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Joker is still not the Batman nemesis nor the Gotham ghoul he will be. Instead, Todd Phillips’s eponymous character takes an almost regular-man trajectory in this second outing, with good actors in side roles providing layers to his increasingly unsettled world.
The killing spree of two years ago has landed Arthur Fleck a.k.a Joker (Phoenix) in Arkham penitentiary. He is in the Department of Corrections centre, taking prescribed medication pills and enduring the kind of daily humiliations that had turned out so wrongly for him last time.
What shakes him out of this grey stupor of jail cell, dreary outdoors time and guards who want to see him pay (especially Jackie, played by Gleeson) is Lee (Gaga). Arthur stumbles upon Lee while she is participating in choir singing as part of musical lessons, in that section of the penitentiary where inmates with presumably more minor misdemeanours are kept.
Arthur and Lee, whose real name is Harley Quinnzel (later to be known as Harley Quinn), very quickly fall for each other. This being a musical, their repertoire of well-performed songs is one thing that connects them. Another thing is the interesting sub-plot of Lee seeking out a frisson of excitement in her comfortable upper-middle class existence.
In Arthur she sees a spark that can light her inner anarchist Joker. So she wants to see to the fore that wild, barely-thought-through side of Joker that has landed Fleck in “the trial of the century” – as such trials are inevitably billed. The court proceedings are being broadcast live, though why a government determined to send Fleck to death and facing a frenzy of deluded fans impressed by Joker would do that, is anybody’s guess.
Arthur’s lawyer (Keener) is apprehensive Lee is pushing Arthur into demolishing the insanity or split-personality argument that she is meticulously — and rather too rosy-eyed — building to get him off the death row.
There is a good movie here about what to make of Arthur shorn of Joker, and the persona that is all he has left now. How much of it is real and how much of it is a self-feeding creation?
In terms of a storyline, this co-writer-director effort by Phillips is more settled, more mature and less desperate in trying to craft a hero for our times.
In Gaga, Folie a Deux additionally has a compelling star force that pulls Arthur effortlessly in. It is easy to see why Lee would be hard to resist, let alone by a desperate man who has never had any real intimacy with anyone, and let alone her surging powerful vocals that are impressive in their own right.
Phoenix is doing more of what he did last time, and the proficient actor knows how to do this kind of crazy well.
However, if Joker has any of the tenuous, arresting vitality of his Batman films, it is courtesy Gaga.
“We will build a mountain together,” Lee tells Arthur. That staircase that Arthur traipsed up and down to great effect in Gotham…. that doesn’t have to be it.
Bring on Harley Quinn, we say.
Joker Folie a Deux movie cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga
Joker Folie a Deux movie director: Todd Philips
Joker Folie a Deux movie rating: 3 stars
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