Joker: Folie à Deux
The evidence is indisputable and damning, Arthur Fleck held in the Arkham State Hospital psychiatric ward having killed talk show host Murray Franklin on live television, the “trial of the century” now set to take place with state prosecutor Harvey Dent demanding the death penalty for an act of premeditated murder while defender Maryanne Stewart attempts to prove that Fleck is not guilty by way of insanity.
His personality fragmented by his traumatic childhood where he was abandoned by the state into the care of an unfit mother who abused him, was it truly Arthur Fleck who shot Murray Franklin or was it another personality within who likes to be called the Joker? An elusive and dangerous individual, he has admirers, hundreds of them gathered around the courthouse and even infiltrating the asylum, pyromaniac Lee Quinzel gazing after the man from cell E258 as he is marched past the door of the musical therapy sessions, kindred spirits in the psych ward.
Set only two years after the events of Joker but released five heavy years later, incarceration has aged Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, not a prime specimen to begin with but now stooped and emaciated yet still smiling as he cries in the rain, tethered to a pole in the exercise grounds while the guards led by Brendan Gleeson mock him, director Todd Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver having created a sequel to their unexpected hit which instead of building on its success turns its face in dismay as it burns to the ground.
The folly of two shared not only between Fleck and Quinzel (Lady Gaga), first seen as the blonde in baggy pyjamas who needs her roots bleached, Joker: Folie à Deux pulls the audience into their toxic madness, hearing the songs that play in their heads, musical numbers as absurd as the cartoon Me and My Shadow which opens the film before the fantasy dissolves into the rough brick, fluorescent lights and locked doors of Arkham, the dungeon where the unwanted dregs of humanity are abandoned, out of sight and out of mind for the good people of Gotham.
Joker having been embraced by his followers as an agent of chaos within the towering city dominated by the rich and powerful in their skyscrapers and mansions, Gotham always having been a stand-in for New York but never before so explicitly stated as being within New York State, within certain parts of the audience he also became a figurehead who challenged structure and authority, refusing to capitulate to law and order and lashing out in vengeful rage, the misapprehension of a rallying cry to riot now clarified as the characters joke about not giving the audience what they want.
A contrary work which criticises systems which place mentally ill individuals in positions of power, where most superhero and supervillain films carry an expectation of larger-than-life characters and their actions Joker: Folie à Deux is not only more internalised than its predecessor, taking place almost entirely in cells and courtrooms, it is a counterpoint to the original which actively condemns those who clutched Arthur to their incel bosoms as some kind of misunderstood folk hero, deliberately anti-commercial as it tears him down, Phillips drawing brave performances from his ensemble and exposing them not as colourful comic book heroes but as desperate people in need of professional care.
Joker: Folie à Deux is currently on general release and also screening in IMAX
