2019’s Joker was a comic book movie for people who don’t like comic books. Its newly-released sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, is both that and a musical for people who don’t particularly like musicals.
I told myself I wasn’t going to be sarcastic, but it’s tough when the director of the film you’re reviewing doesn’t seem to have much of a feel for the genre in which he’s working.
Todd Phillips’ biggest success prior to becoming an award-winning “serious” filmmaker was The Hangover trilogy, which, say what you will, had a certain unpredictable, anarchic energy to it. The first Joker film was a puddle-deep misery-fest that nicked all its good bits from Scorsese. Joker: Folie à Deux reportedly took inspiration from Francis Ford Coppola’s mega-flop musical vanity project One from the Heart, so at least you can credit Phillips with some ironic self-awareness on that one.
Picking up two years after his murder spree, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is incarcerated at Arkham Asylum, awaiting trial. He’s withdrawn, sedated, defeated, until an encounter with another patient, Lee (Lady Gaga), gives him a new lease on life. There is a frisson to this early encounter – Fleck, awkward and offbeat; Lee, forthright and alluring – that carries over into their first musical number as the pair run riot to the tune of “If My Friends Could See Me Now” from Sweet Charity.
Joker: Folie à Deux is a jukebox musical of mid-century musical standards – Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and Nat King Cole all get a look-in – but there’s no tonal variation. Whether it’s Arthur palling around with frenemy guard Jackie (Brendan Gleeson) or yet another imagined romantic interlude, it all takes place in exactly the same key. They’re even shot the same way, as though Phillips is worried that by pulling back, by freeing himself, he might expose the limits of the world he’s created.
There’s no sense of fun or inventiveness; it’s dreary. The flights of fantasy barely get off the ground. This may be the first Batman, or at least Batman-adjacent film, you’d wish was directed by Joel Schumacher.
The film sets up the idea, in cartoon form no less, that it will explore the duality between twitchy, unassuming Arthur Fleck and the unstable, showboating Joker. Are they, as Arthur’s well-meaning lawyer (Catherine Keener) claims, distinct personalities, or, as upcoming DA Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey channeling Peter Sarsgaard) argues, is Joker just putting on an act? It’s a good question, but one that Folie à Deux‘s script, written by Phillips and Scott Silver, doesn’t know how to engage with.
Through court scenes that literally litigate the events of the first film, diving back into then proverbial puddle, but there’s no additional depth to be found. Arthur may be the central character, but he remains a cipher, as does Lee. The reveal that SPOILER1 ultimately comes to nothing.
The film’s not ambivalent, just incoherent. Exactly what anyone sees in Arthur beyond a broken, narcissistic man with delusions of grandeur is hard to say. There might be a political point to be made there, but I can’t think of it… for that matter, nor can Phillip’s film. There’s something to be said for a narrative about a man whose unreadability leads people to project their own assumptions, their own desires, upon him; especially when that man is a violent criminal. Think Being There with bombs. This is not that.
Hildur Guðnadóttir’s moody, pensive string score is atmospheric, but gets lost amid the rest of the music. Lawrence Sher’s cinematography is rich and crisp; making the most of the dingy environs of Arkham and, for instance, the colourful retro of a Sonny-and-Cher-Show-style number. Phoenix and Gaga are magnetic, but all they attract is dust. The performances and filmmaking are virtuosic, but they’re in service of a self-regarding mess.
All that said, I liked Folie à Deux more than the first Joker. It’s an indifferent drama, but a passable musical; despite Phillips’ refusal to imaginatively musically cut loose. It’s a second folly – not what the title means, I know – but if you’ve got nothing to say, I guess you might as well sing it.
Still, send in the clowns? No thanks.
