If I’m being honest, I wasn’t as crazily enthusiastic about Joker when it first came out as some people were – and I’m not talking about the insecure types who thought it was cool to use Arthur Fleck as some sort of poster boy for their “loyal but dangerous” statements on social media. Oh I thought the movie was exceptionally well made, superlatively acted and an impressively bleak take on Batman’s most popular sparring partner, but I didn’t think it was particularly innovative as it basically, at its core, was simply Taxi Driver with face paint on.
However, the box office gods repaid director Todd Phillips with a hefty haul for an R-rated movie and like it or not, Joaquin Phoenix gave us a true successor to Heath Ledger after Jared Leto’s ill received “juggalo” Joker from Suicide Squad.
Well, Arthur Fleck is back in the extravagantly monikered Joker: Folie à Deux and he’s now got Harley Quinn in the mix with him, but in an attempt to mix things up, Phillips has given us a sequel that takes something of a musical bent. Is the world ready for Joker and Harley – the psuedo-musical?
Two years after he murdered chat show host Murray Franklin on live television, we rejoin Arthur Fleck as he shuffles through his grim existence as an inmate of Arkham Asylum. Mocked by the guards, led by the bullish Sullivan and utterly aimless, he finds that hotshot district attorney Harvey Dent has decided to make an example of him due to the martyr-like behavior his actions caused. Determined to prove that Fleck and Joker aren’t separate personas living in the same head and that Arthur was fully sane when he made such a big splash on the Murray Franklin Show, if the DA gets his way, the muddled inmate could be facing the death penalty for his many crimes.
However, a ray of light enters his life one day when Arthur is entered for a spot of musical therapy and meets fellow inmate Harleen “Lee” Quinzel who not only is drawn to him because of his notoriety, but they also have similar upbringings and have that similar opinion about the world in general. With Lee in his life stoking up those old Joker fires, Fleck’s lawyer starts to struggle with getting her client to convince a jury that he hasn’t been in control of gis faculties all along and as the trial of the century looms, it seems like the city is ready to explode all over again.
But who is Arthur Fleck really? Is the Joker truly a malevolent side of his personality that he can’t control, or is the face paint and sharp suits merely an excuse for the one-time party clown to lash out at a city that’s shown him nothing but scorn. Either way, Lee is more than happy to cheer him on and ride his coat tails into infamy – but as more truths emerge about his twisted soul mate, is Arthur truly the one driving this crazy train, or is he just being tied to the tracks?
Joker seems to be one of those movies, not unlike Fight Club, that seemed to be embraced by a certain kind of audience that saw it’s protagonist not as a tragic victim of neglect, but instead as some kind of champion who struck out at injustice with a spiteful rage born of frustration. Well, those guys better brace themselves for a fair bit of disappointment as Todd Phillips seems to have gone out of his way to make a movie that will no doubt frustrate and disappoint that certain section of the audience – but as amusing as that may sound, the bad news is that it’s also a pretty uneven experience for the rest of us too. While Phillips should probably be commended for not doing what was expected of him and going in a strange new musical direction, the result is something of a weirdly bland mess that attempts to reprogramme the first film’s Scorsese fetish with a story that seems to want to have the same impact as Angels With Dirty Faces as it gives us a Fleck who seems to want to take responsibility for the damage he caused only to be caught up with the whims of a woman who desperately wants him to be Joker.
It’s annoying, because all the things that made the first movie so memorable is still present and correct. Phillips’ script maybe repetitive and frustratingly vague in an attempt to be deliberately ambiguous (some moments may be in Fleck’s head, Lee’s motives are utterly nebulous), but his direction still maintains all the angst inducing filth and grime of 80s New York that made the original so upsettingly tangible. Arkham is an oppressive dungeon when bullies like Brendon Gleeson’s thuggish guard can lord it over the unfortunates in their care like brutish gods; but Phillips tips things on their head by introducing a musical aspect that may induce groans who hate the idea of Joker being overly theatrical, but it manages to portray Fleck’s detachment from reality in a way that’s visually interesting. It’s just a shame the director doesn’t embrace the glizty world of Joker and Harley’s imagination more fully as it might have made the rather dreary court case of the second half been far more interesting rather that just going over a bunch of stuff from the first film once again.
The actors also put in the work marvelously, with Phoenix once again so upsettingly thin he looks like a scarecrow made out of chicken bones; but inbetween the title character seemingly spawinging unlimited cigarettes out of thin air (I think we have to admit that Phillips may have a smoking kink) and giving another agonising portrayal of a lost soul in pain, the character becomes far more interesting when his darker, Joker impulses kick in – which proves to be odd considering that the film is trying so hard to besmirch it. Elsewhere, while the My J-J-J-Joker face, my J-Joker face jokes have regrettably already been done, Lady Gaga manages to hold her own against the magnificent Phoenix by giving us a Harley that seems to be far more the aggressor than we’ve ever seen her on film before. While usually cast as a prime example of Stockholm Syndrome while doing the bidding of her abusive “Mister J”, this time around it’s she who is pulling the strings as she seduces a poor, mixed up, mentally ill man into reclaiming his identity as a violent symbol to a city on the verge of social collapse.
However, while this all looks good on paper, this revisionist take on comics most enduring villain ultimately proves to be irritatingly unwilling to take things in a direction that’s like to satisfy anyone. While the neutering of the main character into an easily led pasty may be a somewhat amusing troll on anyone willing to slap an anarchic hero worship on the character, the movie doesn’t actually offer a worthwhile alternative in its place, leaving the rest of us to slog through the grimy misery with only a few croaky-voiced show tunes to perk things up.
There’s just too much talent here to write matters off completely and when it manages to finally slip things into a higher gear, Folie à Deux manages to deliver some enjoyable sights such as a dance sequence that sees our delusional duo tap dancing in a glitzy nightclub, or Joker represent himself in court complete with a faux, southern accent. But overall, the Joker’s second coming feels too much like the character himself – confused, frustrated and painfully unsure of itself.
Folie à deux essentially means shared madness – but despite some mountainous performances, you’ll won’t want to share this one for very long.
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