We’re early in awards season, and two highly touted films have already flopped, commercially and critically: Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and, this past weekend, Todd Phillips’ sequel Joker: Folie à Deux.
Joker (2019) was an Oscar-winning smash that reimagined the titular DC Comics villain as a realistic character living in 1981 “Gotham City,” taking its cues from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. Many critics hailed it as a successful fusion of comic-book material and art cinema. So what happened to make Folie à Deux worthy of its name?
The deal
Two years ago, professional clown Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) was imprisoned at Arkham State Hospital for five murders, including that of a beloved late-night host on live TV. As his trial approaches, Arthur’s lawyer (Catherine Keener) hopes to prove that he suffers from dissociative identity disorder and cannot control his bloodthirsty alter ego, the Joker.
Meanwhile, Arthur/the Joker has attracted a following, partly due to a TV movie based on his crimes. Among his fans is Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), a fellow Arkham inmate. The two quickly become soulmates, and Lee encourages Arthur to embrace his inner Joker at the trial. Should he risk the death penalty to make his name as a rebel against society, or remain the butt of its killing joke?
Will you like it?
Go online, and you’ll see a lot of discourse attributing the failure of Joker: Folie à Deux to the musical factor. Many fans of the first Joker do indeed seem to consider singing and dancing unworthy of their beloved antihero — strangely, since the Joker is a showman in most of his incarnations — but I think a more powerful factor is at play. Folie à Deux isn’t a departure from Joker. On the contrary, Phillips’ vision for this film (cowritten with Scott Silver) is absolutely consistent with his vision for the first one. It just isn’t the vision that fans hoped for.
Joker is a story of grinding miserabilism, livened by a few scenes of joyful violence. Never does the movie suggest that Arthur is anything but the person we hear summed up by a psychiatrist in Folie à Deux as a narcissist with a low IQ and a history of abuse. In both films, there’s nothing glamorous about his mental illness, no flashes of brilliance or subversive insight. His humor is on par with middle schoolers’. When Arthur decides to dismiss his lawyer, the best defense he can muster is sneering at a traumatized witness’ name.
In short, this is not the Joker we know from Batman movies. Everything Arthur does in both of Phillips’ films is a damaged man-child’s clumsy effort to win the love he craves. Only when those efforts fail does he kill out of despair.
The main innovation of Folie à Deux is that Arthur finally meets someone who offers him love, provided he’s willing to play the role of Joker to the hilt. The movie reframes the comic-book supervillain — mastermind of diabolical plots, agent of chaos — as the projection of a demented fan onto a pathetic sociopath. If you hoped Arthur would blossom into someone he wasn’t in the first movie, you’ve made the same mistake as Lee.
Phillips deserves full credit for the courage of his convictions — his determination not to portray murderous rage as cathartic or sexy. Unfortunately, the way he illustrates this thesis remains pretty dreary.
Like its predecessor, Folie à Deux is a triumph of seamless yet joyless design. If Gotham City’s mean streets were grimy and hopeless in the first film, Arkham is even more so.
In its determination to rub the audience’s nose in Arthur’s misery, the movie does muster some bracing moments of mordant humor. But the jukebox musical numbers, which are framed as fantasy sequences, add only superficial color and verve. The songs rarely advance the characters’ development or reveal their hidden feelings, and the performances have been kept whispery and underwhelming. Only one of them — Phoenix’s rendition of “The Joker,” from the 1964 musical The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd — gives the movie the shot of energy it needs.
Maybe Phillips’ Joker films are less a commentary on society than on the degrading nature of showbiz itself. The first movie proved that the most lucrative way to get a dark character study into today’s theaters is to make it superhero-adjacent. When Phillips stayed true to his original vision, fans rejected him, just as fans reject a remorseful Arthur who refuses to give them any more vicarious thrills. As the old song (featured in the film) goes, “That’s entertainment.”
If you like this, try…
“The Singing Detective” (1986; try your local library): If you want to see how good (and dark) jukebox musicals can be, check out the pioneering BBC work of writer Dennis Potter, who also made “Pennies From Heaven” (1978). Both TV series are better than their film adaptations.
The People’s Joker (2022; rentable): Vera Drew’s outrageously creative low-budget parody — not connected with Warner Bros. — reimagines the Joker as a trans woman who incorporates the subversive energies of Harley Quinn. If you want a joyfully rather than lugubriously irreverent take on the character, this is for you.
Dancer in the Dark (2000; PLEX, Roku Channel, Tubi, rentable): Or, if misery-porn musicals are more your style, Lars von Trier has you covered. Star Björk’s songs are arguably good enough to make up for a plot that is basically one misfortune after another.
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2024.
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