Film Review - Joker: Folie À Deux

Images courtesy of Warner Bros.

The reception for Todd Phillips’ Joker has had a bizarre trajectory since it came out five whole years ago. Initially received lukewarmly by critics, with many pointing out obvious similarities to Scorsese's Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, the film went on to become a cultural phenomenon when wider audiences were enamoured by Joaquin Phoenix’s incredible lead performance. 2019 was just the perfect time for a film like Joker to be released, between the public's waning interest towards superhero films (especially the output of DC), and the general air of dejectedness was something that I remember even my parents relating to. To put it in the words of the clown prince of Gotham himself, we were living in a society.

Nevermind everything that went down the following year: a pandemic, riots in the streets of the US, and the January 6th insurrection on the capital. While I personally wouldn't tie a direct line between these events and the release of Joker, I remember the fear when the film's premiere included a rigorous security enclave to dissuade any would-be James Holmes copycats. All that is to say, while the Joker as a character does seem to appeal to a certain kind of person, the evolution of the culture war in radical online circles and it spilling out in the form of real world violence seems unfortunately inevitable, and those who commit these acts often do so with a martyr in mind, whether real or fictitious.

Now that I've prefaced the rest of the review, that should give you some idea of the awkward spot that Joker: Folie à Deux, this year's follow up, finds itself in.

We again follow Arthur Fleck (Phoenix), serving time in prison while he awaits a court trial that could see him getting the electric chair. Only one thing, he's caught the eye of Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), and thus the whirlwind of a toxic relationship begins. The two share duets, schemes, and above all, cigarettes, as well as a flair for the theatrical, and while both performers are at the top of their A-game in their respective artistic field, neither is particularly given the space to rival the other, resulting in musical segments that come mostly from the lungs of Gaga, while Phoenix gets centre stage in the acting department, leaving Gaga high and dry as the one-dimensional manipulative girlfriend whose attitude boils down to “I can make him so much worse.” It's kinda nuts that Margot Robbie basically got to run laps around Gaga as far as gritty modern interpretations of Harley Quinn go - despite her iteration of the character beginning as mere eye candy in the woefully misguided Suicide Squad (2016).

The subtitle - as many fellow Fall Out Boy fans will already know - literally translates from French to “madness of two”. Between the introduction of the idea that Joker may be a separate personality of Arthur’s, the film's attempts to reckon with its cultural appraisal, and the introduction of Gaga as this universe’s Harley Quinn, so it's fitting that the title refers to a codependent insanity. It's just a shame that, despite attempting to branch out from under Scorsese's shadow, Phillips only really seems to have one semi-interesting idea, and it's not executed particularly well. If Joker (2019) was drowning in its influences, Folie à Deux is up the creek without a paddle, falling apart like a half-made house of cards.

That one idea is this: violence begets violence. By inciting riots in the street, and then playing into the media’s perception of himself, Fleck sets himself up as a martyr and paints a giant, clown-shoe-sized target on his back. If you're content to rattle the cage, don't be surprised if it breaks. While this does work on some level given the meta element of knowing how the original film was received and represented, it doesn't always mesh well with the newfound love at the film's core (a Bad Romance, if I may), nor the attempts at surrealist grandeur present in the musical cutaways.

There's a scene in which Lee and Arthur sit together to watch a movie in the Arkham Asylum theatre room, during which Lee insists they run off because “you already know how it's going to end, everything's gonna work out”, which had me questioning whether the film I was currently watching would take many chances with its structure. When the ending finally rolled around, I felt somewhat satisfied with how it culminated, with one significant caveat; usually I'm quite easily moved by “downer” endings in films, but this time, I didn't feel much at all, and I think it comes down to Todd Phillips not really having the sauce for a film of this calibre. It's interesting that for all the film's grappling with Arthur's identity crisis, Folie à Deux winds up having one of its own.

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Joker: Folie À Deux is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.