‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Review: Frustrating Sequel Is Most Electric When Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga Sing, Dance and Romance
For a movie whose global box office exceeded $1 billion, Todd Phillips’ gritty supervillain origin story, Joker, could not have been more polarizing. The pro contingent, which includes this critic, appreciated its glowering social-realist spin and its adventurousness in observing Batman lore while tethering it to a morally bankrupt view of contemporary America on the brink of anarchy, cracked open by class and wealth divisions. The detractors objected to its incel depiction of Arthur Fleck as a morally dubious, if not downright irresponsible, attempt to find compassion for the kind of aggrieved masculinity that breeds gun violence.
The 2019 movie was a surprise winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion, a prestigious honor rarely bestowed upon a major Hollywood studio blockbuster of that type. Not only did it gross a fortune, it went on the following year to win Oscars for Joaquin Phoenix’s by turns pitiable and disturbing lead performance and for Hildur Gudnadóttir’s haunting score.
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In hindsight, what was most troubling about Joker’s politics was that its bleak nihilism lacked a point of view coherent enough to make it genuinely radical or provocative.
Returning to the Venice competition, Phillips’ uneven sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, will likely be embraced or dismissed for some of the same reasons. It doubles down on key aspects of the earlier film’s divisive character study by confining Phoenix’s Arthur to prison or a courtroom for the duration, aside from a brief taste of freedom toward the end — and fantasy musical numbers that turn jazz, pop and show-tune standards into interior monologues of a sort, or physical expressions of the person Arthur imagines himself to be.
In blocking the Joker from his maniacal dissemination of mayhem on the Gotham City streets, the movie all but neutralizes him. Not to get too spoiler-y, but even more than its predecessor, the sequel reduces the archvillain to a hollowed-out product of childhood trauma and mental illness. Which means there’s little we didn’t learn last time. Even the dance interludes are carried over from Joker.
The portrait is a long way from the cackling criminal prankster we’ve loved since César Romero first donned the clown makeup and purple suit in the campy 1960s TV series. Even further if you trace him back to the character’s 1940 introduction in the DC comics.
The addition of Lady Gaga as Lee, the character who will go on to become Harley Quinn, adds a sprinkle of romance to give Arthur a lift that his projection of a relationship with his neighbor, Sophie Dumond (Zazie Beetz), in Joker ultimately did not.
Beetz makes a brief appearance here when the character is brought in as a witness for the prosecution team led by young assistant district attorney Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey, HBO’s Industry), before his villainous alter ego Two-Face has shown up. Also featured in the previous film and turning up on the witness stand are Arthur’s social worker (Sharon Washington) and Gary (Leigh Gill), the one person who was kind to him in his clown-for-hire job.
Lee is introduced as a patient at Arkham State Hospital, the psych institution where Arthur is a maximum-security prisoner, awaiting trial for murdering five people, including one on live TV. They click in their initial encounters and form a deeper connection once Arthur is permitted to join the music therapy group where he first sees Lee. She sets herself up as a superfan, but is she looking to emulate or manipulate him?
Arthur’s defense lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), has firm ideas on that. Earnest and caring, she maintains that Arthur suffers from trauma-induced fragmentation, and that his crimes were the result of a separate person inside him, the Joker, taking charge. She wants to show people that he’s human.
The required competency hearings and medical examinations account for the years-long wait before Arthur’s case can be tried, during which time he has become even more shockingly emaciated. (The bones jutting out of Phoenix’s back as Arthur is hauled out of his cell in underwear the first time we see him make the scene hard to watch.)
Gaga is a compelling live-wire presence, splitting the difference between affinity and obsession, while endearingly giving Arthur a shot of joy and hope that has him singing “When You’re Smiling” on his way to court. Their musical numbers, both duets and solos, have a vitality that the more often dour film desperately needs.
Since Lee is not meant to be a polished singer, Gaga tamps down her vocals into a raw, scratchy sound. But in the handful of scenes where fantasy liberates her in full-throated glory, the movie soars right along with her. Given that both Joker and the fledgling Harley Quinn see their criminal proclivities as theatrical spectacle, the choice to conceive the sequel as a musical makes sense.
The high points include a ‘60s-style TV variety show in which Arthur and Lee become a kind of sociopathic Sonny and Cher, performing “You Don’t Know What It’s Like” (better known as the Bee Gees hit “To Love Somebody”). They segue from a wedding fantasy into a nightclub act with Lee singing at the piano and Arthur cutting loose in a wild tap routine to “Gonna Build a Mountain.” And an elegant rooftop dance that recasts them as an outsider Fred and Ginger against a giant moon is lovely.
Production designer Mark Friedberg’s inventive sets, both in grim Arkham and in the stylized fantasies, shake up the visual canvas in welcome ways, and Arianne Phillips’ vibrant costumes for the numbers are a treat. Gaga’s fabulous orange sequined ensemble of skirted halter top and clown pants, as well as a spectacular ’60s maxi-fall wig, is a knockout look.
Some will complain that Gaga is criminally underused in the movie. But as much as it cries out for more of the extravagant numbers where the singer-actress gets to shine, Lee does have a full character arc. Any more of her probably risked tipping Folie à Deux into a Harley Quinn origin story.
Paradoxically, given the co-lead casting of a music superstar, the majority of the numbers are Arthur’s soliloquies, indicating his complete detachment from the reality of a trial in which the prosecution is seeking the death penalty.
Inspired by Lee’s attentions, he breaks into Stevie Wonder’s “For Once in My Life,” a quiet, talk-sung moment of rapture that eases into a jazzy, up-tempo version with a big dance break. “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” is another moment of transporting romance. His mental detours into song in the courtroom range from the Shirley Bassey banger “The Joker,” duh, to the melancholy but hopeful Jacques Brel/Rod McKuen ballad, “If You Go Away.” Phoenix handles the song-and-dance duties with panache and feeling.
While familiarity means the actor can’t equal the startling transformative power of his work in Joker, he draws a continuous line from that film with another riveting performance, unsettling when Arthur roars with laughter at inopportune times and poignant when he looks inward to question his identity. There’s a desperation in his fixation on his own celebrity, for instance when he begs Lee to give him an honest assessment of the TV movie based on his exploits, which he’s been prevented from seeing.
He has a volatile encounter with an unscrupulous interviewer (Steve Coogan), who goads him into a hostile reaction, and a spiky rapport with a prison guard (Brendan Gleeson, in charge as always) that turns ugly and violent more than once.
But for a movie running two-and-a-quarter hours, Folie à Deux feels narratively a little thin and at times dull. Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver in the first Joker had the sturdy bones of not one but two Martin Scorsese films, Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, on which to hang their story and set their tone. This one is built on more of a conceit than a solid story foundation. It kicks up associations with everything from golden age movie musicals to auteur experiments like One From the Heart, without nailing down a workable model to provide much shape or structure.
On a technical level, it’s a big, muscular production. Cinematographer Lawrence Sher again delivers the grimy ‘70s-inspired textures of the economically depressed city along with the hard institutional look of Arkham, but gets to sweep away the gloom in the musical sequences with more of the gaudy kitsch that in the first movie was confined to the set of late night network show Live! With Murray Franklin. And Gudnadóttir whips up another portentous score loaded with Sturm und Drang.
Folie à Deux will probably make a ton of money given the built-in curiosity factor of a predecessor seen by millions, plus the added attraction of Gaga and the ballsy move of making it a musical. Opening with a mock-Looney Tunes cartoon from Triplets of Belleville animator Sylvain Chomet is another bold flourish.
Phillips and Silver deserve credit for going their own way with a canonical DC character. But it’s difficult to imagine hard-core Batman universe aficionados being thrilled by a movie that — OK, this is definitely a spoiler — would seem to wipe out an entire future for a key nemesis enshrined in comic-book mythology, rendering him a sad, broken man.
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