THE JOKER’S STILL WILD
First off, allow me to explain the meaning of the title. “Folie a Deux” is French for “madness of two,” or a shared psychosis.
And that psychiatric syndrome appears early on in this sequel to the 2019 hit.
In the first Joker film, Arthur Fleck, AKA The Joker, murdered five people, although in this sequel he admits to also murdering his mother, which brings the number of dead people to a sickening six.
And much of the movie centers on whether Fleck is merely bipolar or suffers from some more serious form of split personality disorder. And nothing star Joaquin Phoenix does onscreen makes that task easy.
Fleck is incarcerated at Arkham Psychiatric Hospital awaiting trial for the murders. His lawyer, played by Catherine Keener, will try to persuade a jury that Fleck is in fact two personalities and that his Joker half is the guilty party, and not Arthur.
Phoenix here, as in the first film, does insanity exceedingly well. He was so convincing as the psychotic villain in the first movie, he won the Best Actor Oscar in 2020. So, again, he wavers between being unhinged and eerily withdrawn, except for occasional outbursts of demented laughter.
The movie begins, oddly enough, with an animated feature, an homage to the Looney Tunes of old, in which Fleck as The Joker is fighting with his own shadow. Or maybe he’s battling his alter ego. To what end is anyone’s guess.
And that’s how I felt throughout most of the plus-2-hour running time. Yes, we’re still in Gotham City, although it’s a far cry from the Art Deco-on-steroids Gotham of Tim Burton’s Batman. And we’re still ostensibly within the confines of the comic book from which The Joker traces his roots.
But this story departs from the source we all know too well by wedding itself to the physicality of contemporary New York City.
For me, the new film is a mashup of The Shawshank Redemption, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Taxi Driver, La La Land and every legal drama we have seen in the movies or on television. Oh, and any Hollywood musical you might care to mention. This “Joker" references Fred Astaire in “The Band Wagon.”
Phoenix is joined by Lady Gaga as a fellow inmate with many dark secrets. She partners with him in several song-and-dance numbers that spring out of nowhere. Phoenix has a serviceable singing voice, but it’s Gaga who ably carries the many standards from the American song book. A soundtrack CD is sure to be a hit.
Again, the reason for the musical numbers is often baffling. We assume they spring from Arthur Fleck’s imagination. Rather than illustrate a plot point, they often stop the movie dead in its tracks. Not that a little tap-dancing isn’t fun to watch.
But it’s hard to figure out what these handsomely-staged duets—elegant throwbacks to Hollywood’s golden era--want to be, other than a pleasant diversion from Arthur’s grim reality.
That’s grim with a capital G, though not the G intended for general audiences. In fact, “Joker: Folie a Deux” is rated R for a very good reason. Carnage at its most extreme is no joke.