Beware: this article features Joker: Folie à Deux spoilers.
What’s black and white and red all over? Joker: Folie à Deux, the desaturated sequel to Joker, which is currently undergoing a public beating. A measly weekend haul of $37.8 million in the US! A CinemaScore rating – based on audience surveys – of D! Both are probably very unfunny to Warner Bros executives.
It seems unlikely, even given a healthier international haul of $80 million, that Joker: Folie à Deux will live up in any way to its prequel which earned a billion dollars (a billion dollars!) and netted Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar for Best Clown (sorry, actor). But you know who might have the last chuckle? Todd Phillips.
You could not accuse the director, so adored for 2019’s Joker and currently being pilloried for ruining that film’s legacy, for phoning it in. In the latest episode of Esquire’s Freeze Frame, Phillips is insightful about his film, which charts Arthur Fleck’s (Phoenix) stint in Arkham Asylum as he prepares for trial and learns to live alongside his Joker alter-ego.
Phillips goes deep on the casting—Steve Coogan’s ghoulish journalist, Brendan Gleeson as a manipulative asylum guard, Lady Gaga’s dour take on Harley Quinn (who goes by the name of Lee)—to one of the movie’s prevailing themes, which he calls the “corruption of entertainment”.
He is talking specifically about the scene in which Coogan’s character interviews Arthur about his misbehaviour in the previous film (he murdered five people). The low-rent journo clearly trying to get a rise out of our beleaguered anti-hero, who cannot help mugging to the camera.
As Phillips says, “In the States, often we put trials on television. We’ll put a murderer like Arthur on TV and sell adverts during the interview. We’ll have presidential elections with graphics that make it look like a wrestling match. If everything is entertainment, what is actually entertainment?”
Good question! Clearly not Joker: Folie à Deux, according to Joker fans. They were not keen for a courtroom drama. Or Lady Gaga in her least Lady Gaga-like role. Or the downbeat ending where Fleck is—spoiler alert—stabbed by a fellow asylum patient known as “Psycho” (well, he is not nicknamed “Cuddly”).
Does the film have the verve of its prequel? Bar a few arresting sequences—like when the asylum guards’ grey umbrellas appear multicoloured from Arthur’s perspective—it certainly doesn’t have Joker’s element of surprise (unless you were expecting a villain origin story under the influence of Scorsese). The musical aspect is intriguing, but Phillips and his cast have been adamant that this film is not one, and I am inclined to agree: musicals should feature some peppier tunes and fewer renditions of “Oh When The Saints Go Marching In”.
The best part of this film, in this writer’s superhero-averse eyes, is what it attempts to say about fame. Arthur, who had become a hero to losers (on and off-screen), in the first movie, finds himself at a crossroads in the second. He’s more famous than he could have dreamt—his trial is being televised, his burgeoning romance with Lee makes the front pages—but more tormented than ever before.
His lawyer, played by Catherine Keener, is trying to persuade the courtroom (and Arthur himself) that he has a split personality and needs better treatment (does that exist in Gotham?). Meanwhile, his lame fans wait outside the courtroom, worshipping a version of Arthur that exists—sometimes? In the past? Certainly, when Arthur takes the stand, to the applause of his adoring fans, Joker is absent. The man stammers to an expectant room, completely sans braggadocio.
“Folie à Deux” (maybe the best thing about this film is the title?) refers to a joint psychosis. Sure, that could refer to Arthur and Lee. But more compelling is the delusion shared by Arthur and his fans.
This week, I watched The Franchise, a brisk TV comedy from Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes, about the making of a doomed superhero movie. The series is an entertaining look at how Marvel fodder is churned out: decisions by far-off committees, pandering to intense fans, overworked CGI departments.
You end up with ugly, boring mush, even if you have helicoptered in an arthouse European director. Watching that show, I found myself warming to Joker: Folie à Deux: it is clearly beyond redemption for many thanks to its weird perspectives, but at least did not commit the sin of not having one at all. Maybe a few jokes next time?
