Synopsis - While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur Fleck not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that's always been inside him.
Cast - Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson
Crew - Todd Phillips (Director/Writter), Scott Silver (Writer)
Runtime - 138 minutes
"Let's give the people what they want."
I admit I have spent too much time thinking about this movie after I saw it on theaters last Sunday, while my first review was made trying to understand the implication of what this movie was trying to "teach" the audience, I don't think I should have seen it that way. After all, I am starting to think Todd Phillips could not care at all what other people thought of him and his films, beyond executives and people in the industry.
Since my first watch on Sunday, I've rewatched both Joker and Joker: Folie à Deux and found out that there are even deeper themes to both movies and a direct connection to the musical aspects of the sequel than I expected.
Disenfranchised people are always trying to find a community or a symbol to relate with, this is true to any group, and it can come in many different flavors, for joker, there was a fear propagated by some leftists groups and mass media about the potential rise of incel violence if this movie was released, at that time I just found it pretty laughable, while I was less "woke" as I am today it was hard for me to conceive at that time to see a movie like Joker create a community with the whole purpose of being violent, this is not how conservative minds work and is not how the incel mindset is. instead, Joker serves more as a social critique of different aspects of modern culture and the "society" we live today than a call to action for all the people society has wronged.
What can we observe in 2019's Joker? If we ignore all the myth and "lore" of the character Joker, what we see is a person, struggling to survive in a world that, frankly, is not made for them. Arthur Fleck is not a person the viewer is meant to become, instead, is a portrayal of an individual who wants and desires to be seen by everyone as a part of a community, we see him being abused on the streets, people do not give him the benefit of the doubt or a chance to defend himself through dialogue, he is not able to stand up for himself or others due to his physicality or his mental state. Arthur wants to be seen as Arthur, not some sort of other being that is capable of starting a movement, we, as the audience should be wishing for him to never become the Joker, we should be wishing he gets help, that he lives a happy life, but sadly Gotham is not the city for that, and we are definitely not a society that wants to see people to get better. How can someone with mental health issues find the help they need if the institutions are not optimized for their care? If the act of going to therapy is treated as some sort of taboo?
Extrapolating these ideas to the real world, we can see many examples where an abused person or an individual with mental health issues makes horrible decisions that often result in the death of innocent people. We have the example of many serial killers who were mistreated, often by their mothers, people who have terrible childhoods and abuse that never ends perhaps up to late adolescence, but, we, as a society, never encourage this type of behavior, we understand why it could happen, but we never wish for them to continue to kill people, to continue creating chaos, so why would we want this for Arthur Fleck? Why would we wish for his demise and insanity, when it gets established pretty quickly that he does not want that. Is it because is a fantasy? Something to vent out or frustrations? It is hard to really tell, but having seen the full arch of his character, I must say I do feel pretty bad for him. He is just a lost person.
It is the sequel, and after Arthur has been in prison for more than 2 years we see him demoralized, if he managed to change things outside of Arkham he is not part of it and while he awaits a trial we see him accept his fate. When it was announced that it was going to be a musical, many raised their hands protesting the decision, especially after Lady Gaga was confirmed to be Harley Quinn. When we talk about musicals people often reject the idea of it, I sure did back in 2022, not because of this specific movie but because the idea of watching a movie where people sing and dance felt so outdated and annoying, but after I had my epiphany in Chicago I never looked back. Perhaps the people who have this insane rejection need to watch the masterpiece that is 2002 Chicago, but I digress.
It is interesting to see a Harley who is not in her typical submissive role for Joker or the empowered version that we have now. Instead, she is in the middle, presenting herself with an obsessive admiration for him, and she tries to lead him through music to her insanity. Here is where the "Folie à Deux" part of the movie comes from, this syndrome is defined as the transmission of one's delusion to another person, and we can clearly see that not by Arthur but herself, she tells him that she is the only one capable of understanding, the only person that will be there for him, and he starts to believe it, throwing away all the help he got to avoid death penalty just to satisfy her and, perhaps, have a good life with her after the trial.
The other side of this delusional syndrome is that, inadvertently he manages to corrupt people into doing horrible stuff, the people who admire the persona of Joker take matters into their own hands, either by blowing up the courthouse to take him out of their and create this revolution against the elite of Gotham or by killing Arthur after he can no longer follow this path he has made. We have to sit here and understand that, nobody, even many in the audience cares for Arthur, and he repeatedly tells us over and over again in both movies, that he just wants people to give him a chance to make things right, but we just want him to become what we wish or approve him to be. Maybe this is the only meta-commentary that Todd Phillips envisioned for the film, and for the people's reactions, similar to the people leaving the courthouse they all rejected Arthur.
Right before the end of the movie, we see the iconic stairs where, in the 2019 movie, he becomes momentarily the Joker. There Arthur encounters Lee, and she starts singing, trying to lure him, some sort of call to action for him, now if you want him to become the myth, then you would have to embrace the musical aspect of it, to finish it with a grand musical sequence, a la La La Land, but instead he rejects it, he wants to be grounded in reality, like the first Joker was, he rejects the whole hero and villain roles, and instead he remains as a nuanced individual who has finally accepted his fate.
I don't consider movies that are only sustained by the subtext and the circumstances surrounding them to be good films, but in the case of Joker: Folie à Deux, this only enhances the experience when watching this great film. I can't recommend this movie to most people, especially if they hate musicals, but I will always advocate experiencing them at least once in your lifetime. I wish we had more Lady Gaga, both her performance and her singing abilities are incredible yet such a small part of the film that one is left to wonder if there is a "gaga-cut" out there in the WB archives. The musical numbers are gorgeous to look at and very catchy but they lack influence in the story and are only used to remark the previous scenes. As it stands the movie is a beautiful mess, and will hopefully be appreciated for years to come. Sadly, I feel this will bring the end of the "realistic" superhero characters and perhaps the nuance of the "man behind the mask" that we rarely see in film nowadays and will forever taint the musicals (outside of Disney animated films) for the foreseeable future.
I admit I have spent too much time thinking about this movie after I saw it on theaters last Sunday, while my first review was made trying to understand the implication of what this movie was trying to "teach" the audience, I don't think I should have seen it that way. After all, I am starting to think Todd Phillips could not care at all what other people thought of him and his films, beyond executives and people in the industry.
Since my first watch on Sunday, I've rewatched both Joker and Joker: Folie à Deux and found out that there are even deeper themes to both movies and a direct connection to the musical aspects of the sequel than I expected.
Disenfranchised people are always trying to find a community or a symbol to relate with, this is true to any group, and it can come in many different flavors, for joker, there was a fear propagated by some leftists groups and mass media about the potential rise of incel violence if this movie was released, at that time I just found it pretty laughable, while I was less "woke" as I am today it was hard for me to conceive at that time to see a movie like Joker create a community with the whole purpose of being violent, this is not how conservative minds work and is not how the incel mindset is. instead, Joker serves more as a social critique of different aspects of modern culture and the "society" we live today than a call to action for all the people society has wronged.
What can we observe in 2019's Joker? If we ignore all the myth and "lore" of the character Joker, what we see is a person, struggling to survive in a world that, frankly, is not made for them. Arthur Fleck is not a person the viewer is meant to become, instead, is a portrayal of an individual who wants and desires to be seen by everyone as a part of a community, we see him being abused on the streets, people do not give him the benefit of the doubt or a chance to defend himself through dialogue, he is not able to stand up for himself or others due to his physicality or his mental state. Arthur wants to be seen as Arthur, not some sort of other being that is capable of starting a movement, we, as the audience should be wishing for him to never become the Joker, we should be wishing he gets help, that he lives a happy life, but sadly Gotham is not the city for that, and we are definitely not a society that wants to see people to get better. How can someone with mental health issues find the help they need if the institutions are not optimized for their care? If the act of going to therapy is treated as some sort of taboo?
Extrapolating these ideas to the real world, we can see many examples where an abused person or an individual with mental health issues makes horrible decisions that often result in the death of innocent people. We have the example of many serial killers who were mistreated, often by their mothers, people who have terrible childhoods and abuse that never ends perhaps up to late adolescence, but, we, as a society, never encourage this type of behavior, we understand why it could happen, but we never wish for them to continue to kill people, to continue creating chaos, so why would we want this for Arthur Fleck? Why would we wish for his demise and insanity, when it gets established pretty quickly that he does not want that. Is it because is a fantasy? Something to vent out or frustrations? It is hard to really tell, but having seen the full arch of his character, I must say I do feel pretty bad for him. He is just a lost person.
It is the sequel, and after Arthur has been in prison for more than 2 years we see him demoralized, if he managed to change things outside of Arkham he is not part of it and while he awaits a trial we see him accept his fate. When it was announced that it was going to be a musical, many raised their hands protesting the decision, especially after Lady Gaga was confirmed to be Harley Quinn. When we talk about musicals people often reject the idea of it, I sure did back in 2022, not because of this specific movie but because the idea of watching a movie where people sing and dance felt so outdated and annoying, but after I had my epiphany in Chicago I never looked back. Perhaps the people who have this insane rejection need to watch the masterpiece that is 2002 Chicago, but I digress.
It is interesting to see a Harley who is not in her typical submissive role for Joker or the empowered version that we have now. Instead, she is in the middle, presenting herself with an obsessive admiration for him, and she tries to lead him through music to her insanity. Here is where the "Folie à Deux" part of the movie comes from, this syndrome is defined as the transmission of one's delusion to another person, and we can clearly see that not by Arthur but herself, she tells him that she is the only one capable of understanding, the only person that will be there for him, and he starts to believe it, throwing away all the help he got to avoid death penalty just to satisfy her and, perhaps, have a good life with her after the trial.
The other side of this delusional syndrome is that, inadvertently he manages to corrupt people into doing horrible stuff, the people who admire the persona of Joker take matters into their own hands, either by blowing up the courthouse to take him out of their and create this revolution against the elite of Gotham or by killing Arthur after he can no longer follow this path he has made. We have to sit here and understand that, nobody, even many in the audience cares for Arthur, and he repeatedly tells us over and over again in both movies, that he just wants people to give him a chance to make things right, but we just want him to become what we wish or approve him to be. Maybe this is the only meta-commentary that Todd Phillips envisioned for the film, and for the people's reactions, similar to the people leaving the courthouse they all rejected Arthur.
Right before the end of the movie, we see the iconic stairs where, in the 2019 movie, he becomes momentarily the Joker. There Arthur encounters Lee, and she starts singing, trying to lure him, some sort of call to action for him, now if you want him to become the myth, then you would have to embrace the musical aspect of it, to finish it with a grand musical sequence, a la La La Land, but instead he rejects it, he wants to be grounded in reality, like the first Joker was, he rejects the whole hero and villain roles, and instead he remains as a nuanced individual who has finally accepted his fate.
I don't consider movies that are only sustained by the subtext and the circumstances surrounding them to be good films, but in the case of Joker: Folie à Deux, this only enhances the experience when watching this great film. I can't recommend this movie to most people, especially if they hate musicals, but I will always advocate experiencing them at least once in your lifetime. I wish we had more Lady Gaga, both her performance and her singing abilities are incredible yet such a small part of the film that one is left to wonder if there is a "gaga-cut" out there in the WB archives. The musical numbers are gorgeous to look at and very catchy but they lack influence in the story and are only used to remark the previous scenes. As it stands the movie is a beautiful mess, and will hopefully be appreciated for years to come. Sadly, I feel this will bring the end of the "realistic" superhero characters and perhaps the nuance of the "man behind the mask" that we rarely see in film nowadays and will forever taint the musicals (outside of Disney animated films) for the foreseeable future.
Final Score - 4.5/5
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