“I encountered “Joker” at the Venice Film Festival 5 years ago and was both furious and indignant regarding it. As a response, I had a “review” - readers believed it was popped off too quickly - where I conveyed my anger. I had the privilege of learning that I could have cooled off: I mustered a notice that I had filed haphazardly, and there was an embargo for 5 hours after which I had access.” In this scenario I rationally decided to forgo plot spoilers to protect primary outrage.
The die hard moments for me, are Phillip’s Fleck nearly becoming Joker and calling in live TV, when Murray Franklin’s late night show is hosting him Practicing casual mockery, take precedence. Not because Clay has hands down Arthur doing a play. The reveal of the Joker first appear and standing without uttering a single word is epic. Every mean c), from are rof Franklin’s aiming to clown of decree g lates the eyes of Arthur The crown Fleck sees Franklin dying without a mind two. But Arthur lasts celebrations and failure: No mind he is on live. Arthur hes Frankfurt ash out.
I was shocked in a way that was disturbing. Mainly because I had this unsettling feeling that a certain part of the story came from the 1987 on-air suicide of Pennsylvania political figure R. Budd Dwyer. As shocking as it is, I was quite well acquainted with the media landscape enough to witness unedited footage of him shooting himself. While a lot of it was edited for news reports, at the time, I had enough insider connections to view the raw footage, and honestly, I wish I didn’t. The resemblance between Philips’ direction and the life event was way too exact in my opinion to be pure happenstance. In other words, I thought Oprah’s and Phoenix’s (along with De Niro’s) pieces in the film were, for lack of better terms, slashing oneself in the throat over the claim of cynical opportunism.
If you were curious, now you know. I noted in a review: “In contemporary mainstream films, ‘dark’ and ‘edgy’ are flavors of marketability, and it has particularly comic book where it can be utilized.”
Now I’m once more on the Joker round for “Joker: Folie a Deux Watch on hurawatch,” which, as you have undoubtedly heard, it’s a musical, written and directed, like the first film, by Todd Phillips. Thank God Phillips didn’t write the songs. Mostly it is a jukebox musical with extracts from The Great American Songbook such as “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” or ‘60s International Pop songs like the one the Bee Gees gave life to and later Janis Joplin made famous, “To Love Somebody” and others. My best comment about it would be that it certainly doesn’t do marketing, at least not as one would expect it done.
Before assessing the logic behind turning the second “Joker” film into a musical, we should admit that its reasoning is, arguably, its strongest suit. That is, Arthur Fleck, who here makes a severe distinction between himself as a civilian and himself as a “Joker,” is a profoundly troubled man. His warped imagination may well envision his existence as being inside some sort of a ‘show’. Thus, it would be reasonable to concede that the filmmakers’ intentions are genuine, in this case, falling inside the ‘musical’ frame. This allows the filmmakers to escape some otherwise desperate straits. The movie is narratively, psychologically, and aesthetically incoherent. Nevertheless, it can lean into the first two categories because musicals, by definition, can be narratively and psychologically incoherent and still transcend, you know, actual disbelief.
As the film won't stop telling you, the action begins just after the gruesome murder that rounded off ‘Joker.’ Arthur/Joker is somewhere in custody in one of the dark, satanic mill-style mental wards of Arkham, and on one of his walks to a visit, he is all but winked at by a young woman singing in an unlocked cell. Gaga’s Lee Quinzel is not fully Harley Quinn (DC fans muted her lack of transformation) and so the two conspire to maximize shared captivity as Arthur awaits trial, which Lee was granted mysteriously citizen privileges to attend as a passive viewer. (This is covered well enough, if not entirely convincingly.) Arthur smirky and sulky in his Joker-less face but don’t worry, he gets to wear it a lot, either in song delusions or the reality of the trial. And then he goes, well, ‘Joker.’
This absurdly long film seems to hinge on the trial and the romance. There are bits like Joker as a Southern lawyer that are hilariooous but placed in the movie's 8th or 9th hour, which is a shame.
Ultimately, the wafer-thin story is nothing but the same nihilistic slop that Phillips remixed, genre-wise, in the first “Joker.”
Some early reviews have grumbled that the flick fails to deliver enough in the way of “Joker Fan Service.” This is funny to me; one can appreciate that the character is a cultural icon, and of course he is fictional, but when you reflect on what he represents, what exactly does “Joker Fan Service” mean? You might as well speak of “Charles Manson Fan Service.” It does, better yet, worse yet, say something disturbing and grotesquely twisted about the world we live in.
The only other thing I can positively remark on about the film, other than the detachment to audience appeal, is performance. Both Lady Gaga and Phoenix really seemed to invest into their characterizations and interactions with each other. The diverse performance types they employ while singing, for example, subdued and flawed in their “real lives,” and full-on, professional grade belting in their fantasies. As Gaga manages quite well throughout the film, Phoenix’s mastery ultimately decays into self-centered exhibitionism (his ostensible Joker “dance” looks nothing more than pre-Yoga stretch). But no matter how you look at it, it is impressive, albeit virtuous.