When I saw “Joker” at the Venice Film Festival five years ago, I felt extremely offended and outraged, and I poured out that indignation; some readers thought inappropriately of a hastily written review. (I was later informed that I might have taken some time to calm down: a review embargo on the film was in effect for another five hours after I submitted my notice.) Since I didn’t want to reveal plot spoilers, I didn’t. reveal the main source of my indignation.
What set me off was the film’s climax, in which Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, now almost entirely the Joker, appears on a late-night talk show hosted by glib showman Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Franklin’s object is a mockery of the man dressed as a clown. But Arthur has the last laugh: he pulls out a gun and blows Franklin’s brains out on live television.
This shook me up in a not very good way. Partly because I was pretty sure this point in the story was inspired by the 1987 suicide on air by Pennsylvania political figure R. Budd Dwyer. The footage of him taking his own life was, of course, edited for news reports, but at the time I was media savvy enough to be able to see the unredacted footage of the suicide. And to this day I wish I hadn’t. The similarities between the real-life event and what director Todd Philips staged seemed too specific to me to be a coincidence. I considered what Phillips and Phoenix (and, yes, De Niro) had done to be unforgivable opportunistic nihilism.
There you have it, in case you were wondering. In my review, I wrote: “In today’s mainstream movies, ‘dark’ is just another flavor. Like “edgy,” it’s an option you use depending on the market you want to reach. And it is particularly useful when introduced into the comic genre.”
And now I’m back in the groove of the Joker for the sequel, “Joker: Folie a Deux,” which, as you’ve no doubt heard, is a musical, written and directed, like the first film, by Todd Phillips. Fortunately, Phillips didn’t write the songs. This is very much a jukebox musical, with selections from The Great American Songbook (“Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”) and 1960s international pop (“To Love Somebody,” originated by the Bee Gees and popularized even more by Janis Joplin) and more. . And the best I can say about it is that it clearly does not take into account marketing, as it is conventionally understood.
Before evaluating the ultimate goal of turning the second “Joker” movie into a musical, we must acknowledge that its foundation is arguably solid. That is to say, Arthur Fleck, who here makes a stark distinction between himself as a civilian and himself as “Joker,” is a deeply disturbed individual whose twisted imagination may well imagine his existence within some kind of spectacle. So, we can admit that the filmmakers are acting in good faith in presenting this as a musical. Doing so also allows them to get out of otherwise hopeless situations. The film is narratively, psychologically and aesthetically incoherent. Still, it can fall into the first two categories because musicals get away with being narratively and psychologically incoherent simply by the nature of their being, you know, musicals.
As it always reminds you, the story takes place almost immediately after the sickening murder that capped “Joker.” Arthur/Joker is held captive in one of Arkham’s dark, satanic mental institutions, and on one of his walks to see a visitor, a young woman singing in an open room practically winks at him. That’s Lady Gaga’s Lee Quinzel (DC insiders may be upset that she never goes full Harley Quinn here), and the two soon plot to see each other as much as captivity allows before Arthur’s trial, to which Lee mysteriously receives a sudden citizen status. attend as a spectator. (This is sufficiently explained, if not entirely believable). Arthur is smiley and sullen when he’s not in Joker makeup, but rest assured, he can wear it in abundance, whether in the fantasies of the songs or the reality of the trial. And then he says, well, “Joker.”
Trial and romance are the axes of this seemingly endless film. There are parts, like the Joker’s impersonation of a drawling Southern lawyer, that might have been entertaining if they weren’t placed in what appears to be the eighth or ninth hour of the film. In the end, the thin story amounts to the same nihilistic bungling that Phillips presented in the first “Joker,” albeit remixed in terms of genre.
Some early reviews have complained that the film doesn’t offer much in the way of “Joker Fan Service.” This makes me laugh a little; I understand that the character is indeed a fictional and pop culture phenomenon, but when you consider what it is, what exactly would “Joker Fan Service” entail? You could also talk about “Charles Manson Fan Service.” It is certainly a sick and twisted world we live in.
The only other aspect of the film that I can speak positively about, aside from its indifference to any audience it may attract, is the acting. Both Lady Gaga and Phoenix clearly put a lot of work into their characterizations and interactions. The different modes of interpretation they use when singing, for example, are discreet and fallible in their own “real lives,” with a professional and fulfilling quality in their shared dreams. While Gaga holds her own throughout the film, Phoenix’s virtuosity eventually devolves into narcissistic exhibitionism (her apparent Joker “dance” actually looks like she’s doing pre-yoga stretches). But it’s still virtuosity, for what it’s worth.