JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX

 Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Harry Lawtey, Leigh Gill, Zazie Beetz.

Director: Todd Phillips

139 mins.

Joker: Folie à Deux, the sequel to the hugely successful Joker, is a return to the squalid, Batman-less Gotham of the original, with Joaquin Phoenix returning to the mesmerising, pathetic, fascinating, terrifying part that won him an Oscar. However, once audiences get there, they’ll be confronted with a gruellingly miserable psychological study of a depraved, self-pitying mind that leaves no room for pity – but does squeeze in a bundle of musical numbers. The previous film was controversial and divisive before anyone saw a single frame, with fears it would spark a wave of violence. That never happened, of course, because Phoenix mined deep and previously untouched questions of the nature of a monster. The Joker, cinematically, has been by turns a prankster, a thug, and chaos incarnate. Indeed, one of the most memorable aspects of Heath Ledger’s embodiment of the Clown Prince of Crime was that he had no singular backstory. Joker was an origin story, ugly and brutal, that forced audiences to consider how much an environment can shape people, and to question the limits of their own sympathy. The major miracle about the original was that audiences actually responded to its over-the-top psychological drama. It’s arguably that response – plus the mass shootings that never happened – that have inspired Todd Philips and Phoenix to team up again for a seemingly unplanned sequel. Joker: Folie à Deux poses another of those questions implicit in the Joker mythology: How does he keep getting back out on to the streets? The vehicle for that discussion is his trial for the five murders he was known to have committed in the first film (as he giggles to himself, the cops and courts still don’t know he suffocated his mother). But the real question quickly becomes, who is actually on trial? Is it, as D.A. Harvey Dent (a suitably smug Harry Lawtey) makes the accusation, Arthur Fleck, the twisted little man who created the Joker persona to get away with murder? Is it, as defence attorney Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener) contends, Arthur Fleck, the man with multiple personality disorders who became Joker as a response to childhood trauma? Or is it, as obsessed acolyte Lee (Lady Gaga) believes, Joker, the messiah of a new era who will tear down the dishonest old world?

Whichever it is, they’re all played by Phoenix with that strange, mumbling, wretched vibe that he perfected in the first film. These arguments about who or what he is, go on around him, making him the portrait of disassociation. This is where Phillip’s thesis gets interesting, because Joker: Folie à Deux isn’t really about Joker or Fleck. It’s about the perceptions of him. The only person who really seems to understand his nature and deceits is Arkham Asylum guard Jackie (Brendan Gleeson in full-on bullish mode), which really complicates Phillip’s talking points about societal dysfunction and power. How can the vicious prison guard be the good guy? Well, maybe by not murdering five people in cold blood. Phillips sets the stage for a courtroom procedural – and then rolls a hand grenade into the middle of that weighty stage with a series of song and dance numbers. It’s a romp through the Great American Songbook handled by the excellent Gaga and Phoenix (who is not by any stretch a vocalist). These sequences are beautifully choreographed and suitably bizarrely executed, touching on the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals and Seventies TV variety shows equally, and serve as a hyperbolic metaphor for Arthur’s disassociation. They never serve as simple relief from the unrelenting grimness of Joker: Folie à Deux. Rather, they are a sometimes befuddling extension of the ongoing discussion from the first film, about whether Arthur is truly insane or just an average man with mental health issues that don’t reach the level of legal defence. 

Phillips has undoubtedly taken the wildest creative leaps imaginable for what one could expect from a nine-figure-budget comic book film. Unexpected musicals are hard to assimilate and these songs may feel more in keeping with the film’s rhythms on repeated viewings, but the inherent grimness makes for a tough re-watch. It may be the first time a big-budget comic book outing ends up as part of the programming for the American Cinematheque’s legendary Bleak Week of depressing films, but no number of Umbrellas of Cherbourg or Sonny & Cher pastiches can ever lift that mood. But then again, that may well be Phillip’s point. For every musical number, Joker: Folie à Deux wants us to look long and hard at our attitudes to them. Zazie Beetz and Leigh Gill, who played Arthur’s neighbours in Joker, return as star witnesses for the prosecution, and are a deliberate kick in the teeth for anyone who has spent too much time feeling sorry for poor old Arthur. If you wept for him in the first film, Phillips uses the second to ask why – and the answer may be extremely awkward for some viewers.