Joker: Folie à deux, the grimace soup (review)
This sequel to Joker, in the form of a depressive musical, is so dreary and ineffective that it almost seems like a complete scuttling on the part of Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix.
Five years after its critical and commercial triumph, what remains of Joker ? It is not a film journalist looking for a subject for his next editorial who asks the question, but Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix themselves, in Joker: Folie à deuxa sequel devoted almost entirely to rehashing the events of the first film. The fact that this Joker 2 was announced as a musical comedy that could raise hopes for a flamboyant proposal, something a little crazy and unique, from a director and an actor who respectively won a Golden Lion and an Oscar for the previous component, in addition to having exploded the box office (more than a billion dollars in revenue), and therefore being able to afford almost anything.
Failure: Joker 2 feels like a freezing shower. The result is so monotonous, so empty of ideas, desire and energy, that one almost comes to wonder if this departure from the road is not the consequence of a self-destructive impulse, as if Todd Philips and Joaquin Phoenix had suddenly decided to break their toy, to sabotage their lucrative association rather than capitalize on their success. To do, basically, what their kamikaze clown character would have done: explode everything in their path, then contemplate with a smile on their lips the ruins left by the great fire. The “folie à deux” of the title is perhaps also that of the filmmaker and the actor.
In any case, we have rarely seen an episode 2 as stuck in the memory of the first film as this one. The story of Folie à deux revolves around the trial of Arthur Fleck (Phoenix), tried for crimes committed in Joker 1and that a young prosecutor named Harvey Dent would like to see burned in the electric chair. Argument which gives rise to a long and gloomy trial film, rehashing the most salient facts of the previous film with the help of its secondary characters (invited to parade in the witness box), in the service of a “reflection” on spectacle justice and a questioning of Fleck’s madness – is he really a “split” man, possessed by a demonic double, or just a frustrated showman overplaying madness to obtain the adoration of the crowd?
Analyzing Fleck’s madness is a way of holding up a mirror to the first film, or rather to the reception of this one, which has been accused by certain commentators of romanticizing the incels or mass killers. Criticisms that Todd Phillips obviously took very seriously, to the point of fleeing at full speed in the opposite direction, taking great care to avoid here any titillation of our base instincts as spectators eager for violence and seditious spectacle, and not to especially not to glorify his antihero. It’s a bit of a syndrome Magnum Force (the second Inspector Harrywhich deconstructed the character of the supposedly fascist cop played by Clint Eastwood), but then a Magnum Force completely limp. Over Folie à deuxthe characters evoke a TV film retracing the abuses of Arthur Fleck, the broadcast of which would have contributed to making the Joker a popstar in the eyes of the crazy marginalized people of Gotham – a TV film which we end up understanding is a lamentable turnip. At this point, we no longer know whether Todd Phillips is in the register of self-criticism or pure self-hatred.
The only character in the film to encourage Fleck to embrace his nature as aentertainer anarchist is Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga), met in singing lessons given to patients at Arkham Asylum. Gaga is OK in her usual “black burlesque” style, half Moulin Rouge, halfAmerican Horror Storybut, in terms of musical comedy, Folie à deux is sad. As has been said, there was something brave in imagining a Joker 2 in the form of musicalwhy then settle for so little on this level? Todd Phillips limits himself three-quarters of the time to filming Phoenix covering jazzy standards by Sinatra and others in a sinister voice, or sketching out a few dance steps opposite Gaga in ordinary pastiches of sixties variety shows.
We almost choke when we think back to the fact that director of photography Lawrence Sher had cited Favorite by Coppola and his magical Vegasian sparkles as one of the influences of the film (at the end, a shot vaguely suggests it). And we stiffen in our seats as soon as Phoenix starts singing and we understand that he’s going to spend the next five minutes killing “Bewitched” or “For once in my life” under the pale neon light of Arkham. All on stage by Vincente Minnelli is scrupulously cited, because his legendary mantra “ The world is a stage / The stage is a world » could be the credo of the Joker, but also because it is an obligatory passage, almost a cream pie, of films which intend to theorize on the musical. The reference, very academic, is not surprising from a filmmaker who had largely copied The Waltz of the Puppets And Taxi Driver In Joker first of the name. Which brings us to a final hypothesis to explain the lack of juice in this sequel. Neither artistic seppuku nor moralizing contrition, it would just be the consequence of a major breakdown of inspiration – Martin Scorsese having never made a film Waltz of the Pantins 2 or Taxi Driver 2Todd Phillips had no film to ape this time.
Joker: Folie à deuxby Todd Phillips, with Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson… In theaters October 2.
