“Joker: Folie à Deux” (2024) is the sequel to “Joker” (2019), a standalone DC Comics film which was not intended to have a sequel though it was supposed to be the first film to launch a DC Black film series. Gotham is a thinly disguised late 1970s/80s Manhattan, and the movie starts right before the prosecution of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) begins for the murders that he committed in the preceding film. Arthur lives in Arkham Asylum and sees Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), in a less secure section of the facility. They instantly fall in love, and she is the only bright spot in Arthur’s life, but does she really understand him?
“Don’t hate the player, hate the game” is a hard adage to follow when it comes to director and cowriter Todd Phillips. To get funding, Phillips uses the Joker as the Trojan Horse to hide his concept because otherwise no studio would back an art house film about some sad sack guy who finds love and acceptance by committing brutal murders but loses himself in all the ensuing hype surrounding his trial. Phillips’ story is about the innate dignity and love that everyone deserves even someone as talentless with no redeeming or unique qualities as Arthur, but Phillips does it by not giving most of his other characters such respect or understanding and making them the worst versions of themselves to make a bleak movie. A bleak movie is great, but Phillips is really putting everyone else on trial: the Joker’s groupies, the legal system, the press, the Arkham guards. “Joker: Folie à Deux” is like the anti- “Megalopolis” (2024), and the truth is messier and falls somewhere in between optimism and condemnation.
Arthur’s time in Arkham has been a dehumanizing horrible time. He is looking skinnier than ever, and he is no longer telling jokes. The guards are cheerful, but abusive though they could be worse even on a sadistic movie scale. One guard, Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson), shows some good will to Arthur. Arthur’s attorney Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener) sees the pitiful side of Arthur and does not believe that he is the Joker, but argues Arthur has dissociative identity disorder. “Joker: Folie à Deux” begins with a cartoon with a “Looney Tunes” vibe, which basically embodies her argument and is like an animated recap in spirit of the first movie and how she filters those events through her argument. If Phillips commits a cardinal sin, it is how little research and time he devotes to mental disorders. Using a literal shadow self to depict Arthur’s alleged alter ego is going to confuse many since shadow work is only just beginning to enter the mainstream. Armchair or pop psychology is more rigorous than the psychobabble that this movie uses to discuss Arthur’s alleged condition. Because Phillips’ ideas are not rooted, the movie flounders by making this question the central one: is Arthur putting on an act, is he really the Joker or is the Joker a different side of him? It kind of does not matter because for Phillips, it is about the conditions and systematic failures that put him in this position and how unapologetic the system is for getting him there. Phillips, like the onscreen system, tortures Fleck to castigate everyone.
Most of the inmates are not individuated except for Ricky (Jacob Lofland), who is not the sharpest tool in the shed, is too trusting for the environment and seems to be Arthur’s only friend, but it is unclear why, and he seems to be an innocent. Another unnamed inmate (Theodore Martello) watches Arthur and stands apart from the others, leaning against a wall, assessing everyone’s behavior. The inmates seem to see him as a folk hero whom they can live through vicariously. Joker is every inmate’s intrusive thoughts personified. All the asylum action revolves around him as if none of them have their own personal dramas. If “Joker: Folie à Deux” was only told from Arthur’s perspective this creative choice would be acceptable, but it is not so Phillips is basically guilty of treating them like every character in the film treats Arthur: as a symbol of a greater issue, not a human being When Lee appears, her attention feels different from the adulation of other inmates for a couple of obvious reasons: she is a woman, and Lady Gaga plays her. Through Arthur, Phillips holds Lee to a higher standard than even the men who admire but harm Arthur: does she love Arthur for himself or is she just another user?
Once Arthur meets Lee, he looks fleshed out. His hair is lustrous black. His back is a little straighter. Their meeting unfortunately coincides with his trial, and for his lawyer to save him, he cannot resemble the Joker, which is exactly what happens when their relationship heats up. Lee is an unpredictable wild card. While at Arkham, she is eager to catch a glimpse of Arthur, and spend time with him, so every time Lee appears, the scene is dynamic. “Joker: Folie à Deux” would be a better movie if it was told solely through Lee’s unhinged eyes. In that scenario, if Arthur questions Lee, her answers would have been an epic twist that he is the vulnerable one, not her. Because the story is told more from his point of view, that tension does not exist, and it is a missed opportunity. She screams woman with an agenda, and the red flags are there, but Arthur is oblivious. From the minute that they meet, her image contrasts with her actions. Phillips broke the cardinal rule of storytelling: never let the most interesting character/actor go off screen, and that person is not Phoenix, who looks more like a cross between Robert DeNiro and Matt Dillon. Ms. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta made every moment count, and it felt as if she had more to offer than she was allowed to show.
“Joker: Folie à Deux” becomes a musical once love becomes a possibility for Arthur, and it is a sardonic reprise of classic 1950s musicals. Think Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett collaborations with a seventies Sonny and Cher variety television show aesthetic. It also serves as a slight rebuke from Phillips to classic Hollywood as if his idea of movies lured him into a fantasy world and ultimately betrayed him. Lee says to Arthur that things always work out in a musical, but Phillips thinks that it would be edgy to see how that would play out in Gotham where are no happy Hollywood endings, which means one of the greatest performers is restrained from really letting loose when the singing commences. After a musical, people should leave the theater singing the song or wanting to listen to it on repeat, and even the most fervent Little Monster will not want the onscreen rendition but hope that her accompanying CD will give her more latitude so she can belt out those showtunes. She could hardly hold back in one song where Lee is seated behind a keyboard. Phillips would want her to outshine Phoenix so making her tone it down makes sense but is aggravating if the movie is supposed to be a musical. Phoenix is that one guy in the club who has one go to move, which seems decent and maybe even a little impressive initially, but as he keeps repeating it, it becomes dull. For Phoenix, it is a backbend with his arms stretched out. Phoenix’s whisper singing was not as emotionally laden as it needed to be.
Unfortunately, Phillips also uses the most trite and dull format to structure the proceedings: a trial. Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey), who only stands out at the prosecution table because he has lines, is the prosecutor. Judge Herman Rothwax (Bill Smitrovich) is presiding under challenging circumstances and wants to stop the courtroom from becoming a circus, but it is too late. As Harvey finds it more difficult to face the reality of his existence, as a loser, he must choose between regressing into his fantasy as the Joker or accept that he is just a messed-up man.
The trial reveals a lot of details deliberately omitted in “Joker,” which left Arthur’s morality ambiguous, so Phillips retroactively redeems Arthur in a way that he did not earn in the first movie. As a result, this sequel makes “Joker” seem better in hindsight. While “Joker: Folie à Deux” is at its most watchable when Lee is with Arthur, the most powerful moment in the film is between Arthur when he faces his former coworker, Gary Puddles (Leigh Gill). The movie did not have to be two hours eighteen minutes. That single scene was perfect because it is the only time that Phillips shows Arthur as his full self before he reverts to his one-dimensional self and treats another character as a full human being who does not exist to be found wanting. After that point, it would have been more powerful to retain that nuance. Arthur is both: a sad sack and the Joker, not just one of those people in the way that most people dismiss him.
Ultimately “Joker: Folie à Deux” is a condemnation of entertainment, including DC Comics. Phillips refuses to give a villain movie to moviegoers. He wants to condemn us for reducing a man into amusement, not a person. Life is not like a musical or a DC Comics film. It is about complex socio-economic issues that people ignore for pat answers, but the joke is on Phillips. Many people never wanted a Joker movie so if he did not commit the same misdeed that he tut tuts, then the cycle would be broken. Men like Arthur would not be used as figureheads to give us hope or scapegoated instead of loved. Phillips made the male equivalent of Tess of the D’Urbervilles with an ending that ties it back to Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” (2008). The actors gave more than was on the page for their underwritten, two-dimensional characters, which may speak to Phillips’ direction, but not his and cowriter Scott Silver’s narrative. Also, maybe Phillips should see a therapist to address not feeling seen and inadequate after achieving fame and success instead of making his next movie. Just saying.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
My theory about Lee is that she genuinely loved that Joker side of Arthur and is heartbroken that he is not going to be the man that has no impulse control and will just act on instinct regardless of morality. She strikes me as a woman dissatisfied with the life that she was supposed to lead and believes that anything different from her known experience is automatically grittier and real: poverty, madness, violence. Her money explains how she can get away with so much, which also explains why you do not need Wayne Enterprises in this version. She is the rich person meddling with the little guy except as an appropriator; however, her inability to navigate the world in a healthy way is authentic. If she has a mental health issue and/or is neurodivergent, it is not an act, but because Phillips is such a mess, it is impossible to figure out. She is a pyromaniac, compulsively lies, seems to resist self-harming and forms unhealthy attachments. She liked the attention but felt incapable of getting it independent from Joker. With the ending, it is possible that if another Joker arises, i.e. the one from “The Dark Knight” who slits his own mouth with the knife that he uses to stab Arthur, she will automatically go to him, which will put her in deeper waters than she is prepared to handle in terms of the threat that the psychopath would pose, which would result in her escalating in order to survive.
