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REVIEWS - THEATRICAL

Joker: Folie à deux

A week ago, Francis Ford Coppola affirmed that Joker: Folie à deux was a film ahead of its audience, as it happened with One from the Heart.

This inevitable sequel comes as the product of the resounding success of a first entry, one that attempted to make us digest a crossover of Taxi Driver with The King of Comedy and establish that, upon using Scorsese-esque aesthetics and even employing the talent of his go-to actor (Robert De Niro), Todd Phillips could shoot like him.

It showed a Gotham City with high levels of violence resembling those of 1970s New York, before the rise of republican city official-later elected mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his public safety policy called “zero tolerance”. Thus, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a citizen stepped-on by society, became an antihero representing the value of defense and taking law into one’s hands until reaching a point of no return. Arthur’s figure, reflected in the double that is Joker, lifted masses upon murdering prime time TV comedian and host Murray Franklin (De Niro), therefore becoming a media personality that does not take long in acquiring a following, establishing a notion similar to what influencers exercise today.

Now, Todd Phillips, far from improvising, has a very clear view on what is going on with cinema worldwide: he is aiming a little beyond what a simple film would mean to him, one with the task of conform those who held on to the first film, give in to the fan service and keep them all happy. We are not talking about box office, awards, Rotten Tomatoes or Letterboxd scores, or any nonsense of that sort, but the notion of having a director with free reign to do as he pleases with his work, something rather unusual, but that is what Phillips is doing here; something similar to what happened with Shyamalan and Glass. It might be enjoyed, understood or not, boring or whatever, but a film with musical sequences is something that masses devoted to characters like Joker would not consume today nor analyze in a context of Hollywood classic cinema. They are simply left out, discontented and bewildered.

Phillips starts the film with the initiative of preceding the main attraction with a Looney Tunes cartoon (complete with the Warner logo, of course). This animated sequence, directed by Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville), foreshadows what will happen later on in the film: the duality Fleck/Joker, here represented by his own shadow and posters of The Band Wagon, Sweet Charity, Modern Times and Pal Joey.

The film picks up where Joker left off and finds Arthur Fleck imprisoned. He walks under the rain, in an overhead shot showing umbrellas with colors reminiscent of those in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. He is visited by an attorney (Catherine Keener) who wants to re-open his case with proof that confirms he is suffering of a dissociative identity disorder as well as insanity, thus establishing that the one committing the violent acts is Joker and not Arthur, as to avoid a death sentence since he has murdered five people. Arthur inhabits a solitary cell and his only contact with the exterior is a guard (Brendan Gleeson) who sings and, at the same time, invites him to attend a music therapy class. There he meets Harleen Quinzel or Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga), an intern that claims to have set her parents’ house on fire (until that moment she does not give any details of whether they were inside); then it is revealed that she is there by her own choice and serves as a character that reveals Fleck’s disbelief, as well as being a symbolization of the fan’s disappointment over Joker’s character, first film and influence over the masses.

The film is divided between a prison drama, a courtroom drama and a musical. Although it incurs in significant mistakes, it is a rupture with the first Joker. In Mex Faliero’s recently published review there is an interesting reflection about this mise-en-scene and it is one where stands out the making of a successful film about Arthur and Joker that everybody saw and Harley did not like. That film might as well have been the first Joker, and this sequel is the real film about the real character or the reality, where it is established that Fleck is simply an insane citizen.

Arthur’s duality is reflected in the musical scenes. They are his mind flying into another plane of existence, one of happiness, one of love and escape from the institution, an alternate reality that fits only in his imagination, happier, at last, like in a musical.

Director: Todd Phillips. Screenwriters: Scott Silver, Todd Phillips. Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Catherine Keener, Brendan Gleeson, Steve Coogan. Producers: Joseph Garner, Todd Phillips, Emma Tillinger Koskoff. Runtime: 138 minutes.

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