‘Joker: Folie à Deux’: truth isn’t truth

Author’s Note: this review spoils the ending of 2019’s Joker. If you still haven’t seen that film, don’t read this review. Also, if you haven’t seen that film, don’t see this one. This film picks up months into the aftermath of the previous. For all things, context is important.

This story should have ended four years ago. Joker was a one-off, a fluke, a moment, a unique snapshot of a particular point in history capturing the popular zeitgeist in a way nobody could have expected and causing fear among the public. Yet once the film found success – earning over one billion dollars at the box office, winning numerous awards, and with legions of fans obsessing over a figure who they (incorrectly in my opinion) believed represented themselves – it was obvious there had to be a sequel. What worked once has to work again. That’s the entertainment industry.

It should be noted as well that Joker: Folie à Deux definitively disproves my interpretation of Joker. Having already established its protagonist’s tenuous grasp on reality the entire final act of the film read to me as the fantasy of a narcissist with delusions of grandeur. The sudden shift of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) from unemployed birthday clown and failed stand-up comic to homicidal talk show guest and leader of a populist uprising just seemed too convenient to be real. It was so in-line with the character’s demand to feel important, even if for the worst behavior imaginable. Instead of letting that ambiguity hang, Warner Bros, Phoenix, and director and co-writer Todd Phillips had to return. While it may not have been narratively necessary, it is understandable. There was too much money and attention to be had. After all, that’s entertainment.

To their credit, Phillips and Phoenix both understand the sui generous nature of their previous success and, unlike some other recent historical anomalies (or should-have-been historical anomalies) craft an intriguing commentary on what happens when delusion overtakes reality. Or at least, that’s my reading of the film. But my theories have been disproven before.

At the start of the film, Arthur Fleck, aka Joker, is a broken figure buried within Gotham City’s decrepit penal system. Phoenix, continuing his legacy of physical commitment, trudges through his prison life with one displaced shoulder blade protruding from his ghoulish frame. His brief fling with notoriety, complete with an “awful” made for television movie, makes him a favorite of the guards for both banter and ridicule. Even Arthur himself is defeated. No longer laughing, no longer smiling, and no longer telling his signature horrible jokes. By all means his upcoming trial for crimes which were broadcast live on national television should be the end of his notoriety and whatever movement he may have inspired. However, just like in real life, some fans can never let go.

Cut off from the public, Fleck’s revival comes through a narrative contrivance that connects him with Lady Gaga’s Harley “Lee” Quinn, a fan so obsessive that she claims to have watched Joker’s “amazing” made for TV movie twenty times. From here, Folie à Deux swings from a fairly standard grimy prison film to a sort of romantic-musical courtroom drama. It’s also in Harley’s fascination with Joker that we first come to see why such classification is as artificial as the clown make-up Arthur wears when presenting himself as Joker.

As with so many people in the real world, Quinn sees Joker as a distorted symbol of rebellion. For her, and the people like her, he is retribution against a society that they, for whatever reason, feel has turned against them. In turn, through Quinn, Fleck receives the devotion that he’d always desired. It’s the same type of abusive cycle that fueled Joker and Harley’s dynamic through myriad media and adaptations, until Quinn’s turn from brainwashed villainess trapped in a toxic relationship to heroic figure in a healthy same-sex one. Interestingly, Folie à Deux flips the power dynamic between Harley and Joker. This is about as close as the film comes to reflecting the characters’ comic book origin. In fact, while Joker was a 80’s Martin Scorsese movie in DC cosplay, Folie à Deux barely contains any DC material at all beyond a couple of names. There isn’t even a DC logo at the start, only a throwback Warner Bros. cartoon. This is a sequel to Joker, but not a Joker movie. And some fans won’t be able to accept that.

The negative backlash to Folie à Deux has been as quick as it was for Joker. Yet, whereas the backlash against the previous film came from worry that it would cause real life violence, the backlash this time seems to have come from the people who wished for the real life violence. Obsessive fans, both in real life and in the film itself, often wrap so much of their personality in the character that any criticism of one becomes criticism of the other. Any portrayal of the character is a portrayal of them, thus it becomes impossible for such supporters to accept that the object of their affection could be in any way flawed or weak. While this could be Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver’s commentary on the self-delusion of people in toxic relationships, it’s my opinion that there’s a much bigger theme at work here. Keeping in mind of course that my reading of the previous film was definitively wrong.

It’s the love of these obsessive, cult-like fans that fuels Arthur to take increasingly outlandish action. While the people concerned with his well being ask him to tamp down his behavior, the cheering crowds urge him to become more of the Joker that they believe they know and identify with. They don’t care when he’s Arthur Fleck, an unhealthy man who committed several obvious crimes, they only care that he is Joker. The more outrageous he is, the more violent and deplorable, even sexual assaulting a woman during his hearing, the more they love him. For them, he is entertainment.

Although Fleck’s previous condition of uncontrollable laughter seems less pervasive in this film – popping up just as abruptly but seldom to the same degree – his personal and mental issues remain consistent. Fleck believes he is an all-important figure who deserves the world’s attention. When he didn’t receive that attention, in the first film, he lashed out. Yes, he was bullied. Yes, he was abused. Yes, he was fed lies that led to his delusions. However, rather than receive the support he needed (which I believe is the correct message of Joker) he was left to dive deeper into his narcissism, moving himself from victim to victimizer. Also as with the first film, Phoenix is phenomenal in the part. His subtle shifts in behavior make us believe that there is a genuine break between Fleck and Joker, he and his shadow. He is equal parts meek and menacing, as capable of reacting to conflict by curling into the fetal position (or into a refrigerator) as he is of stabbing his tormenter in the neck. It was only when giving into this violent urges that he gets the attention he wants, thus encouraging him to embrace that part of himself.

As with the first film, Fleck projects himself as an everyman when he is, in fact, a very sick and fragile individual in need of psychiatric help. Also like the first film, his phony populism finds an audience willing to give him the attention he craves so long as he gives them the outrage, the destruction, the calls for violence that keep them entertained. Thus a cycle of viciousness perpetuates itself to the point where Arthur finds joy in watching his followers inflict pain on others in his name. They threaten witnesses and prosecutors trying to hold him accountable for his actions. They come to his court appearances in matching make-up and don his signature suit like a uniform. They riot, and he watches, happily, knowing that he is finally important. Without them, without their attention, he is a tiny, irrelevant, unremarkable person. With them, with their slavish devotion and simmering bloodlust, he feels like the most powerful person in the world.

For her part, Lady Gaga plays the role of Harley Quinn very well. Granted, this is not the Harley Quinn people know, and those looking for a Margot Robbie style psychotic-pixie-dream-girl will be sorely disappointed. Rather, Gaga’s take is Lady MacBeth-like in her manipulation. She’s volatile, in the same way that Fleck is, but without the years of abuse and resultant self-doubt. If anything, she’d be more dangerous figure than Fleck if not limited by a greater understanding of the social norms which keep us all from cartoonish acts of violence. More importantly, Quinn provides Fleck with the female attention he’d previously fantasized.  This fantasy element is typified by Folie à Deux’s most divisive element: the music.

More than any other genre of film, television, or theatre, musicals are artificial. Not only do we have to suspend our disbelief for the story and the characters, but we have to further suspend for the fact that the story is happening to these characters while in song. At this point having a character break out in a musical number in the real world is already a tired gag, so Folie à Deux takes it a step further by having its lead characters be just as mentally ill as those in musicals would appear. Also, like in musicals, the performance numbers grind the narrative to a complete halt. While a few of the numbers are very well produced, with some inventive staging and the same level of grime and attention Phillips uses throughout the film, it is frustrated to once again pause for a pastiche of Sonny and Cher, for example. Yet it’s in these pauses that we witness another level of the artificial relationship between Joker and Harley, or Joker and his fans. This isn’t love. This is entertainment. Furthermore, even if Joker obsessives may hate it, there are few things more Jokeresque than following a gritty crime drama with a romantic musical courtroom procedural.

Yet, for all its own artifice, Joker: Folie à Deux focuses on the danger in not recognizing the artificial. His fans, real or otherwise, don’t love Arthur Fleck. They love Joker. They love the character they see giving unhinged, grandiose speeches on television. If he were to ever wash that make-up off, his followers would see a fragile man of limited cognitive abilities. Physically unhealthy and mentally unstable. They would see that he isn’t some great champion for their cause. They would hear that he doesn’t speak for them and their disputes against society. Instead, they would witness a boring, weak, meager man who only cares about himself and his own grievances. A man who would burn the world to make his life easier.

Joker: Folie à Deux highlights why demagogues, both fictional and real, can never allow their fantasy to fade. Even the slightest hint of reality, the smallest break in their illusion, causes their entire identity, and those who have invested themselves in that identity, to crumble. Thus it’s in all of their best interest to believe the lies. What we see, they don’t see. What we hear, they don’t hear. What we know, they don’t know. They alone get to decide what is true. Everything else is fake news. And they – the fans, the supporters, the devotees, the cult – will continue believing that as long as they are given what they want.

They want the anger, the violence, the outrage, the destruction, the carnage.
For them, that’s the show.

That’s entertainment.

 

Rating 4 / 5