‘Joker: Folie À Deux’ Review: Joaquin Phoenix And Lady Gaga In Todd Phillips’ Brilliant Musical Return To A World Of Madness – Venice Film Festival (original) (raw)

“Folie à deux” means a kind of shared madness — possibly two extreme hearts on similar wavelength or maybe a clash inside one disturbed person’s head. When Arthur Fleck aka Joker meets Harleen “Lee” Quinel aka Harley Quinn in director/co-writer Todd Phillips‘ audacious and head-spinning follow-up to his billion-dollar-grossing 2019 origin story, Joker: Folie à Deux is maybe all of that.

The first trailer for this new film, which could be called a musical but really is so much more than that one hook, used the underlying theme of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” and perhaps that ultimately is what Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver are trying to say. This meeting of the minds between Arthur (Joaquin Phoenix) and Lee (Lady Gaga) is indeed an odd love story in a world losing control.

An early inspiration for the filmmaker and his star, even going back to the making of the first film, was that music lives inside Arthur waiting to get out, just as his alter ego bedecked in that clown makeup also was waiting to get out. In this movie, both happen — in a big way but very much in the fantasy world he has created that is juxtaposed with the harsh reality of life in Gotham City. No comic book facade here.

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The film, however, opens unexpectedly as a Looney Tune that Warner Bros. so famously would supply before the feature attraction, this one not starring Bugs Bunny but rather Joker, and it cleverly sets up the film we are about to see as a collision of old-fashioned Golden Era musical fantasy and real-world violence. The animated Joker struts through a theater lobby past posters of Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon, Frank Sinatra in Pal Joey and Gwen Verdon in Sweet Charity — all figuring in musical choices later in the film — but blood also will splatter the screen. The great French animation wizard Sylvain Chomet (Oscar nominated for The Triplets of Belleville) created this toon as a bit of an homage to the fun world of those old cartoons, but also as a warning of what is to come in the split musical universe in Joker’s head.

The real world is where this film then picks up, set about two years after Arthur aka Joker murdered Murray Franklin on his live TV talk show (as well as the parents of Bruce Wayne). He now is in a psychiatric institution/prison, Arkham, awaiting his trial. Clearly medicated, he doesn’t say much, but in the meantime he has become a bit of a sensation, the object of obsession by “fans,” especially after a mediocre TV movie has chronicled his infamous rise to fame, as it were. One of them turns out to be Lee, a patient on another floor at Arkham who has seen the TV movie many times and feels a kinship, if not to Arthur, then certainly to Joker. As their relationship begins, Arthur opens up, and so does the movie’s color palette.

He is someone the world has never given a second thought to, but if they had, maybe his crimes would not have occurred. Lee sees someone unique as they sit together, a couple of society’s outcasts, at Arkham’s rec room watching the 1953 MGM musical The Band Wagon, the movie where Astaire sings “That’s Entertainment,” a song reprised by our stars more than once in more dour, dressed-down tones. Although Gaga is obviously a supreme singer and Phoenix won an Oscar nomination playing Johnny Cash, both lower the volume as neither Arthur or Lee is a singer themselves. But it is the music inside that brings out both in fantasy numbers staged as if they were at MGM, not a prison.

Phillips plays all this out in a series of musical sequences including a stunning “Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered” from Pal Joey that lend themselves to old-style Freed Unit MGM musical moviemaking. There also is Judy Garland’s “Get Happy”; the anthem “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” sung in understated bravado by Lee as her relationship with Arthur intensifies; the same for Anthony Newley’s “Gonna Build a Mountain” as she believes there will be a fairy-tale ending here; and even Sinatra’s “That’s Life,” the one song we hear clearly from Lady Gaga, not Harleen, as it plays in a jazzed-up arrangement over the end credits. Otherwise, Phillips does not allow the musical aspects to resemble the go-for-broke style of most musicals from the era when Arthur probably saw them or heard records growing up. A poignant “(They Long To Be) Close to You” has a certain wistfulness as Lee sings it in an otherwise tense prison visit, the glass window separating her and the incarcerated Arthur. Throughout, the music choices reflect the story points rather than just existing as an obligatory moment to break out into song and the stars make them almost like dialogue.

The importance of the lyrics to the lively “That’s Entertainment” wryly also serve as a pungent counterpoint to the crowds outside the Gotham City courthouse as Arthur’s trial takes place, a madhouse outside and inside as he gets permission to defend himself in full Joker regalia. He has become some sort of folk hero — his notoriety, no matter how horrific, exciting the masses. It seems Phillips wants to comment on what’s become entertainment in a TMZ world where tabloid stories and social media dominate interest over more serious issues. We want the show. Meanwhile, we have a former president and current candidate, beloved by his base, holding court in a similar kind of sensational trial in New York City. Coincidence? That’s entertainment, indeed, but what are the consequences? Without giving anything away, Joker: Folie à Deux has some answers, and twists.

Phoenix knows this character inside and out, and in what others might say is a risky proposition, he tap dances, sings and sells this role like no other — if not topping his Oscar-winning turn in Joker, at least finding a way to take him in different, wholly surprising direction. Gaga is smartly low-key, not the Harley Quinn we associate with Margot Robbie, but her own person, dressed down and believably showing affection and connection with Joker and, more important, the man behind the makeup. A fine supporting cast includes Brendan Gleeson as the sprightly prison warden, Catherine Keener as Arthur’s empathetic lawyer, Steve Coogan as interviewer Paddy Myers and return appearances by Zazie Beetz’s Sophie Dumond, and the wonderful Leigh Gill as Gary, but now known by his last name, Puddles, as well.

Production values across the board are excellent, particularly returning Lawrence Sher’s cinematography, the production design of Mark Friedberg, and costumes from Arianna Phillips. Hildur Gudnadottir’s score for the first Joker was so integral to the story it won an Oscar. Here she hits just the right notes again. Musically we should point out contributions of executive music producer Jason Ruder and supervisors Randall Poster and George Drakoulias. The mix of songs is artful.

Phillips likely could not have foretold the explosion of the musical form in unexpected ways this season, but with The End, Better Man, Emelia Perez and Piece by Piece all exciting Telluride audiences over the weekend, it is clear that the genre is igniting a new era of innovation. Phillips, with today’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where the 2019 Joker took the Golden Lion, has added his own voice to its evolution. With song, dance, comedy, darkness, animation, drama, violence and more, this is a musical — if it even is a musical — like no other.

That’s entertainment, too.

Producers are Phillips, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, and Joseph Garner.

Title: Joker: Folie à Deux
Festival: Venice (Competition)
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Release Date: October 4, 2024 (October 2 internationally)
Director: Todd Phillips
Screenwriters: Todd Phillips and Scott Silver
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Zazie Beetz, Leigh Gill, Steve Coogan, Harry Lawtey, Bill Smitrovich
Rating: R
Running time: 2 hr 18 mins