Josh Reviews Joker: Folie à Deux

I know that Joker: Folie à Deux bombed in theaters, that the reviews are terrible and the film’s CinemaScore is even worse.  But I liked it!  I liked it a lot!

It’s not perfect.  It’s too long (I’d have cut two of the fantasy sequences that happen during the trial) and I hate the ending.

But I found a lot to enjoy in the film ,and I think it’s far better than its abysmal reputation (or all the critical headlines) would have you believe.

What I most love about the film seems to be what most people hate about it: that it’s a musical!  They didn’t advertise the film as a musical, which seems to have led to much upset from Joker fanboys who saw this sequel and were unhappy by this sharp departure from what they were expecting.  But I love the crazy ambition of this idea.  To make a sequel to Joker — a gritty, dour film that was effective in its depiction of a sad, lonely man’s psychotic break and descent into violence — and make it a musical is a crazy idea.  Crazy!  But I love the gutsiness of that move.  While I enjoyed the first Joker film, my main complaint was that I thought it was derivative — a blatant rip-off of Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy.  But in contrast, Joker: Folie à Deux felt like a far more original film to me, and I appreciated that, even while many “fans” have been bent out of shape.

Joaquin Phoenix’s depiction of Arthur Fleck remains compelling and disturbing.  I liked the choice to have Arther near-silent for the opening of the film.  Mr. Phoenix was so expressive, he was eminently watchable, even when silent, and the film successfully builds tension as we wait for something to spark Arthur back to life and action.  That something turns out to be Arthur’s encounter with Lee, played by Lady Gaga.  “Lee” is, of course, short for Harleen Quinzel.  I was excited by the decision to bring Harley into this Joker sequel, and I love the very different take on Harley that Lady Gaga and the Joker team have created here.  Lady Gaga is magnetic, and I enjoyed the way the film slowly develops the burgeoning relationship between Lee and Arthur.  (Or, I should say, Lee and Joker, because as we discover, it’s not Arthur who interests Lee, but Joker.)  Lady Gaga has been developing a wonderful movie star career, and I was very impressed by her performance here.  She commands the viewer’s attention whenever she’s on screen (just as Lee commands Arthur’s).  In the original depiction of Harley in Batman: The Animated Series, she was often depicted as subservient or submissive to the Joker.  In her original origin, it was Joker who broke her.  But I like the way this film reverses that.  Lee is clearly the driving force in her relationship with Arthur/Joker.

I appreciated the way the film slowly introduced the musical elements.  There’s not much music in the film’s first half-hour.  I liked the way, at first, director Todd Phillips & co. brought us back into thee familiar, grimy world of the first Joker film.  (This includes some memorable beats of music from the first Joker’s score on the soundtrack.)  Singing only becomes a story-telling approach one sparks start to fly between Lee and Arthur.  I thought it was clever the way music was used to depict their love-story — both in the way the musical sequences could express what they were both thinking and feeling (which is what musical sequences usually do in a musical), and also in the way that the use of singing reflects how Arthur’s falling in love with Lee opens up new doors and new feelings within him.  (When there’s a break between the two later in the story, Arthur tellingly asks her to stop singing.)  The first film was playful in the way it would slide us into Arthur’s imaginings, often without our realizing it, and I liked the way this sequel’s musical sequences could do the same.  There are a few instances when we see Arthur and Lee singing that could be interpreted as literally happening… and there are also a number of sequences that are clearly a depiction of their fantasies.  I liked the way the film could slide back and forth along this scale.

(I will comment that it might have been nice had the musical sequences been a little more elaborate.  While I enjoyed all the musical numbers, I thought the staging of most of the sequences seemed fairly simple and grounded to me.  It might have been fun to have built those sequences out a little further.  I also was a little surprised that that they didn’t let Lady Gaga cut loose more in the fantasy sequences.  In interviews, Gaga and Phoenix have described how he encouraged her to “sing poorly” in the film.  That makes sense for the moments which seem to be happening in reality between Lee and Arthur.  Lee shouldn’t have Lady Gaga’s pipes.  But in the fantasy sequences, I wish they’d let her vocals shine a little more.

The great Brendan Gleeson (Braveheart, the Harry Potter films, The Guard, The Banshees of Inisherin) is wonderful as Jackie Sullivan, a guard at Arkham State Hospital, where Arthur is imprisoned.  I loved the way this character was written; he’s not a simple villain, nor is he an unrealistic saint.  He has good qualities and bad qualities.  He has moments of kindness and moments of awful horror.  Mr. Gleeson brings a vibrant energy and a pleasing twinkle to his performance.  I loved every second he was on screen.

The first Joker was mostly disconnected from the established Batman mythos, and this film was even more separated from any familiar Batman lore.  The first Joker, for instance, despite being mostly a stand-alone story, did spend a good deal of time depicting Thomas and Bruce Wayne; but there’s nothing like that here.  We do get a character named Arthur Dent, but he’s nothing at all like that character (Two-Face) with whom we’re familiar.  (I did really enjoy Harry Lawtey’s performance as Harvey.  He was perfectly smug as the prosecutor attempting to convict Arthur.)

I liked seeing Catherine Keener (Being John Malkovich, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Where the Wild Things Are) as Maryanne Stewart, Arthur’s lawyer.  Maryanne seems to genuinely believe that the Joker is a persona created within Arthur by trauma, and not who he really is; therefore, Arthur shouldn’t be tried and convicted for murder but rather should be getting medical care for his mental illness.  I’d expected this character to be depicted as a sap — she’s trying to help the super-villain — but I appreciate that the film never took that route.  I liked that this character was asking questions that perhaps the audience should be asking about Arthur — rather than our wanting him to cut loose as the violent super-villain we’re expecting the Joker to be.  (I wish this character didn’t drop out of the film in the final act.)  Steve Coogan is tremendous in one scene as an interviewer trying to draw the Joker out of Arthur.  Mr. Coogan was so good in that scene that I wish he was in more of the film!  I also want to praise Leigh Gill, who returns from the first film as Gary Puddles, the little person clown with whom Arthur used to work.  Gary plays into a critical scene in the film’s third act, and Mr. Gill was extraordinary.  He brought such a rich current of emotion to the scene, which was essential for the weight of that scene to land — both on Arthur and on the audience.  Mr. Gill killed it; I was very impressed.

As I’d noted at the top, the film is too long.  This is exacerbated by the film’s somewhat unusual narrative structure.  Not a heck of a lot happens in this film.  I thought things would pick up once we got to Arthur’s trial, but there were a lot of scenes (too many scenes) of Arthur’s going back and forth between Arkham and the courthouse, and whenever we were in the courthouse, we spent a shocking amount of time just retelling the events of the first film.  I can understand why this bored or angered some audiences.  I found a lot of enjoyment from the performances, so this didn’t bother me too much, but I do think the film could have been tightened up.  The fantasy sequences weren’t all quite as compelling as I suspect the filmmakers wanted them to be.

But for me, the film’s main problem is the ending.  I’m going to veer into SPOILER territory here, so it’s time to stop reading if you haven’t yet seen this film and intend to.

I mean it; SPOILERS ahead!

OK, first off, the entire film’s structure seems to be intended to subvert expectations and build to an anti-climax.  This is a risky move.  I spent the entire movie waiting for Joker to erupt into violence.  I was sure at some point he’d take control of the crowds massing outside his trial to wreak havoc.  I was sure he’d have a violent confrontation with the Arkham guard played by Brendan Gleeson.  But none of that happens!  Instead, after the wonderful scene with Gary Puddles, Arthur in his closing statement at his trial rejects his Joker persona and expresses remorse for what he’s done.  Wow, that was not what I was expecting!!  I like the boldness of this choice; the bravery to determinedly not give the audience what we thought we wanted… even while I admit that I felt somewhat let down by that development; that the crescendo I’d been expecting never came.

But for the most part, as the film was drawing to a close, I was happy with the film’s choices.  Then we got to that final scene, which was where the wheels came off.  An unnamed inmate kills Arthur and then cuts a smile into his own face.  The idea being, Arthur was never the “real” Joker — it’s this other, younger, even more violent and disturbed person who’ll become the real Joker and eventually fight Batman.  UGH.  This reminded me a lot of the ending of Layer Cake, a terrific film that I loved right up until the final seconds, in which Daniel Craig’s main character is shot and killed.  That caused me to ask: what then was the point of any of what I’ve been watching?  I had the same negative reaction here.  I can understand how this ending to Joker: Folie à Deux might have seemed like a good idea on paper.  Maybe the filmmakers got excited by the “twist.”  But as a viewer, I thought this was a big middle finger stuck in my face.  If Arthur was never really the Joker, then why have I been watching TWO movies about him?  This makes the whole story seem like a complete waste of time to me.  (Also, because the camera had earlier lingered on this other young inmate earlier in the film, I’d already guessed this ending, which meant that it didn’t even succeed in being a surprise to me!  I couldn’t believe how thuddingly obvious that earlier lingering shot was.)

While we’re poking at this film, I will also say that I found the trial — that takes up a LOT of time in the middle of this film — to be less interesting than it should have been.  Take, for instance, the scene with Sophie (Zazie Beetz).  The first Joker was surprisingly ambiguous about what happened to Sophie; the film never clearly let us know whether or not Joker had killed Sophie and her daughter.  So I was happy to see that question resolved.  And Ms. Beetz is a terrific actress, so I was happy to see her brought back for a scene here in the squel.  But her scene was little more than a retelling of the events of the first film.  I didn’t feel we gained any new perspective on those events.  Nor does this lengthy scene at the trial seem to have much effect on the story.  (It’s almost immediately overshadowed by the far more effective Gary Puddles scene that comes soon after.)  This is an example of the sort of narrative wobbliness that weakens the film in my opinion.  (If we wanted to step back even further, I might ask: why did this sequel decide to basically undo Arthur’s transformation into the Joker that the first film had devoted its entire run-time to depicting?  We’re forced to rewind back to a more passive version of Arthur, and we wait almost the entire length of this sequel to see Arthur step back into being the Joker… only for the film to undo that in the Gary Puddles scene just a few minutes later.  Again, this makes the whole thing feel like something of a waste of time to me!)

So, yes, I have some complaints, and yes, that ending really seems to be doing everything it can to wash away any goodwill in audiences’ minds.  But my experience of watching 95% of this film, until that final scene arrived, was mostly quite positive.  I was excited by the bold originality of the concept of doing this sequel as a musical, and I had a lot of fun watching the main ensemble of talented actors take us through this story.  I’m glad to have seen Joker: Folie à Deux, and I suspect this is a film that many will find themselves re-evaluating a few years down the road, once more people actually see it…

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