“We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse.”
- Barack Obama, at the 2024 Democratic Convention
I can’t go to a bad movie by myself. What, am I gonna make sarcastic remarks to strangers?
- Jerry Seinfeld
2019’s JOKER, starring Joaquin Phoenix, attracted intense controversy upon its release but also praise for Phoenix’ performance, and the direction of Todd Phillips. As I said at the time, it is not a “good” movie in the sense of being entertaining and uplifting, but it was good in the sense of being a film maker’s vision that was expertly presented. This year’s sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Lady Gaga, hasn’t even gotten that much respect. In fact the level of negative press and word of mouth was so hard that I thought: I just have to see this.
“Folie à deux ” is French for “a shared madness”, like two people having the same hallucination. As Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) is put on trial for the murders he’s committed, he is still in Arkham Asylum among the general population. His lawyer offers an insanity defense saying that Arthur is not culpable because “Joker” is a shadow personality who took control of his actions when he killed five people. Arthur is put in a musical therapy class by one of the guards, where he meets “Lee” (Lady Gaga) who followed his case on TV and says she’s a big fan. They bond when she sets the music room on fire in order to attempt an escape. Despite this, she gets released on her own recognisance and becomes one of the people pleading Arthur’s case to the media. Arthur, previously broken down by prison, starts to become more “normal”, which for him means swaying to imaginary music and hysterically laughing until he cries.
This love affair spurs several moments where Arthur (or Lee) breaks out into song, sometimes leading to fully orchestrated bits where they sing popular songs or musical numbers. This is one the elements that most turned critics off to the film. If anything, I find this the most realistic aspect of the movie, precisely because in the real world, nobody acts like that. In real life, if you see everyone around you singing and dancing like they’re in a Broadway musical production for no good reason, that should indicate that you’re suffering a psychotic break.
In the trial, Lee’s encouragement, and the support of fellow inmates and court crowds, causes Arthur to embrace his Joker personality and turn the trial into that much more of a circus, eventually firing his lawyer and successfully petitioning to represent himself in full Joker makeup. But things turn when the prosecution brings in Gary Puddles (Leigh Gill), who confesses how he saw Arthur kill a fellow co-worker. In cross-examination Arthur berates Gary, and the authorities, and his guards, saying they never really knew the real him. And Gary confesses that Arthur was the only guy in the clown company who didn’t make fun of him for his height, the only one who was nice to him, but now he’s become terrifying. Arthur is hauled back to Arkham and abused by the guards for badmouthing them on TV. And when Arthur’s best friend in the ward tries to speak out, they end up killing him.
This death finally breaks Arthur, and in court he finally takes responsibility for his acts, confessing not only to five murder charges, but to smothering his own mother, which appeared to be a natural death. This causes Lee, and several other fans, to leave the court in disgust. Arthur is shortly found guilty, but then some other fans blow up the room with a car bomb outside the courthouse, and help him flee. Arthur goes back to his old neighborhood, where Lee told him she was staying, and finds her, saying they can run away now. But she refuses, saying “all we had was the fantasy” and he ruined it.
Arthur is then captured and sent back to Arkham. One day he’s in the hallway and a fellow inmate comes up and tells him a joke. A psychopath sees a clown in a bar. He comes up and tells the clown, “I used to be a big fan of yours but now I realize you’re a fucking disappointment.” Then he offers to buy the clown a drink and says “I’m going to give you what you fucking deserve.” And then the inmate shivs Arthur in the gut. And as Arthur bleeds out, the psycho is in the background, slicing his own face with a knife.
Odd, isn’t it, that when you give people license to be irrational and violent, that sometimes they direct that violence at the person who inspired them?
As in the first movie, Folie à Deux is sold by the intense performance of Phoenix as a physical and mental wreck, whose circumstances are that much more grim than before. Meanwhile Lady Gaga’s character is a literal embodiment of the love affair Arthur has with his fan club, people choosing to spread his insanity to the outside world and then turning on him when he no longer wants to be the star of their show.
With the first movie, a lot of critics and pundits complained that Phillips was glorifying his anti-social “incel” subject by making him a protagonist. And yet when Arthur receives his comeuppance, no one wants to see that. At the end of it, he’s basically just a sad clown, who was never good at anything, has never accomplished anything, and for all the chaos and destruction he caused, has to be rated as a total failure.
JOKER, the original movie, was deeply unpleasant, by design. Folie à Deux is even more deeply unpleasant, by design. I guess I read more worth into these movies than a lot of people. But whatever value is in these movies may not be enough for you to watch. If anything, the overwhelmingly negative reaction to JOKER: Folie à Deux tells me that Americans don’t want to bring back a deeply unpleasant, psychotic clown in unnatural face paint four years after he left the stage.