Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) - A sequel as conflicting in reception as it is in subject
Credit: allocine.fr
Living up to Joker is no small task. Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, first R-rated film to gross over $1 billion, sixth-highest-grossing film of 2019, not to mention an Academy Award winner and overall cultural sensation. It makes sense, for this reason, that so much weight would be put on the shoulders of Todd Phillips’ sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, a weight it was unfortunately not quite able to carry. This is not to say, however, that it is the flop it has been so harshly labelled as. Despite hitting $200 million only in its third week, scathing reviews and general groans of “I didn’t know it was a musical” all round, this sequel strikes a certain number of right notes.
Two years after the events of the first film, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) awaits trial at Arkham State Hospital. His lawyer (Catherine Keener) plans to argue that he has dissociative identity disorder and that his alter ego, Joker, is in fact responsible for his crimes. At a musical therapy session, which Arthur is allowed to attend on account of his good behaviour, he meets Lee (Lady Gaga), with whom he embarks on a supposedly fusional love story. But as his trial begins, with Lee eagerly waiting in the starting blocks for when he is released, Arthur is caught – is he the people’s voice, Lee’s soulmate, the leader of the mass following established post-murders and deepened by a hit television show released about his grizzly crimes? Or, as his lawyer argues, is he, simply, severely mentally ill?
Arianne Phillips (costumes) and Mark Friedberg (set design) are on top form once again, delivering a whirlwind tour de force in the form of a medley of dreary prison cells and colourful stages excellently captured by cinematographer Lawrence Sher. Sunshine and darkness, happy and sad, up-tempo and lament – the problem with Joker: Folie à Deux is not, as many have claimed, that it is a musical. This, in fact, is one of its strongest points. Fleck is low in Arkham State Hospital – he is mistreated, possibly even thinner than in the first, worn out. Always a performer, his singing takes on a different meaning as his psyche degenerates: as is the case in musicals, the songs – aptly chosen Sinatra for the most part, loyal to the first – are representative of his inner life, taking on a fantastical quality that beautifully echoes his dual personality. It was bold of Phillips, but it worked.
What lacked rather was a well-paced plot and, arguably, a sense of character to follow up on the original – is Arthur enjoying himself in this sequel, or is he genuinely unable to control himself, in a blackout Jekyll and Hyde type of situation? His intentions are never quite clear, not with prison guard Jackie Sullivan (played in Brendan Gleeson), nor in the courtroom, where he oscillates between aggressive outbursts and puppy-eyeing Lee in the public gallery. Scenes in prison also drag, offering very little besides a vapid feeling of misery and damp, and for the most part, Fleck and Lee are, rather strangely, kept separate, offering up no space for the “deux” in question. A dance in the rain, a five-minute visit from the other side of the glass, a fantasised onstage performance that quickly goes downhill – Lee is, despite Gaga’s respectable performance, quite empty and one-dimensional, drowning in a crowd of Joker followers. Delving into Lee’s inner life, especially with her background, feels like a missed opportunity. As Gaga herself stated, she is a “study of contradictions”, certainly, truthful yet dishonest, loving yet disgusted. But this should not be an excuse for what seems to be a case of underdevelopment, a character whose intentions and drive remain largely unclear, and who, in the end, served as nothing more than a plot point in Fleck’s narrative. I was reminded in fact, at one instance, of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, whose one-faceted portrayal of women translated a preoccupation and exclusive focus on his eponymous character, he himself preoccupied and exclusively focused on quantum physics. But Joker’s sequel is, after all, titled ‘madness for two’ – and in this case, one of the two is strikingly lacking.
But there is something else to consider – Lee might not be multi-faceted, but Arthur certainly is. So who are the two in question – Arthur and Lee, or Arthur and himself? In an eerie cartoon beginning, animated by Triplettes of Belleville animator Sylvain Chomet, Joker is impersonated by his shadow, who commits violent acts and performs onstage in his place, then abandons him just as three police officers arrive and attack him. Perhaps, then, Phillips has lost sight of who Joker is. Or he has, once again, hit the nail on the head – the jury is out.