Making “Joker: Folie à Duex” a bloody jukebox musical is every bit as maddeningly beautiful and absurd as the impulsive checked duality of the Clown Prince himself, even moreso than the prospect of making a sequel itself. And as someone who likes the first movie enough as is…..
….I’m weirdly captivated by the results here.
Todd Phillips’ reputation for ruining his own works in sequels (like The Hangover movies) is warranted but just like Lana Wachowski with Matrix 4, the way he expresses his complete disinterest in making this sequel is….ballsy. Still socially discontent but self-aware enough to get in on whatever joke there is, he ditches the Scorsese blueprint for a more sensitively erratic and dubious procedure that attempts to match the wildness of our protagonists.
Production design is a tale of two halves: the grimy, careful methodical model of ugly, misshapen Gotham that cruelly shapes and abuses everyone and everything it touches and the splashy neon-lit feverishness of the musical dream sequences that emphasize the reality desired as an escape. Enough is done to shake up the visual canvas and distinguish between reality and fantasy despite the lack of atmosphere and repetitive use of locations and Arianna Phillip’s costume design keeps the visual aesthetic popping off.
Camerawork thankfully remains composed thanks to surefooted editing and a simple but beautiful color palette, they somehow managed to keep a passable R-rating that fits despite the context, and you get all of that…..in spite of a troglodyte-esque pace.
Bringing back Hildur Guðnadóttir was the right call, as she belters out another spine-chillingly haunting score. But the musical sections themselves outpace everything else a paltry two to one and they’re not really effective: choreography is middling at best and the musical numbers themselves, while ambitious, quickly become tiresome. Yes, the songs themselves are covered well and there are a few that can be considered essential to what it boasts as “story progression” but given musical numbers are meant to help tell the story and develop the characters, the rest of them are about as authentic as Dick van Dykes British accent.
Also, regardless of what I say about the shallow characterizations, it is not a knock on any of the performances; everyone is fairly convincing in their roles. I’m so thankful Joaquin Phoenix doesn’t phone in his performance as he remains physically imposing as ever but Lady Gaga’s live-wire split between affinity and obsession is just as compelling, especially as both of them are the only characters here with the closest thing resembling arcs.
To an extent, part of me wants to say it makes sense why the story goes in the direction it does sometimes based on the events of the first film; further picking apart Arthur’s delusions of grandeur while dissecting the consequences of his actions in the way he best knows how to cope. In general, both Joker and Harley Quinn see their criminal proclivities as theatrical spectacle for others to rabble about into a media circus so crafting the musical idea around that had potential to sparkle and I can’t help but praise Todd Phillips and company for the mere extent of going in a direction this bold and off-the-chain. So please tell me: how do you make ALL OF THAT so two-faced?
Narratively and structurally, that solid foundation that helped set the tone and events for the first Joker are fleeting here; at best, it’s just a poorly rendered epilogue of what we already know and at worst, it technically nullifies the entire first movie in exchange for erratic isolation and disarray. More chaos does not automatically equal more depth, it just makes it come off as empty spectacle with barely any of the philosophical grit that made the original resonate. Fairly tensionless as a drama but tonally aloof and ugly as a musical (and this comes from someone who adores musicals), it ends up exposing its entire foundation as terrible by design, masquerading about in a manner specifically designed to alienate and piss off DC fans, Batman fans, comic book fans, fans of the 2019 Joker among many others.
And when you consider the sobering reality that many comics fans have been really fatigued by the overexposure of Joker and Harley Quinn as characters for close to a decade now, that also doesn’t help this film’s standing.
And yet, you know the crazy thing? After a while…..I actually kind of dug it.
The tragic part in all of this is despite the deliberate “F you Warner Bros” expressionism on display, the film does still have something it wants to say, despite never fully taking advantage of those opportunities. Ideas are explored here regarding how the coping mechanism that shields Arthur and Lee from the world's cruelty makes them cruel in turn, a temporary commentary on toxic fandom even more partially constructed than 5CREAM, the critique of a system that rightfully deserves to be gutted and inspected for its obsession with sensationalism and the specific exploitation of the mentally ill as somewhat of a mini-companion piece to the first film where society lets them down first. Even the disjointed song choices showcased that need for escape into idealism.
I’m not entirely sure of whether I liked how this film tears down the Joker identity but it does serve a point in criticizing the constant misunderstandings of what the character represents, further tying into society's celebration of grifting and deception. It’s kinda ironic how Arthur’s desire to make a name for himself ended up making a name for others and the fate he meets at the end of this movie is so tragically ironic, you can’t help but wonder if it actually does make the first film better.
One can certainly praise this for singing a different tune than its predecessor and I’d argue this encore is one worth sticking around for…..if you’re open to this kind of expressionism.
