Review: Joker: Folie à Deux

The problem here isn’t that Folie à Deux betrays the first Joker. The first movie was clear about Arthur Fleck’s importance being a laughable self-delusion. Most likely a lot of fans of the first movie are uncomfortable with Folie à Deux because it’s not actually very different from Joker. Like Harleen Quinzel tells Arthur Fleck, “let’s give the people what they want.”
But Folie à Deux doesn’t give the people what they want. It doesn’t even give them what they fucking deserve. Hell, it doesn’t even give those of us who were cautiously looking forward to a Joker musical with Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn the pleasures of, well, that. It’s hard to tell if Todd Phillips thought he was giving anything to anybody, except a two-and-a-half-hour handjob to Joaquin Phoenix. And if Phoenix’s idea of a good time is starving himself and showing his protruding ribs on film, well, good luck to him. His narcissistic wet dream bombing is what he deserves after walking out on Todd Haynes and company five days before shooting was supposed to begin.
The nerds ranting about Joker: Folie à Deux are angry for the wrong reasons. They can see this is a bad movie, but they hate it for emphasizing the subtext of the first movie. Joker‘s ultimate flaw was that, despite its 20-odd minutes of excellence, it’s not about much more than the misery of this one guy. It had moments of genius — the talk show scene is an all-timer — but its critique of neoliberalism and the destruction of support systems really boil down to “this guy’s life sucks.” Joker took on the trappings of Taxi Driver, a nightmare about the monsters that the United States creates abroad and unleashes on American streets, and used them to say “man, crazy dudes sure have it hard, don’t they?” while painting mental illness and violence as the children of violent and unstable women.
I don’t hate Joker. It succeeds at being something that I appreciated more five years ago than I do now. And Folie à Deux mostly follows in its footsteps, serving as a functional companion piece to that movie. Arthur Fleck remains a symptom of a sick world. Gotham is still a cracked reflection of Robert Moses’ New York. There are moments of cleverness in the mix. But everything that was ugly about the first movie gets dialed up to 11 here. I walked out of the theater feeling nauseous and angry, like I’d been complicit in something evil. For all of Joker‘s problems, that wasn’t my experience of it.
Unlike its predecessor, Folie à Deux doesn’t make overtures at being about interesting things after its halfway mark. Early on, there are dalliances with Joker being a sick media creation by a diseased news and culture industry. There are a few genuine laughs in here. The Warner Bros-style cartoon that opens the movie is fun. And the first time Arthur Fleck burst into song, I started cackling with delight — an effect I believe was wholly intended by the movie. But soon afterwards, it stops being fun. It stops even being insightful or clever. The movie turns relentlessly ugly and mean-spirited, no longer pretending to be about anything other than Arthur Fleck’s misery. And it becomes one of the worst theater experiences I can remember.
I mean, shit. Did we need Joaquin Phoenix doing an impression of a Black man in a courtroom? Did we need the Joker getting gang-raped in prison? Did we need Brendan Gleeson playing a corrupt Irish cop who sings in a 2024 movie? Who is this for? What is the point of any of this? At a certain point this feels less like a continuation of the first Joker movie than Joaquin Phoenix starring in a remake of Precious. “Here’s the story of a guy who doesn’t matter and how sad he is” hits different at this moment in time. Are white male serial killers really the most interesting lens you can put on carceral violence in 2024? Because I can think of a few books you could read, Todd Phillips.
Honestly, none of this would have bothered me as much if it weren’t for Harley Quinn. Obviously you have to reimagine Quinn for this universe. I don’t want to see Lady Gaga doing an impression of a Nineties cartoon character. And Gaga handles this incarnation of Quinn well — she successfully captures the mannerisms of every not-quite-homeless woman with BPD I’ve ever met. The performance is not the issue here. The gaping problem, one that stems from the first Joker, is that it place responsibility for the mental illness and violence (yes, this movie pairs those things too) in the hands of a manipulative woman. Quinn manipulates, lies and enables Arthur as long as she can use him, and ultimately tips him over the edge. Arthur is only able to make peace with himself when Quinn drops him for owning up to his murders. Todd Phillips et al looked at one of the most noted abusive relationships in mainstream fiction and went “what if the woman was the abuser actually?”
But the misogyny isn’t new. Joker was just as happy to engage in this nonsense with Penny Fleck. The misogyny is much more explicit in Folie à Deux, but it was present in the first movie too. The world of Todd Phillip’s Joker movies is a hellscape where men turn violent because women hurt them. And fuck Todd Phillips for that. Fuck Joaquin Phoenix for that, and for screwing over Todd Haynes. And honestly fuck Lady Gaga, who’s smart enough to know better than this movie. The legacy of Folie à Deux won’t be ruining Joker; it’ll be that the movie exposes Joker for the turgid, solipsistic misogynistic crap it was always was.
October 17, 2024 @ 4:31 pm
I knew he’d screwed over a film production by walking out, but it was Todd Haynes he did it to? What the hell, Joaquin.
October 18, 2024 @ 7:16 pm
It really says a lot that the current go-to template for a Batman film adaptation now is the Telltale games.
I don’t know what it says (Probably something about the meaninglessness of trying to reinterpret these ideas in the specific way they want to or that the “perfect Batman story” already exists, one that’s only there to be Batman and that any attempt trying to make something “purer” will always end up rehashing something of it? I don’t know) but it really gets my goat. Especially as in both cases, the game does it better.
Connotations of (adaptational) pureness in relation to DC and the general public, there’s certainly an intersect there, now that I think about it. I’m definitely not using all the words right here.
Anyway, it’s disappointing to me especially. As I’ve already seen the interpretation I’d vastly prefer to be incidentally cribbed from (with no recognition of its larger role) and it’s Batwoman.
Failing that, Batman stuff should allowed to be happy. But I doubt we’re in a cultural context for that yet. As it is, on with the Telltale theft.
October 18, 2024 @ 7:19 pm
I’m sure the people behind these want to say something. But they aren’t. They just try for pure Batman. As if that means anything anymore.
(I honestly just want someone else weighing in here, I feel like I’m going mad with all this Telltale stuff)
October 21, 2024 @ 11:53 pm
The first Joker movie was great, and discrediting it by calling it misogynistic is a massive stretch.
And since you have no problem dishing it out, fuck you, Christine Kelley.
November 2, 2024 @ 7:13 pm
Someone gonna delete this asshole’s comment?