Like the audience of Arthur’s trial, how you receive this film will largely depend on whose viewpoint you choose to watch this story through, and whether you are cheering for Arthur, or Joker.
DIRECTED BY: TODD PHILLIPS/2024
It is opening weekend for the long-awaited sequel to Joker, and already it is the most divisive film of 2024. Even more so than Francis Ford Coppola’s long gestating dream project, Megalopolis. Is this because there are so many expectations following the very successful 2019 film, Joker, and the 5 years fans have had to speculate how this would eventually develop into the origin story of the Joker character who will one day take on Batman? Before its release, fans were even petitioning Joaquin Phoenix to become the official Joker of the new DCEU. Following the disappointing opening weekend of Joker: Folie à Deux, there may be a new petition to cancel the original petition. Yet for all of the hate being thrown towards this sequel, and the low aggregated audience and critics scores, I found myself enjoying not the sequel everyone was expecting, but the one we actually got.
Despite some rather eye-catching bylines of other reviews of this film, I didn’t feel it was a “giant F-You to the fans”, or a “waste of Lady Gaga’s talents”. The screening representative at our screening encouraged our audience to enjoy the film by choosing to see the film through the lens of any of the characters in the film as a way “in” to the film and watch it from that perspective. She was truly on to something. If the first Joker film proved anything, it showed that Phoenix’s character Arthur Fleck is not a reliable narrator, and does not live in a true reality. Instead he lives in one where he imagines he has main character energy, but too often ends up as a side-character in his own narrative.
Joker: Folie à Deux finds Arthur in Arkham Asylum, for the 5 murders the Police know Arthur to have been involved with, in the first film. We find him medicated, severely malnurished, and a shell of his Joker character that had inspired a street-level response that idolized what he symbolized. To believe that his viewpoint would be even more reliable now, and more worthy to cheer for, is something I believe audiences are missing for this sequel. I chose, at our representative’s advice, to see this film through Arthur’s eyes, and the sequel left me filling quite satisfied with the risks it took to position itself as a concluding installment of Arthur Fleck’s journey, and to do it as a musical no less.
Arthur finds himself earning some rewards in prison for good behavior. Arthur is always quick to have a joke for his main guard, Jackie Sullivan (Brendon Gleeson), and Sullivan is happy to let Arthur see the minimum security wing’s production of a musical performance by some of the patients there. One of those patients is Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), who feels a kindred spirit with Joker, but not Arthur. Joker, she insists, is the true person inside Fleck, and Arthur is just the mask. As their relationship grows, Arthur imagines what they could accomplish together, often in musical performances. Meanwhile, his growing desire to become less Arthur and more Joker by getting off his meds and listening to the guidance of Lee, sets him against the advice of his attorney MaryAnne Stewart (Catherine Keener) who is trying to defend Arthur against the prosecution led by Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey).
The film is able to carry a very sinister current through each segment of its story as Arthur slowly starts a shift back to his Joker persona. Seeing what he did in the original film as he squared off against Robert De Niro’s Murray Franklin keeps the audience on edge, especially as Arthur is put into a similar situation being interviewed by gotcha journalist Paddy Meyers (Steve Coogan). I found that Phoenix was more than committed to this role and the character development of Arthur than he was in the first film. Gaga was equally good and both had amazing chemistry together. I won’t be suprised if either gets some award considerations, even if the film is ultimately seen as a disappointment or flop.
Todd Phillips wasn’t sure, after the first film, if Arthur was the man who eventually would take on Batman, or if he was just the foundation for another individual to be inspired to rise up and take the mantle of that iconic role. Joker: Folie à Deux does answer that question in its final scene, which makes the journey of Arthur Fleck so important. Does the idea of Folie à Deux (the idea of the same madness shared by two individuals) apply in this film to Phoenix’s Joker and Gaga’s Harley Quinn, or to Arthur Fleck and another individual? Does Arthur’s “trial of the century” reflect a type of madness in a culture who is drawn to the murderous celebrity of a character like Arthur and a desire for the drama of a trainwreck of any type through the media? Is the film ultimately about the reoccurring theme of the many musical numbers sung by Arthur and Lee of: “that’s entertainment”?
This film will no doubt divide audiences, and especially fans of the original Joker. I find it misleading for outlets to call this the worst reviewed/received film of any comic book character, as this series isn’t really interested in being a comic book film and has only loosely sought to connect its story to the larger Batman universe. The plot points tying Arthur Fleck to the Wayne family in the original film, and the use of Harley Quinn and Harvey Dent in this film, are only tangents to the larger world at best. This has always been about a character study of one man. It delves more into the ideas of trauma, grief, desire for love, anger of rejection, the need to find relevancy in one’s life, mental illness, victimization, and a warped idea of justice. It is also about the masks we wear to hide our true selves, and how we are subject to losing ourselves to the personas we build and wear for others.
Joker: Folie à Deux doubles down on this character’s journey through all of these things and manages to still arrive, in spite of the unreliable narrative of Arthur, to a genuine moment of choosing between doing what is wrong/right or doubling down on chaos regardless of the consequences. Like the audience of Arthur’s trial, how you receive this film will largely depend on whose viewpoint you choose to watch this story through, and whether you are cheering for Arthur, or Joker. No matter how the public ends up seeing Joker: Folie à Deux, I think that this sequel is not a joke…but a masterfully subversive continuation and conclusion of one man’s compelling story.
