Joker: Folie à Deux is a 2024 film co-written and directed by Todd Phillips starring Joaquin Phoenix and singer-actress Lady Gaga. The film will be released in Italy starting from October 2nd distributed by Warner Bros.
The feature film represents the sequel to Joker (2019) which won the Golden Lion at the 76th Venice International Film Festival, this sequel was presented in competition at the 81st.
Joker: Folie à Deux
The failed comedian turned criminal Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) in Arkham prison meets his soulmate Lee (Lady Gaga) who will find herself helping him during his murder trial.
The trailer of the film
A repetitive film that has nothing new about Joker
Reinterpreting means taking the basis of a work, or in this case a character, and giving it your own vision but using the foundations of what you take. This is what Todd Phillips didn’t do with the first filmappropriating the DC character Joker by assigning this now iconic name in pop culture to an Arthur Fleck who had nothing of the prince of Gotham, much less the basis mentioned above. This to carry out a gigantic marketing operationpassing off a film about a fake-authorial generic psychopath that turns out to be a bad copy of Scorsese’s “Kings of the Night” (1982), since if it had been called something else it probably wouldn’t have even been produced given the weakness of the subject and the virtual absence of any artistic component.
Ecco this was the first Joker of 2019 as well as the Golden Lion of Venice76, seeGiven this disastrous precedent, it was difficult to make a film that would be appreciated by those who hated the first one and in fact Todd Phillips did not succeed in this undertaking.
Joker: Folie à Deux is a continuous repetition of every element, from those seen in the first film to those introduced here, a film where the protagonist does not make the slightest evolution. It tries to be a social complaint to the American state and its controversies, such as what happens in prisons, but ends up doing so by only inserting decontextualized pretexts, obviously proving ineffective.
Joker: Folie à Deux – the psychological aspect
The film beyond this failed attempt returns to exasperate the main theme of the first by questioning whether Arthur is a victim or guilty, whether Joker really exists or is only in his mind, an element which here too, as in the previous chapter, has no development. Indeed, as if the exasperation in the themes wasn’t enough to strengthen them, sequences identical to the previous one are inserted which add nothing. Parable without evolution that culminates in an ending that mocks the viewer who wanted even the slightest basis of the comic character which creates quite a bit of annoyance. Joaquin Phoenix usual good over-the-top performance which for an actor like him is not as difficult as the general public might think.
The only interesting thing about Joker’s psychology are the musical sceneswhich at least contain iconic songs related to the themes of the film from Tony Bennet to Antony Newly and quote, this time well, what were iconic sequences from the golden age of Hollywood. Without a doubt a directorically and aesthetically interesting component.
Other element to mention from an aesthetic point of view is the beginning of the film which gives us a splendid version of this Joker in Looney Tunes style animationI would have much preferred a film like this instead of the one we had.
Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn
Talking about the musical scenes mentioned above we get to the much talked about co-protagonist of the film, who was supposed to be Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn, needless to say, the comic book character has nothing at all, if not a hint thrown in there, the usual character invented from scratch who is given the name for commercial matters. Obviously she works at the center of the musical scenes but if we then go outside that path she too is quite weak and written superficiallytoo bad because the singer provides also a good interpretation.
The love story between the two has cloying and forced scenes staged in this way clearly to be shared on social media. All the poetic toxicity that at the time was truly the flag of an important social denunciation of the love between the two is completely absent in the paper counterpart. At least this story has an unexpected epilogue.
Speaking of secondary characters we arrive at yet another clever trick that reduces a cartoonishly relevant character to a speck. If in the first we had Thomas Wayne as the classic rich villain and nothing more, here we have Harvey Dent as the classic prosecuting attorney, the basis of every American legal drama and nothing more.
Gotham is non-existentand not because the film is set mostly indoors, which is also pleasantly interesting, but because it never existed since the first film. There has never been the slightest effort in building the gothic city of the dark knight with his sins and his facets, neither aesthetically nor conceptually.Todd Phillips took New York and changed its name for the same reason. Here the Big Apple is even mentioned, not by mistake or intentionally but it makes us think a lot.
Joker Folie à Deux has all the defects of the first film, obviously starting from the totally wrong idea of making these two filmswith the minimal addition of something original and aesthetically interesting but unfortunately at the same time an incredibly annoying ending that smacks of a mockery. Overall they both stand at the same mediocre level with merits and many defects.