Joker: Folie (or Folly?) à Deux

We are just two days from the Venice premiere of Director Todd Phillips’ sequel to his stunningly successful Joker from 2019 (which now feels like a millennium ago). Joker is easily one of the more polarizing movies in recent years. Still, despite reviews that in the aggregate are just around the mixed-negative/mixed-positive line (with some real scathing takes in that mix), the film made over $300 million at the box office, garnered 11 Oscar nominations, winning two gold men–one for Joaquin Phoenix’s lead performance, and the other for the film’s avante-garde score by Hildur Guonadottir. The split opinion on the film wavered largely between those who saw it as a celebration of violence and those who admired the grim take and saw the film as a reflection of the starkly divided country we live in, where battle lines are drawn tightly. Nuance is not on the table for discussion.

When I originally heard that Phillips was set to take on a movie about the Joker with Phoenix, I was more than a little doubtful. Why would we need another Joker after Heath Ledger’s extraordinary performance in The Dark Knight? Not to mention, is the guy who directed Old School and The Hangover movies up for this? I knew Phillips had an ace in the hole with Phoenix (one of this generation’s greatest actors), but the Hangover guy? Really? But I reminded myself of one rule I always attempt to apply to any movie I see: Let yourself be open to surprise.

And so as I gingerly entered the theater, on one of those rare occasions when one doesn’t know what to expect from an intended blockbuster film, I viewed Joker with open eyes and heart. I came out of the theater confounded in ways I would have never expected. Phillips and Phoenix committed entirely to the concept of misery and chaos, drawing liberally (at times overly so) on two Scorsese films: Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy; the first, an expose on a mentally deteriorating and dangerous loner; the second, a look at how the desire for fame and validation can ultimately warp a person’s worldview. Love it or hate it, it was hard to deny that Joker not only went for it but went for it hard. And I can understand why moviegoers and critics would fall on either side of that love or hate line. Joker is a deliberately ugly film, and those that saw Phillips’ version of the Joker as an anthem for incels— a displaced and darkly simmering group of males whose self-termed name stands for involuntarily celibate–weren’t just grasping at strawmen. For the incel community that breeds hate, violent fantasies, and sometimes real-world violence, the Joker is hardly an inappropriate hero.

In Todd Phillips’ film, there is no Batman. There is no hero. No good vs. evil. There’s only the Joker. It’s strange and different for a film based on a comic book character to not traffic in any of the usual comic book movie cliches, perhaps the most important being that someone always comes to save the day. Joker abandoned this notion entirely.

The telling of the Joker’s origin did not come from the comic book source material, Phillips and fellow screenwriter Scott Silver made up Arthur Fleck, the unstable professional clown who goes Joker, from whole cloth. It takes Fleck a long time to fully embrace the Joker inside him. It’s a grueling process to behold: Fleck is ridiculed by co-workers, beaten up by children, and humiliated by a talk show host (Robert DeNiro in an obvious nod to The King of Comedy, where he played what might be called the Arthur Fleck of that movie), until one day he decides he won’t accept another humiliation—that’s when the body count starts.

There was not a single moment of Joker that I found enjoyable (let alone fun), despite its plentiful cinematic qualities (such as its remarkable decaying set pieces, ominous score, and taut direction). The bold, vanity-free performance by Joaquin Phoenix does not allow for pleasure. At least, not unless you have a very troubled idea of what constitutes pleasure. But I did respect the film and its fearless go-for-broke nature. 

I also found the film to be about the Joker, which is not to say that the film approves of him. What Joker asks of us isn’t to root for the lead character: it asks us to understand the underlying problems and points of failure that brought him to this moment. Opinions differ (often wildly) on how effective Phillips’ Joker was in the presentation. In some ways, I see the movie similarly to Fight Club–a film that exposed toxic masculinity but is often seen, by those not willing to look deeper, as a film celebrating toxic masculinity. In no way am I putting Phillips’ Joker on the level of Fincher’s Fight Club, but I do see the connection, and what I believe to be a misinterpretation of both films’ intentions. 

To put it in musical terms, I’m old enough to remember high school seniors using The Police’s stalker-eyed view song “Every Breath You Take” as a common prom theme, and it’s not like the lyrics were deceptive. Now that I’ve brought up music, this seems like the perfect time to segue to the sequel to Joker, Joker: Folie à Deux, which will be some form of a musical with Lady Gaga playing Harley Quinn. While the film’s teaser trailer offers hints, the mind still reels at the thought of what a 138-minute musical built around this character might look like (is Phillips going to gild the Scorsese lily further and make an homage to New York, New York?). One thing that is clear from the preview is that Folie à Deux will not be a sunnier version of the first film just because there are songs. If anything, it’s hard to imagine the sequel not being more demented than its predecessor precisely because it’s a musical. 

Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck can be heard in voiceover in the trailer saying, “We use music to make ourselves whole. To balance the fractures in our life.” A terrific line that is full of truth, but coming from the mouth of the Joker, I suspect the music will be pretty fracturing in its usage. The question is can Phillips pull this off? I can’t imagine Folie à Deux not being received in much the same fashion as Joker. I’m betting that there are critics whose knives are already sharpened and out. The risk Phillips is taking by making the sequel a musical opens up the possibility of complete disaster. “Joker’s Gate” some might be eager to call it. To my mind, Phillips has already overachieved mightily once with the first film. Is it a hell of a lot to think he can do it again? And with a musical? 

Yeah, it is. 

But then again, I do like to be open to surprise. In two days, we will get the first reactions from the Venice Film Festival.

Joker: Folie à Deux opens nationwide in US theaters on October 4, 2024