Directed By Todd Phillips

Starring – Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson

The Plot – Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) is institutionalized at Arkham, awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love (Gaga), but also finds the music that’s always been inside him.

Rated R for some strong violence, adult language throughout, some sexuality, and brief full nudity.

Joker: Folie À Deux | Official Trailer (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

Considering a majority of sequels deduce audience expectations by phoning in their creativity towards feeling like a derivative slice of its predecessor, you have to admire the ambition that ‘Folie a Deux’ and specifically Phillips has towards summoning something creatively daring in its approach, which will inevitably divide audiences in the same way ‘Joker’ did, as a refreshing take an antagonist’s origin story. Regardless of whether anyone agrees or not, this movie is totally a musical, with fantastically imaginative sequences involving immaculate lighting and overhead shadow play that help expand on so many of the film’s technical merits, and while the execution of their usage in parallel to the unfurling narrative left slightly more to be desired, superhero musicals are a rare breed among contemporary cinema, and in such you have to admire the ambition and fearless filmmaking that it took to manufacture something so diverse, especially in that the passionate Joker fandom have been begging for a sequel to this series for five whole years. In addition to this, ‘Folie a Deux’ doubles down on the transfixing elements of its original film that earned it two Oscars along the way, specifically the breathtaking cinematography and scintillating score inside of the movie’s production values that once again immerses audiences in the bleak and weathered ways that Arthur sees the world. Music composer Hildur Gudnadottir encapsulates us with compelling cello compositions so dark and foreboding that they inescapably resonate like a dense overhanging fog, and when combined with the hypnotically entrancing visuals of Lawrence Sher’s weathered and moody canvases elicited from his three-dimensional captures eliciting so much deeper meaning and introspection in the depths of the characters, gives audiences lots of subliminally substantial style to continuously chew on throughout the engagement, cementing this as every bit the beautifully looking triumph that its predecessor commanded in bringing this nightmarish side of Gotham to life. It’s also exceptionally acted once more by Joaquin Phoenix, who effortlessly channels the duality of Fleck and Joker, feeding into the personal conflict of the movie’s established plot that so much of the movie’s stakes rest upon. When he’s Fleck, Phoenix inscribes an earnest vulnerability that really garners empathy from the audience to how we see him as a victim of the monster that the world created, matching it with an imposing ferocity and intensity in the make-up side of his alter ego that in the confines of an evolving courtroom drama, into the movie’s second half, that has him feeling like a combination of Ted Bundy and Atticus Finch. Phoenix is joined this time around by Lady Gaga, who despite a lack of opportunity or defined direction in the depths of the screenplay, makes the most of the opportunity, both in the magnetism of her unmatched vocal range during singing sequences, as well as dramatic depth, which summon some highly emotive facial registries that, like Fleck, convey something deeper and darker at play than what meets her opposition at face value. Together, the two have intentionally awkward but endearing chemistry that plays particularly well to the awkwardness of their characters during dialogue-driven moments, surpassed only by the pageantry and showmanship of the movie’s many musical sequences, which unsurprisingly are legitimately sung by both of them.

NEGATIVES

That’s where the pleasantries conclude because ‘Folie a Deux’ feels like a superfluous sequel, as a result of its boring and underwhelming screenplay, managing around 30 minutes of legitimate advancement in the character that makes this feel like a tacked-on epilogue to the two hour original film. Stretching doesn’t even begin to describe the disjointed and inconsistency of its storytelling, with a lack of urgency or compelling drama during narrative scenes being balanced by abruptly continuous halting in the overabundance of musical sequences, giving the film a dejected consistency that not only makes it difficult to invest in the storytelling, but also not feel annoyed by the musical numbers, which hijack the film at around the half hour mark. While music’s meaning in the context here is established early in the narrative, the decision to make this movie an overwhelming musical is one that comes with major consequences to the entertainment value of the engagement, smothering an already hollow script on the way to making a 133 minute engagement feel every inch of that bloated weight. The songs themselves are performed unsurprisingly fine enough from Phoenix and Gaga, and are selected to be thematically relevant enough to the transpiring motions of the corresponding scenes they score, but are misdirected as tragically as possible, with a lack of sizzle and flare from Phillips, who clearly shows that he has never directed a musical in his entire storied career, leaving them feeling all the more dejecting each time the film abruptly cuts away from the real time developments to summon one of them. The captivity of each are supposed to feel like they merely exist in the minds of Arthur and Harlequin, but are edited in ways that obscure that line of fictional detectability, in turn making the sequencing of the events feeling sloppy by editing that doesn’t distinguish itself enough to breed simplicity. Then there’s the other side of the convoluted creativity; the courtroom drama, which is another creative captivity that I don’t think Phillips has ever had experience towards interpreting. I say this because, for starters, there’s no kind of palpable drama to the courtroom sequences, registering as flatly as a funeral, with regards to any kind of tension or endearing banter in dialogue that could wholeheartedly invest audiences in the back and forth of a moral debate for Arthur’s innocence. Because the film undercuts such integral ingredients to its creativity the script is often in search of a direction that it unfortunately never finds, and as a result slugs its way through scenes that are unable to elicit any kind of excitement or anticipation to the endless possibilities that go unaddressed. I also found some of the choices with the characters to be quite disappointing, as the lack of usage and exploration for Harley Quinn (I understand she’s not called that in the movie) is only surpassed by this film’s inability to render a complete character evolution for Arthur, resulting in one of the most frustratingly unnecessary endings that actually does damage to the first film, as a result of its supposed finality. The Harley thing is especially puzzling considering she was the drawing point to much of the movie’s marketing, but instead merely serves as an armpiece to Arthur, and nothing more, forcing Gaga to work overtime towards making her turn any kind of memorable, which she only barely succeeds at. The ending is a lot more difficult to talk about without downright spoiling, but I can say that I didn’t appreciate a certain decision made during the closing moments that completely undercut the magnitude of Arthur’s aforementioned evolution, in turn making these two films feel like a complete waste of time, in that there wasn’t a satisfying destination to properly conclude upon. If certain measures were made in fleshing out one particular dynamic involved, or someone else all together initiated this measure, then I think it would’ve come across more meaningfully, especially in the irony of Arthur’s established loneliness, but instead it’s a last second effort to establish some sort of shock and stakes to the engagement, instead surmising the worst possible resolution that I can’t imagine many audiences will appreciate.

OVERALL
‘Joker: Folie a Deux’ doesn’t feel like the sequel we were expecting, nor the one we ultimately deserved, but it is at least an ambitiously daring deviation to genre conventionalism, whose heart is in the right place, even when its head feels a million miles away. Phoenix and Gaga elicit as much energy and ambiance to the spectrum as humanly possible, but ultimately this is a film crushed by the weight of its aforementioned ambition, neglecting the key components in characterization and profoundness in material that made the 2018 original an instant classic, all in favor of the same song and dance that dazzle without truly delivering.

My Grade: 5/10 or D