion. Arthur Fleck is an empty husk of a character, and the movies that tell his story are not much better.
