Directed by Todd Phillips | Written by Phillips and Scott Silver | 138 min | ▲▲▲△△
I’ll admit, I girded myself to go see this sequel to Joker. I was no fan of the 2019 blockbuster from filmmaker Todd Phillips — it’s a nihilistic, sour pill of a movie that serves up its lead as an idol for incels and rage-filled men. In my review I wrote: “If Joker is a smash hit, we might all be in a lot of trouble. Not because it’s likely to incite violence, but because its success reflects an anger stemming from some combination of entitlement and impotence.” Unfortunately accurate. Even if parts of the first film probably took place in Fleck’s imagination — one possible interpretation of that film’s final scenes — its fans still loved him as a chaos bringer.
The sequel is an entirely different beast and I’d argue much more authentically subversive. If the first movie was about finding strength and power in violence, this picture makes its audience a whole lot more aware of the consequences of that violence, and is much more specific about Fleck’s delusions. Phillips and his collaborators have made this film both as a response to Joker and to those who embraced Joker. It doesn’t excuse the earlier film, but it does deepen and enrich it.
In other words, it does what you hope all Hollywood sequels will do. Joker: Folie à Deux isn’t by any means a great movie, but it’s a far richer and more complex film than its predecessor.
The movie starts with a Looney Tunes-style Warner Brothers cartoon where Joker fights with his shadow, setting up the dichotomy suggested by the title even before Lady Gaga appears. Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix, frighteningly emaciated) is in Arkham — more a prison than any kind of institution of healing — being assessed for whether he’s mentally fit to be tried for the murders committed in the first film. His lawyer (Catherine Keener) advocates for him, hoping to show that Joker is an alternate personality, part of Fleck’s dangerous pathology she says proves he wasn’t responsible for the murders. Meanwhile, Arthur is bullied and beaten by the guards at Arkham, led by Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson), but finds a connection with Lee Quinzel (Gaga), a singing superfan inspired by his cult of personality. Of course, she’s another version of Harley Quinn, the character Margot Robbie played in a number of DCU films.
Arthur’s sudden romance with Lee recharges the Joker persona just as his trial is set, the prosecutor a young Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) seeking the death penalty. It’ll be the first high profile case to be televised in Gotham — this and the previous Joker movie takes place in some non-specific year in the 1980s.
And yes, it is a musical — even if certain members of the creative team dispute that. It includes both fantasy musical numbers and sequences set in the reality of the movie, and that all works well. The magic of the romance between the leads is conjured with their versions of classics like “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” and “(They Long to Be) Close to You” by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and “That’s Life,” by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon. No, the actors aren’t presenting them in slick, polished versions, but their vocal choices work well for this material. Phoenix is, once again, compelling in his Oscar-winning role, and Gaga meets him and his every perverse chuckle.
As Arthur’s confidence returns, and with it his affection for greasepaint, we also see how his madness affects his fellow inmates and crowds who gather outside Arkham. Of course it’s fun to see a character who’s been held down, bullied, and bloodied get vengeance on his abusers, to push back against the hypocrisy he sees all around him, but this time the film is sophisticated enough to show his character as more complex and a lot more fragile, and how his behaviour had unexpected results. When Arthur’s former friend Gary Puddles (Leigh Gill) testifies at the trial on the way his life changed because of Joker, it’s devastating.
Joker: Folie à Deux shares at least one problem with its predecessor — it runs a lot longer than it needs to. Some tightening of certain scenes, maybe fewer songs wouldn’t have gone amiss — Arthur’s version of “The Joker” by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley is particularly on the nose.
I’ve heard the film’s denouement described as bleak. I didn’t think so at all — I stepped out of the film humming the songs with a spring in my step. This film may be thought of as grim if you’re cheering on the lead character’s riot-stoking rather than hoping for him to achieve some level of self-awareness.
Phillips enjoys shooting Phoenix in the back of cars, evoking how Christopher Nolan shot Heath Ledger, but this isn’t a film that’s otherwise interested in being a chapter in a bigger story. Full marks to the filmmakers for staying inside the frame of this two film anthology. That said, I will admit to a mild sense of regret that with the box office reports coming in — a $40 million weekend is considered a disappointment — we’ll likely not see this Joker ever fight his universe’s Batman, which is too bad. How Gotham’s caped crusading vigilante would have operated against Arthur Fleck and his acolytes might’ve made another Joker movie worth watching. At least there’s one.
