Joker: Folie à Deux

There comes a point in every child’s life when they feel too old to be relegated to the kid’s table at family dinners, but are sadly too young to be accepted through the gates of the adult table. It is humiliating to be in high school but forced to sit next to those who can’t eat a meal without half of it smeared on their chin. It is strange to be at the adult table and feel second-hand embarrassment watching a child desperately attempting to show how adult and serious they are. It is stranger still to see that behavior in cinematic form. Todd Phillips’s Joker films mimic more sophisticated works and dip their toes in interesting topics in the hope of appearing more worthwhile than the sugar highs their genre tends to consist of. The issue that persists through both films is that the desperation to say something meaningful and to be treated as a valuable piece of cinema only makes them come across as more childish. At least your average comic book film has the dignity to know what it is! The shallowness of the first Joker seemed to be mostly overlooked when it was released five years ago: although it had mixed reception from American critics, international critics and audiences around the world really took to the film. It’s not hard to understand why: if you haven’t seen the movies Joker is clearly derivative of, you could be blown away by the attempts at commentary that older, superior films actually follow through with. The first film also struck at a much riper time politically and felt very topical. Joker mania swept the nation mere months before COVID-19, while Donald Trump was still in office. Its most ardent defenders were amazed by the artfulness and appreciated how refreshing a comic-book film with one singular story to tell felt. In fact, those who fell head over heels for the first film were probably those most resistant to the idea of this story continuing. Alas, both America and the rose-colored glasses its fans viewed Joker with have changed radically in the five years since it released.

That brings us to the highly talked about (and now highly loathed) Joker: Folie á Deux. The same people who fell for the first film found themselves confused by the direction Phillips took for this seemingly unnecessary sequel. Reports then came of the film being a musical, with Lady Gaga being cast in the role of Harley Quinn mere years after Margot Robbie’s popular rendition. It seemed even the most ardent fans of Phillips’s vision were skeptical of the sequel’s quality. In fact, it was those like myself who were less than fond of his first venture into Gotham City that seemed to be the most open minded. Maybe this film would be more interesting than the first. Maybe it would be so batshit crazy with the choices it makes that it would hold more merit than its predecessor. And to be honest, we weren’t exactly wrong.

The second Joker is a mess, and it remains as hollow in its portrayal of mental health and societal decay as the first, but it may capture a new smaller audience with the sheer cockiness of its messy presentation. Apart from two numbers, most of the film’s musical elements seem to exist within a bubble, with Gaga or Phoenix often sitting still and singing awkwardly towards the camera. The bland presentation of these scenes is made worse by Phoenix’s unimpressive vocal work, especially when singing opposite one of the greatest voices of our time. Gaga is able to overcome the flat, non-existent choreography with her sheer screen presence, but Phoenix flounders in the inadequate staging of it all. The flashiest numbers are quite fun to watch and by far the highlights of the film, but because they are all dream sequences, their excellence feels pointless in the grand scheme of things. In fact, the musical element really brings nothing apart from implied spectacle; the numbers bring the story to a halt rather than moving it forward and fail to give us further insight into our characters’ minds. Everything feels so unexplored! Phillips has ideas that could be interesting, yet with both of his Joker films he proves he has nothing beyond surface-level platitudes worth saying. It is true that saying something is enough to start a conversation, but at the end of the day, the film bafflingly says nothing at all. The public’s idolization of monsters is an interesting idea to apply to fantasy worlds, especially with a character as iconic as Joker, but nothing is ever explored. It is a common denominator depiction that does nothing with this concept besides showing that it happens. Phoenix and Phillips seem to think Arthur is a deeply complex and troubled character, this anti-hero audiences can both love and hate. But due to lazy writing, Arthur is a blank slate, with his mental illness being defined by incessant laughing and violent acts. Both Joker films feel like a “gritty” filter was put over your average comic book film with no other changes made, as at its core it is as profound and applicable to the real world as any other entry in the subgenre.

With the critical and audience plummet this film is having relative to the first, hopefully audiences may come to realize how few tricks Phillips has up his sleeve. I can only dream that we can all come to expect more of the films we engage with and what they are trying to say.

4/10