Joker: Folie à Deux

There’s a theory that, after the unexpected success of gross-out horror The Human Centipede (First Sequence), director Tom Six decided to run off the fans of his film by making The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) so disgusting that it would force viewers to retroactively question why they liked the original.

There’s a sneaking suspicion that Todd Phillips is doing something similar with Joker: Folie à Deux, sequel to the billion-dollar-grossing Joker. A return to the squalid, Batman-less Gotham of the original, with Joaquin Phoenix returning to the mesmerizing, pathetic, fascinating, terrifying part that garnered him an Oscar, seems like an easy sell. But once audiences get there, they’ll be confronted with a gruelingly miserable psychological study of a depraved, self-pitying mind that leaves no room for pity – but does squeeze in a bunch of musical numbers.

The previous film was controversial and divisive before anyone saw a single frame, with fears it would spark a new wave of Columbines. That never happened, of course, because Phoenix mined deep and previously untouched questions of the nature of a monster. The Joker, cinematically, has been by turns a prankster, a thug, and chaos incarnate. Indeed, one of the most memorable aspects of Heath Ledger’s embodiment of the Clown Prince of Crime was that he had no singular backstory. Joker was an origin story, ugly and brutal, that forced audiences to consider how much environment shapes people, and to question the limits of their own sympathy.

The major miracle about the original was that audiences actually responded to its over-the-top psychological drama. It’s arguably that response – plus the mass shootings that never happened – that have inspired Philips and Phoenix to team up again for a seemingly unplanned sequel.

Joker: Folie à Deux poses another of those questions implicit in the Joker mythos: How does he keep getting back out onto the streets? The vehicle for that discussion is his trial for the five murders he was known to have committed in the first film (as he giggles to himself, the cops and courts still don’t know he suffocated his mother). But the real question quickly becomes, who is on trial? Is it, as D.A. Harvey Dent (a suitably smug Lawtey) makes the accusation, Arthur Fleck, the twisted little man who created the Joker persona to get away with murder? Is it, as defense attorney Maryanne Stewart (Keener) contends, Arthur Fleck, the man with multiple personality disorder who became Joker as a response to childhood trauma? Or is it, as obsessed acolyte Lee (Lady Gaga) believes, Joker, the messiah of a new era who will tear down the dishonest old world?

Whichever it is, they’re all played by Phoenix with that strange, mumbling, wretched vibe that he perfected in the first film. These arguments about who or what he is go on around him, making him the portrait of disassociation. This is where Phillip’s thesis gets interesting, because Joker: Folie à Deux isn’t really about Joker or Fleck. It’s about the perceptions of him. The only person who really seems to understand his nature and deceits is Arkham Asylum guard Jackie (Gleeson in full-on bull mode), which really complicates Phillip’s talking points about societal dysfunction and power. How can the vicious prison guard be the good guy? Well, maybe by not murdering five people in cold blood.

Phillips sets the stage for a courtroom procedural – and then rolls a hand grenade into the middle of that weighty stage with a series of song and dance numbers. It’s a romp through the Great American Songbook handled by Gaga (a Grammy-winning natural) and Phoenix (who is … not). These sequences are beautifully choreographed and suitably bizarrely executed, touching on the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals and Seventies TV variety shows equally, and serve as a hyperbolic metaphor for Arthur’s disassociation. They never serve as simple relief from the unrelenting grimness of Joker: Folie à Deux. Rather, they are a sometimes befuddling extension of the ongoing discussion from the first film, about whether Arthur is truly insane or just an average guy with mental health issues that don’t reach the level of legal defense.

Do they work? Maybe? Phillips has undoubtedly taken the wildest creative leaps imaginable for what one could expect from a nine-figure-budget comic book movie. It’s his One From the Heart or Shock Treatment, unexpected musicals that are still hard to parse. These numbers may feel more in keeping with the film’s rhythms on repeated viewings, but the inherent grimness makes for a tough rewatch. It may be the first time a big-budget comic book movie ends up as part of the programming for the American Cinematheque’s legendary Bleak Week of depressing movies, and no number of Umbrellas of Cherbourg or The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour homages can ever lift that mood.

But then again, that’s kind of Phillip’s point. For every musical number, there’s an aside that reminds the audience of America’s great folk villains – Bernhard Goetz, John Wayne Gacy, O.J. Simpson, Ted Bundy – and Joker: Folie à Deux wants us to look long and hard at our attitudes to them. Appearances by Zazie Beetz and especially Leigh Gill, who played Arthur’s neighbors in Joker and return as star witnesses for the prosecution, are a deliberate kick in the teeth for anyone who has spent too much time feeling sorry for poor old Arthur. If you wept for him in the first film, Phillips uses the second to ask why – and the answer may be deeply awkward for some people.