Joker Folie à Deux Movie Review: If you think Batman and Robin are the deadliest combination in the Caped Crusader’s universe, your stance may change after watching Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker sequel. Their Arthur Fleck and Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn match up, complement each other, and are crazy about each other in the sequel to Todd Phillips’s 2019 blockbuster, the origin story of Batman’s most dangerous nemesis. It is a worthy follow-up to the first part, remaining true to its ethos despite changes in syntax and setting.
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Enter: Lady Gaga
Joker Folie à Deux picks up a few months after the end of the first one. Arthur Fleck, aka the Joker, is in Arkham Prison, having murdered six people, including famous television show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), on live television. He spends his mundane prison life with unnatural inanity, before he encounters Lee, aka Harley Quinn, in a neighboring asylum. They immediately connect, with Lee expressing his long-standing admiration for Arthur’s actions. She gives him a reason to live, to escape, to start a new life by trying to get acquitted in an impending trial.
Like Bradley Cooper’s Oscar-winning romance A Star Is Born (2018), Lady Gaga’s film is also a musical in which she plays the proverbial manic pixie dream girl. Still, manic is the operative word here. She brings a detached, straight-faced madness to the sequel, which is further enhanced by her flights of musical fancy with Arthur. She doesn’t go full-on Suicide Squad-Harley Quinn in the movie, as it’s still early days for her full transformation. We see hints of the evil clown she eventually becomes, in a shadowy eye makeup here and a devilish glare there. But for the most part, she remains the relatable crazy person we want to live vicariously through. Watch him politely say “sorry” before breaking the glass of a high street shop window with a chair, or hear him use conditional abuse in a voicemail. Subtle, captivating, crazy.
His character represents the omnipresent madness that transcends age groups, economic backgrounds and moral codes. She forces Arthur to embrace his own madness, and makes him feel as if he has seen her through, as she did to many of them when he gunned down six of them. He committed these crimes because he wanted to attract attention. But when he gets the love he yearns for from Lee, he believes he is no longer the same person he was before and should now be given a new chance. But it also humanizes him, thus putting him at odds with many like Lee who deified him. Admitting that he is insane may get him out of prison on legal grounds, but it will also lower him from the position on which he has been placed by those who consider insanity beyond the law and sanity beyond the limits of crime. Let’s see in form.
Looking at the character arc, the Joker sequel might remind you of Matt Reeves’ 2022 superhero film The Batman, in which Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne swears vengeance, but ultimately realizes that the same V-word is coming back to bite him. Will come back for. It is also fitting that Joker 2 releases in India on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, as it asks the same questions that the Father of the Nation posed to a struggling nation: whether to forgive and practice non-violence or to seek force. Relying on the use of short-term justice. Like Gandhi, the Joker is also a polarized figure who, willingly or otherwise, has started a revolution to which he is now a slave. In the process, co-writers Todd Phillips and Scott Silver give Joaquin’s character the organic closure that the first part lacked.
it’s the joaquin show again
Joaquin slips into the Joker’s shoes as if the first part was wrapped just yesterday. He draws you towards him like a magnetic life force. A smile makes you happy, a smile makes you laugh, and that hysterical laughter makes you seek shelter. His Oscar-winning performance gets even more oomph here, which helps him add more color to his Joker. While Lady Gaga effortlessly holds her own opposite an acting powerhouse like Joaquin, he surprises you with his singing (as the Joker) in sync with Lady Gaga’s Grammy Award-winning voice box. Joaquin is just as effective when he’s crying in his closet as he is when he’s letting his green hair down while shaking a leg.
The Joker-Harley Quinn chemistry works here too, due to Joaquin and Lady Gaga’s eccentric real-life personalities. Madness is nothing new to her as when she started out as a pop icon she used to wear strange clothes just like the Joker. You laugh when Arthur and Lee bond over their destructive behavior and disdain for their parents. They kiss passionately as the ground burns in the background of the prison they are in. When a guard forbids them from touching, Arthur and Lee kiss through a cloud of smoke across the prison bars. It’s crazy, but hopelessly romantic in its most literal sense. Who is Lee to Arthur? Is she an evil shadow of the one we see in the opening animated segment, or is she the mother he never had? After falling in love with Lee, Arthur sings, “(I’ve) become a whining, whining baby again.”
The madcap music format (by Hildur Guðnadóttir) serves the story of Joker 2 naturally because music is the language of madcaps. Or as a character says in the movie, it’s how one “balances the cracks inside.” It also brings a glossy, fable-like quality to otherwise serious proceedings. Cinema itself is a character in the film. A TV movie based on Joker advocates for his justice. Musical interludes are inserted throughout to stage the madness in the minds of the characters. Arthur also joked that he killed off De Niro’s character because he was the “bad actor” in the film, which was what was going on in his mind. What’s crazy, but the lines between real life and fantasy blurred?
Interestingly, Harvey Dent, who would go on to become Two-Face, is the state’s attorney fighting the case against the Joker. This Easter egg is not meant for universe-building, but rather to underline how two-faced Joker’s critics are – wearing a human mask and costume, while they are all Jokers. Clowns are born from the cracks in society, celebrated to tell jokes, and then exiled to attack the very society that created those cracks in the first place. They may not get the last laugh, but when the dust settles, who’s really having fun?
