When I left the screening last night, I told the PR company guy that I liked that he (Todd Phillips) had made a movie that no one would like. “Joker: Folie à Deux” was the kind of movie that when it ended, you could hear the groans from the audience at the fan screening I watched it with. That’s something no one expected, and how different it was in feel and tone from the first film, and how different it was from 2019, when the first film was released and grossed over $1 billion. I wonder how different they are.
Joaquin Phoenix returns as Arthur Fleck, the Joker, two years after the previous movie. He spent the next two years in Arkham State Hospital, awaiting the start of a murder trial against the people he killed in the first film. During his stay, he meets Lee, played by Lady Gaga, at a music class for inmates because of his good manners. Their love for each other and the court case pushed Fleck back into the daydream-driven state of mind that caused him to be “The Joker” in the first place. The film deals with the influence of this person who has a very public impact on the city’s residents, and that’s what the film wants to convey.
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The problem is that this movie ends up being a very boring and at times very boring courtroom drama, with too many rehashes of things that happened in the previous film, and different characters playing around with the real world surrounding the strengths and themes of the previous film. The conversation is being dragged into litigation. The movie is over 2 hours and 18 minutes long, but it feels like every minute I was there was. Rather than double back on me, screenwriters Phillips and Todd Silver connected many real-world criticisms of the first film to the world of the film through characters like Harvey Dent (Harry Lorty). I think I fell into the trap of the story I was trying to create. This Joker is actually different from Batman’s unnamed iconic enemy. There are elements here that work well, such as the poor treatment of prisoners by officials, the media’s need to make a show, and, of course, what was used in the previous film, the class divide in Gotham that led to the riot. movie finale.
Phoenix retains his charm on screen as Fleck, who, on a whim of sanity and a need for love and approval from others, once again loses pounds and looks like a cartoonish haggard man. He has a great use of the face to express the emotional processing going on within Fleck. The majority of the film is spent with Fleck and the Joker trying to save his life through insane arguments, as lawyer Marianne (Catherine Keener) attempts to save his life, and with Fleck and the Joker trying to figure out how guilty they are for what happened. It is a story about characters who deal with There’s little to explain why she believes this other than she’s his defender. This is in contrast to Dent, a young assistant prosecutor who is trying to seek the death penalty, and we never understand why this character doesn’t do anything enough to make us think he cares enough to pursue this sentence. No. This isn’t Dent’s movie, but I think he could have focused more on his motivations for why he thinks Fleck should die.
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This film, like its predecessor, is also great thanks to Phillips’ constant collaborator Lawrence Sher. The way they select the shots and work with the lighting team to give you great visuals as you grow more and more bored with the story makes this movie very rewarding and I still love watching it. I’m planning to buy it in 4K. I like the look. They use color well to tell the story and show us, the audience, in the real world and in Fleck’s daydreams. The costumes also capture the feel of the early 80s while still feeling like the 70s, continuing the immersion in this version of Gotham, but this time stepping away from director Scorsese and making it a little more of its own. I’m about to try.
I think it’s time to talk about the musical nature of this film and how it works and doesn’t work. Some people hate musicals. The reason is that the explosive nature of the song destroys the reality of the world for them. It’s no longer real. This movie chooses to do a few things. The characters naturally hum or sing the songs that are playing in the world, Fleck has entire musical sequences in his head as he processes what is happening around him, and the characters sing the songs. It’s about detonating it and people looking for it and treating it. Because they have a mental illness, they are looked at with contempt. The songs are mostly old pop hits and fit perfectly with what’s happening in the story. The original songs didn’t hit the mark for me the way I wanted them to, but none of them bothered me. Phoenix is good at singing on her own and sometimes with Gaga, but she’s never going to get a banger duet with her from Bradley Cooper like in A Star Is Born. Gaga is, of course, an amazing singer, but her character is not a well-thought-out version of the well-known Harley Quinn. They took her in a different direction than other recent takes, and while it’s interesting, it wasn’t enough for Gaga. In many ways I feel like she was there to make sure the music part was good.
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Now, I said earlier that I thought it was interesting, but if you think on a meta level about the different interpretations of DC characters that are reinvented over and over again, you can find something you like in the story. I liked how Fleck was different from the Joker we usually see. I’m also influenced by The Killing Joke, Three Jokers, and even The Man Who Laughs, the movie that inspired this character. For me, in the first movie, everything worked well within the overall pop culture canon of the character. To be honest, I don’t want to get bored with the same takes. A lot of other people I personally know, especially comic book readers and professionals, weren’t as open to this. Others liked it, but all you can do at that point is shrug. As for the overreaction to the first movie, it should be said that this movie will end Western society just because the filmmakers used the Joker to pay homage to the Martin Scorsese movies of the 80s. There are many things. But guys, this is so much more than that.
This movie tries to be everything to everyone, but ends up being of no use to anyone. That being said, this story is over. These two films serve as complete stories of this Arthur Fleck character, and may be worth watching at home rather than rushing to the theater. It will end up feeling like a waste of time and money to most people.
Something like this:
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