GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★1/2
Rated: MA15+
Directed by: Todd Phillips
Written by: Scott Silver, Todd Phillips, Bob Kane
Produced by: Josephe Garner, Todd Phillips, Emma Tillinger Koskoff
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Zazie Beetz, Steve Coogan, Harry Lawtey, Leigh Gill, Ken Leung, Jacob Lofland, Bill Smitrovich and Sharon Washington.
Madness of two
Folie à deux (French for ‘madness of two’), also known as shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder (SDD), is a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are “transmitted” from one individual to another.
An emancipated Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) is in jail. He’s never been more like Arthur Fleck. He takes his pills. The jailers (Brendan Gleeson) joke with him, ‘You got a joke for us today?’
But Arther Fleck says nothing.
It all changes when he sees her. Lee (Lady Gaga).
Lee sings in music therapy.
She tells Arthur that she understands him. When Joker killed Murray on live TV, she was thinking I just wish he’d kill that guy. And then, he did.
Arthur starts having his fantasies again.
The Joker is his shadow self, his other self. A product of childhood abuse.
His lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener) wants Arthur to pled insanity.
But with Lee, Arthur’s proud to be Joker. He wants to be Joker.
The saints being to march again.
Returning director Todd Phillips (he also directed, Joker (2019)), has taken a different perspective with the character in, Joker: Folie À Deux.
Instead of the DC world of Gotham City, the fantasy is in Arthur’s head.
And in his head, everything’s a musical.
There’s A LOT of singing. Too much singing.
And we all know Lady Gaga can sing (and here too, Joaquin Phoenix), but that didn’t save the movie for me.
The film’s a contrast of a bland and depressing prison and the sad life of Arthur Fleck juxtaposed with his fantasy as the Joker in a sing along with Lee.
When Joker represents himself in court, the fantasy bleeding into reality, parading with a southern American accent, it jars. The fantasy not so endearing; the crossover into reality misfiring and building to that depressing point of difference that this isn’t set in the fantasy world of Gotham City.
This is an unpacking of Arthur Fleck’s mental health.
Set to a musical.
It’s depressing.
In spite of the theatrics (l don’t actually like musicals), the tone was bland. So neither the fantasy nor the depressing reality had the right tone or play off each other in quite the right way.
Unfortunately (I was really looking forward to this sequel!), Joker: Folie À Deux is disappointing.