Movie Review: ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ is a Tale of Two Jokers

Director: Todd Phillips
Writers: Scott Silver, Todd Phillips, Bob Kane
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Zazie Beetz

Synopsis: Arthur Fleck is institutionalized at Arkham, awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that’s always been inside him.

**** This review contains plot details from Joker and Joker: Folie à Deux****

Two years have passed since Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) accidentally became the
figurehead for the angry poor and dispossessed protestors of NYC, no strike that, Gotham
City. He’s in the locked wing of Arkham Hospital, emaciated as ever, and relatively calm on
the psych drugs he desperately wanted in Joker. The film begins in ‘Looney-Tunes’ cartoon
form. There is Joker and there is shadow Joker – to the tune of ‘Me and My Shadow’. Joker
is a clown and entertainer possessed and mocked by the violent shadow Joker who attacks
people and is more confident than regular Joker whom he strips naked and humiliates on
camera. If you are possibly missing the extremely obvious metaphor, Arthur Fleck is fighting
his violent tendencies, but fears that without them he is nothing. There is Arthur, and there
is Joker.

Arthur’s lawyer Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener) is prepping Arthur for what is
purported to be ‘The Trial of the Century’ – killing three Wayne Investments bankers which
kickstarted protests against wealth inequality on the ‘mean streets’ of Gotham and shooting
Murray Franklin on live television, which made Arthur Fleck famous. There has been a book written about him, a made for television movie, he has fans and followers. The level of his celebrity leads to his cheerily sadistic guard Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson) delighting in pushing him to tell him a ‘joke’ to get a cigarette or any small favor. Arthur is all out of jokes, and he’s lost whatever made him Joker – or at least he isn’t sure what it was. Maryanne is trying, through a psychiatrist, to get Arthur to recognize he suffers from a form
of schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder. He has been cleared to stand trial and the
only way he can avoid the death penalty being sought by the state of New York is to push
for an undeniable insanity plea.

Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey – unfortunately a non-character, only recognizable for his in universe
name) will be leading the prosecution and the trial will be filmed for all of Gotham/New
York State to see. Maryanne and the psychiatrist notice Arthur seems to take an interest in
music – or perhaps in the woman who looks him in the eyes and mimes blowing her brains
out; the move Arthur imagined Sophie (Zazie Beetz) making when he first met her.
Therapeutic music sessions are assigned, and Arthur Fleck meets Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga)
from the less restricted psychiatric B Ward.

Arthur has never had a woman look at him and actively want to be around him. However,
Lee isn’t really looking at Arthur Fleck, she’s looking for Joker. Lee says her mother is the bitch
who committed her for trying to set fire to their house. She’s from the same neighborhood
as Arthur, and her father beats her. She knows he knows what it’s like. She’s watched the
made for TV movie about him at least twenty times!

If Phillips and Silver were hoping to do something with the notion of the folie à deux – the
shared delusion – beyond some well shot and sometimes well-choreographed and
adequately sung fantasy musical numbers, it would have been wise to spend more time
with Lee to understand what motivates her. Is it hybristophilia? (attraction to people who
commit murder or serious physical harmful crimes). Is it a form of rebellion? Is it her innately violent nature looking for release through Joker’s transgressions? Or is she angling
for something else?

“I use those stairs,” Lee tells Arthur. The stairs where he heard and danced to ‘Rock n Roll
(Part 2)’ in his red suit and full Joker makeup. “I watched the show, and I wished you’d kill
him, and then you did.” [sic] Lee gushes over Murray Franklin’s (Robert De Niro) shooting. It
takes mere moments for Arthur to admit to Lee to murdering his mother because she
deserved it too. The world is all wrong. It’s all wrong – the instant soul mates lament. The
only way to live in a crazy world is to… sing and dance!

Here is the thing that Todd Phillips can’t quite decide on, whether he’s committed to making
Folie à Deux a good musical. It’s jukebox musical with songs that come from parts of Lee and
Arthur’s psyches – some chosen for specific emotional registers, some chosen for “irony”,
some chosen because we have already seen Arthur reacting to a particular movie star
(Arthur’s previous connection to Fred Astaire dancing to ‘Slap That Bass’) and his immersion
in watching Astaire in The Band Wagon singing ‘That’s Entertainment’ which becomes bitter
as the film goes on and is sung by Joker and Harley.

As a musical, Folie à Deux is for the most part barely adequate considering the talent and
scope Phillips had at hand. Much of the singing is explicitly fantasy – so why so often tone
down Gaga’s voice? Phoenix can carry a tune in a certain range, he was nominated for an
Academy Award playing Johnny Cash. The grander throwback musical numbers are where
Arthur/Joker romances Lee/Harley Quinn in MGM style but with the leading man in clown
face make-up and the leading lady hungry for his blood on her lips creating her own crooked
smile. There’s no reason anyone should hold back from their biggest and best. The movie
cost reportedly up to three times the budget of the original, and apart from the score there
isn’t a song that wasn’t originally recorded before 1970. Phillips has said in interviews, “The
goal of this movie is to make it feel like it was made by crazy people […] like the inmates are
running the asylum.” Only one or two numbers seem like they come from the minds of
people gripped by madness. The ‘Joker and Harley’ Variety Show version of ‘Love
Somebody’ by the Bee-Gees where Joker starts to get annoyed that Harley isn’t looking at
him while singing and addressing the audience instead (it’s a real-world concern Arthur
hasn’t dealt with) and a gun comes into play between the two – Joker and Harley are
unforgivably dull ‘crazy people’ as Phillips’ goal is to make the audience feel they’re the
demented dynamic duo – with singing, as Harley Quinn sure as heck never picks up a mallet.
Joker, as Phillips and Silver envisioned him in the first film, became a semiotic nightmare.

Spoilers for the 2019 film, which one can assume if you have read this far, you have seen.
Arthur Fleck begins as a very low-end rent-a-clown who had been previously hospitalized for
some form of mental illness. It’s 1981 (but also 1973 through to 1981). New York, sorry,
Gotham, is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Travis Bickle, sorry, Arthur Fleck, lives with
his mother Penny (Frances Conroy) who is a needy shut-in who calls Rupert Pupkin, sorry,
Arthur, ‘Happy’ and we later find out she is not his mother (he’s adopted), delusional with
narcissistic personality disorder, believes that she had an affair with Thomas Wayne and
keeps writing him letters telling him what a good boy his son Arthur is and he should help
out his loving other family a little. (Arthur is nobody’s son – he’s one hundred percent
‘nurture’ over ‘nature’ in the film’s simplistic reading of character psychology – he is Gotham’s son). He’s a victim of (memory repressed) childhood physical abuse from his
mother’s boyfriend at the time and has an acquired brain injury from that abuse causing
pseudobulbar affect behavior. That is the medical term for Arthur’s uncontrollable
laughter/crying/and also a large part if we are going by the shown severity of the condition,
his rage, treatment resistant depression, and his aural and visual hallucinations and
delusions. Add to that mix – and this comes from psychologists and psychiatrists analyzing
Arthur Fleck the movie character – unrecognized trauma PTSD. The need to please his
mother because she has chained him to her via tactics she doesn’t know how to control
because of her NPD. He also has an eating disorder. And finally, the cherry on the diagnosis
cake: antisocial personality disorder (which is possibly going to be attributed to anyone who
starts feeling all sexy and euphoric after killing people).

Arthur is a sad guy, he’s not a smart guy, he gets angry and doesn’t know where to put it, he
does stupid things, he’s doing all he can to be the best person he knows how to be, he gets
bullied, beaten, humiliated… put those all together with an inability to speak, outside his
delusions, with any woman who finds him attractive, and he was relatable to certain men of
varying ages. The level of wish fulfilment they had satisfied when the finance guys, who
were bad guys, got shot even if it was at first accidental must have been huge. The moment
Arthur proved (in some people’s eyes) he had a ‘moral code’ by killing Randall who was
defined as cruel, but not harming Gary who had been bullied because of his height, gave
him hero status; not anti-hero status, and not villain status.

Whether or not Todd Phillips intended it or not, he created outside of the diegetic world of
Joker as well as inside of it, a man saying; I tried to bring laughter and joy to this cold dark
world – and you rich/privileged/pretty/handsome/famous/happy people treated me worse
than dirt, so I’m going to kill people and not feel upset about it because you deserve it. And
that vision of thwarted masculinity was embraced by a not inconsiderable amount of people
across the world.

It mattered not to those who saw Joker as a symbol of their personal discontent that he’s an
amalgamation of choose your own ‘it’s not his fault’ grab-bag of issues and legitimate
reasons to be upset about the state of Gotham City and cuts to public services, a rise in
unemployment, and a massive cost of living crisis in 1981 – because a comic book film is
dominant popular culture discourse. It is easier to cherry pick traits from something people
already feel a level of ownership over.

Joker claimed he didn’t care about politics; he was just sick of ‘elites’ and we should all be
too, especially those who suggest bankers lives matter. One of the myriad problems with
Joker is that it so indebted to Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese’s infinitely more complex
Travis Bickle. It’s on the record that Phillips and Silver took their main inspiration for Joker
from Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy – although they didn’t need to say it, and Alan
Moore’s “The Killing Joke” (Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight” is also cited). Travis Bickle’s politics
are also not clear because he’s guided by his own depression and insomniac NYC at its worst
point of view; he sees the city for what it was in the early and mid 1970s – bankrupt
financially and morally. His attempt to assassinate a Democrat presidential candidate came
from jealousy and shame. Bickle had taken Betsy, a college educated WASP campaign
volunteer, on a date to a porn cinema because that was the only place he knew. Betsy rejected him and refused any attempt he made to reconcile or explain. In Travis’ mind Betsy
and the Senator are idée fixe. They represent an America that is unseeing, and Travis is one
who sees too much. As a taxi driver on the graveyard shift almost seven days a week, he
sees and drives pimps, child prostitutes, and their clients.

Travis becomes attached to Iris, who is a runaway and, at twelve, is working as a prostitute
for Sport (Harvey Keitel) . His cache of weapons finds a new purpose as he decides he will save Iris. regardless of whether she wants it or not. He kills everyone involved in pimping out Iris in a
shootout. He gets shot, twice, in the effort and when the police arrive, he mimes blowing
out his own brains because that was what he was going to do after saving Iris. He isn’t
arrested – instead he becomes a media hero for breaking up part of a child prostitution ring
and Iris is returned home safe. Later when he is out of hospital, he is driving again and picks
up Betsy who is now friendly with him because of what she read in the papers about him.
He doesn’t charge her the fare and drives off – but the last image the audience sees is Travis
twitching at something he sees in the rearview mirror.

Scorsese and Schrader agree that the ending is stating that Travis Bickle is given a temporary
reprieve from his inevitable violent death – he is fundamentally broken. In 1981, John Hinkley, Jr., who staked Jodie Foster because of his obsession with Taxi Driver, decided the best way to impress her was to shoot Ronald Reagan. He wounded the then President and paralyzed a member of his cabinet. He was 25 years old and suffering from extreme mental illness. He was not convicted of the assassination attempt due to insanity. He did, however, spend almost all his adult life in an institution. He has almost 70 thousand followers on Twitter. Martin Scorsese was so distressed by the notion that Taxi Driver and Travis Bickle had become a beacon of behavior that would be emulated, he considered giving up directing.

Todd Phillips decided to make a digestible Happy Meal version of Taxi Driver for comic book
readers. “I wasn’t thinking about the broader message in the film,” says Phillips in a mini
documentary which comes with the disc. His goal was to make a “Different kind of origin
story for a comic book character. He landed on The Joker and wanted it to be a character
study of “Why he’s like that, what made him?” It made a huge amount of money and
garnered Joaquin Phoenix a best actor Academy Award and best score. Of course, he
pushed for a sequel – it’s money in the bank. Or not, because there is nothing for fans of the
original film, for whatever reason they liked it, to be found in the sequel.

The penultimate scene of Joker has Fleck seeing the riots he inspired and now takes
ownership of revelling in the chaos, seeing the business that made him pay for a signboard
he was assaulted with being looted. “It’s beautiful.” He’s dancing on a car as Gotham Square
rioters cheer him. Joker dances too in the final scene, bloody hospital booty footprints
suggesting he now kills purely for pleasure (if it is real because that’s not Arkham it was).
Circling back to why Joker is substantially a different person from Fleck is something Phillips
and Silver have been laboriously pondering, because without Paul Schrader and Paul D.
Zimmerman’s homework to copy from, they’ve got next to nothing to work with. In the
writing stage of Joker, the profile Phillips started with was “He’s an egoless narcissist. Joker is pure id. Arthur is the ego the mask that he has to wear […] but it is in reverse because he
puts on a mask to become who he truly is.”

Revolutionary building character blocks pinched from Freud for Dummies that he repeats in Folie à Deux with added Lady Gaga song titles and album titles which Todd needs to ensure are chapter titles for the blu-ray release because they’re begging to be included as more of his “I am really going meta here” schtick. Put Arthur on medication and he’s not ‘happy’ but he’s also not spiraling. He’s in a filthy locked ward in Arkham and he’s been ‘conditioned’ back into submission. He’s malleable, he’s not a genius, he’s no ‘clown prince of crime.’ He’s a person who wants to be told he’s a good boy or a big man, and he is fighting a primal injustice – and Lee provides all three of his ‘ego’ states for him. His id state is the base desires for love (romantic, sexual, social), succor, and the permission to lash out when he doesn’t get those needs met. His super-ego was given bad information by liars, and hypocrites, and the rules of civil society are uncivil, therefore he is not bound by them. His ego state whenever he has Lee to love him with
honesty is stable. If she is dishonest or disapproving, he is immediately anxious. Steve Coogan’s television confrontational and sensationalist reporter Paddy Myers claims Fleck is, “The low IQ” garden variety misfit type. Or, Myers badgers, is Fleck trying to use the insanity plea as an obvious escape for the death penalty? Phillips gives Fleck/Phoenix his ‘this is one core tenets of the film speech’ in response. Something along the lines of ‘You don’t care either way as long as you get from me something that will get you ratings.’ ‘You need me to be famous, now.’

Fleck isn’t taking his psych meds (something Lee suggested post fact – she’s keen on getting
Joker out to play in public). There’s been a bit of light arson by Lee for fun and distraction
and a photo opportunity, and then at some point in the film actual physical sexual
intercourse. In the pantheon of unsexy sex scenes Phoenix and Gaga have been involved in
(Napoleon and House of Gucci) the dismal four to six seconds in the film is supposed to tell
you a lot about what you already knew of Fleck and clue you into Lee – or it’s just
depressing.

The court date is almost upon Fleck and Lee tells him because after their love affair has
been made public her parents are forcibly discharging her from Arkham. “They think you’re
a bad influence on me.” But she will be there every day at the trial. They will “build a
mountain” together. Nothing can spoil their dreams. Everything will work out if he’s Joker.
Lee’s been busy being Joker’s girlfriend to media outlets. The ‘Free Joker’ movement is out
in force. Lee, now turning up dressed as Harley Quinn, doesn’t want Maryanne Stewart
representing Fleck. She’s getting in the way of Joker. Arthur’s journals are read out as
evidence and Sophie is called to the stand (both are specifically Arthur’s shame). Sophie
speaks of how she has been collateral damage despite only interacting with him twice that
she can recall. She does remember Penny, his mother, telling her that he “wouldn’t hurt a
fly” (Robert Bloch and Alfred Hitchcock referenced, Psycho for the two identities, and
murdered mother issues). Eventually Lee gets her way and Joker/Fleck petitions to be his
own defense counsel.

Joker struts and frets his hours on the court floor with Judge Rothwax (Bill Smitrovich) doing
what he can to handle Joker’s ‘antics’ – which aren’t crazy enough to convince the jury of an
insanity plea – but they are enough for the people watching at home to see his biggest ever
live performance. Someone else is gaining notoriety via association, someone who isn’t
being beaten by Jackie Sullivan or thrown in solitary. Someone playing for keeps.
Joker is neither an eloquent nor an eminent jurist. His strategy is to pronounce he is above the law of small-minded men, and rotten social institutions like Arkham that have taken his dignity
and tortured him – (again) straight to the camera recording the trial. He shouts he’s free!
Gary Puddles (a great performance by returning actor Leigh Gill) says he wanted to think
Arthur was better because he didn’t laugh at him. Tearful entreaties from the closest person
Arthur had as a friend means nothing to Harley-charged Joker. Joker mimics Atticus Finch
(Gregory Peck) in To Kill a Mockingbird and rests his defense case at the same time as Dent
rests the prosecution’s.

Some of the court scenes are played out in fantasy musical form. Beyond violence
perpetrated on inmates, patients, and Fleck himself – and a fizzle that is supposed to be a
possible grace note from Phillips; it’s Joker and Harley doing a rendition of Judy Garland’s
‘Come On, Get Happy’ where in his mind he slashes and pulverizes the court, and Harley
wipes arterial blood across her mouth in a big smile.

There is a sting in the tail, two, perhaps three, in Folie à Deux but after all the mediocre
proceedings getting to that point (one of the ‘stings’ is revealed long before the end) the
film is ultimately a “shrug.” The primary question of the film is asked in the cartoon at the
beginning of the film and answered there. So, what is the point of Joker: Folie à Deux? If it’s
to show off Lawrence Sher’s cinematography – great job! If it is to prove Joaquin Phoenix
can lose more weight to play a role – gold star! If it is to make some kind of meta
commentary about how people treat murderers and criminals like celebrities and trials like
entertainment, that’s facile repetition. If Phillips in interviews says it is Shakespearean, the
correct response is “Insufferably smug and self-indulgent director compares cash-grab
sequel to Shakespeare because it’s a basic template plot.”

Harley Quinn has remnants of Paul Dini’s and Bruce Timm’s creation, the name, the
romantic and possessive interest in Joker, and the interest in abnormal psychology. Lady
Gaga, The Fame Monster, should be a natural fit for Phoenix’s freak. When a movie is giving
better and snappier character lines to an Arkham guard, regardless of whether he’s played
by Brendan Gleeson, than in it is to the megastar ostensibly playing the manic ball of malice
with a mallet, it is wasteful. Lee may exist in Arkham as a dirty haired with too much regrowth
inpatient with a non-descript hospital styled gown and fluffy cardigan – that’s okay. But in
the fantasy musical sequences she could be introducing Joker to some of the CBGB’s stable:
Blondie, The Cramps, The Ramones, The Talking Heads, and Patti Smith. It’s 1983. When she
gets out into the real world, her basic Debbie Harry bob haircut and slightly ripped tights
would be invisible, so too her smudged harlequin makeup, so it’s a plot imperative for her to
be seen next to Joker. The movie wants the mix of ‘through the ages’ musical fantasy,
asylum ‘chic’, and gritty realism but forgets that Punk and New Wave were part of the street
culture except in some crowd scenes. Why So Serious, Todd?

The way Arthur Fleck’s mind would conjure romance is based in his nostalgia for a more
‘civilized’ time. He was taught about the aspects of correct human social interaction through
a television screen or songs. Joker’s mimicry of a grand Hollywood dame as he confesses to
the murders of the bankers on Murray’s show is his Bette Davis/Katharine Hepburn
moment. Too old/tired/legendary to lose anything by telling people what she thought of the
dead and the living. Joker was planning on televised suicide, but Margot Channing would
kill. Arthur/Joker needs the past, narrative logic dictates Lee needs Joker – hence joins in his
fixation. Ironically the present and the future protesters/rioters/acolytes crave a figurehead
who has a complete lack of interest and curiosity about them. Although there are always
exceptions.

“He has music in him,” Phillips said of Phoenix’s original performance as Fleck/Joker. He said
of Phoenix he’s never encountered such an agile actor. The moment they knew they had in
combination found the Joker as distinct from Fleck is a dance Phoenix improvised to a cello
piece from Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score in the bathroom after Fleck shoots the trio on the
subway.

Maybe Joaquin Phoenix wanted to experiment with form and dance more and that was his
stipulation for signing on for Folie à Deux and breaking his rumored no serialized film cycles
or sequels rule. The general confusion will come from the audience who are expecting Folie
à Deux to be more of what appealed to the people who contributed to the massive box
office and awards success of Joker. It is not weird enough for Phillips to claim Arkham “crazies” are the authors of the work – unless one counts the choice to have the restricted ward for the criminally insane populated by a group of jazz musicians playing and ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ a maddening number of times (spoiler alert the more maddening, means it’s not real).

Why so many words dedicated to Todd Phillips and his comic book films that blush at the
fact they are based on comic book characters despite him choosing to do them and pitch
them? Joker was and remains a curious cultural phenomenon. A patchwork movie with an
undeniably great performance by Phoenix that became more than the sum of whatever
parts were present or inferred. A sequel which is a musical with a vocalist who is renowned
for outré performances and presence being directed to “Do what you are famous for but do
it predominantly as the dollar shop version.” The lead actor who won an Academy Award,
and Golden Globes Award for the same part and set the specific terms for his involvement
giving a feedback loop then fade out performance. Gotham is sacrificed for two locations
and soundstages. So many words because Joker: Folie à Deux is cheap. It cost a lot, but it’s
cheap. Joker fans retrospectively wondering if they genuinely enjoy the first film, cheap.
Because they’ve been given a movie decided upon by three obnoxious bankers salivating at
projected earnings on the subway.

Here’s a joke: What do you get when you cross a comic book asylum courtroom drama musical made to immediately capitalize on your brand loyalty?

Sunk cost fallacy trash.

Grade: D-