Joker: Folie à Deux ★★★½
TODD Phillips takes a big swing with the sequel to his 2019 mega-hit Joker and mostly succeeds.
Joker Folie à Deux is a quieter film, but no less angry in its character study of mental illness and commentary on the public’s response to fame, or in this case, infamy.
It’s also driven by music, both in a literal sense (yes, characters do sing from time to time) and its incorporation within the narrative.
Phillips uses music and performance to highlight emotions in ways that mostly feel quite natural within the tone and approach of the overall film.
It’s still a big risk to have Joker pondering his future through song and dance, but it’s also no different to other dramas that use the power of music as a central theme.
In this case, it’s whether Joker and his new muse Harlee Quinlevin, played by Lady Gaga, will use their experience of music to soothe or provoke the savage beast within.
In a stylistic flourish and attempt to set a semi-comic tone, Phillips starts the film with an extended animation of Joker and his shadow wrestling for control of his body and mind, only to be beaten into submission by the police.
This harks back to one of the key questions of the original film – whether the brutalised child who became the failed comedian Arthur Fleck or his psychopathic alter-ego Joker is to blame for his murderous rampage that culminated on live national television.
The sequel delves deeper into this question during the trial which is again side-tracked by the ongoing hero-worship from anarchic sections of the public for the Joker and the challenge to the establishment that he represents.
The sequel takes up shortly after the end of the first film with Fleck in prison awaiting trial. His lawyer is trying to basically use a defence of insanity, but is up against not only the views of the State’s psychiatrists but Fleck himself who seems either indifferent to his fate or, on some occasions, intent on sabotaging his slim chances of avoiding the death penalty.
Gaga as Fleck’s muse and Brendan Gleeson as his nemesis are both good in their roles, but this was always going to be Jaochin Phoenix’s film.
Once again, this terrific actor is mesmerising as this fascinating protagonist and antagonist wrestling for control of the one body and mind.
You never know what his character is going to say or do at any point of the film and he is front and centre onscreen for almost the entire running time.
Can you win the Best Actor Oscar for the same character in films five years apart?
Joker Folie à Deux could almost not be considered a comic-based film at all, but I’d rather its dark themes and terrific acting any time over the emptiness of other recent offerings.
Watched at the cinema.