Movie: Joker: Folie a Deux
Reviewer: K G Kline
Not much is sacred and even less is spared in Todd Phillips' cold, brutal conclusion to the Joker saga, which began with 2019's "The Joker." Joaquin Phoenix won an Academy Award for best actor for his controversial take on the character, winning the first Academy Award ever presented to an actor in a superhero film.
The film was highly praised by critics and fans alike, despite, and possibly because of, its bleak departure from the character's traditional canon. Set two years later, the sequel, "The Joker: Folie a Deux," is probably the most complex story ever to emerge from a comic book. It's exploration of the psychology of the Batman universe isn't entirely new. In the 1980's the comic writers Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns) and Allen Moore (Watchman) turned comics on their heads when they independently explored the psychology of superheroes and villains.
Moore's graphic novel, "The Killing Joke," was particularly influential in turning Batman and Joker into real people with identifiable psychiatric problems. The book ends with the Joker revealing to Batman that they both suffer from the same mental illness, it was only their wealth and upbringing that set them on different paths. That's heavy stuff, and "Joker 2" is full of such revelations.
As the film begins Arthur Fleck has been locked up for two years in Arkham Asylum, a maximum-security psychiatric prison. Phillips allows the prison to become a character in itself, it's bleak walls and primitive environment offers no comfort to Fleck or the viewer. We see Fleck waking each morning and being led to the bathroom to pour his urine into the sink. Phillips wants us to feel lost, isolated, and hopeless. Fleck has been reduced to a barren, drugged, and emotionless existence as he waits for his death-penalty trial. We can't help but feel sympathetic to Phoenix's insane serial killer.
Phillips depicts incarceration as far more villainous than the criminals housed within. Arkham's guards are cruel bullies who enjoy persecuting and humiliating the inmates. In the film's only performance that rivals Phoenix's, the great Irish actor Brendon Gleeson plays a particularly abusive guard who delights in controlling Arthur's mind so he can at least control something. Everyone is a victim of something in Gotham City.
Here's where it should be pointed out that these characters are not simple stereotypes. Remember Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?" Phoenix and Gleeson step it up a notch in one of this year's best dual performances. We're peeling back layers here, and that is what this film does best. Enter Lady Gaga as Lee Quenzel, AKA Harley Quinn. Quenzel is another inmate, housed in the prison's minimum-security ward;she lives a world away from Arthur. As expected, Quenzel quickly befriends Fleck. We know this relationship from the comics.
She's a violent, funny lunatic who joins him on his crime sprees. Not this time. Gaga plays her as a depressed and manipulative groupie who's checked herself into Arkham Asylum just to be near her idol only to end up becoming just another person trying to manipulate him. Quenzel may be the only character in the film who understands the power of fame. She doesn't want Arthur Fleck. She wants the force-of-nature that The Joker represents to the lost masses holding vigil outside the prison and courthouse.
We're left to question if Fleck's sociopath Joker is a vital part of society, and is his return to sanity in his best interest? As critics and fans have noted, the film deconstructs everything the first film embraced. If you loved and identified with the Joker's ability to break free from social norms, you will feel very oppressed by Phillips' sequel.
The film plays out as a dark exercise in psychology and idolatry, one that is clearly based on current events. It's a warning to sociopaths and groupies alike. What force draws us like moths to the flame, and who ultimately controls the flame?