Most men involved in heated hetero relationships have two personas — (a) the dynamic achiever, performer, stick-man and breadwinner, which usually satisfies or at least placates wives and girlfriends, and (b) the young lad or adolescent child who wants to be loved unconditionally, as he might be by his mother or, in sexual terms, by an exceptionally passionate lover he’s only been with a short while.
All men of maturity understand that the young lad kind of love is a dream, even if most men long for this kind of thing in their heart of hearts. And yet most fellows of experience realize they can’t hold onto a girlfriend or wife for very long unless unless they achieve and perform and go into an impressive song-and-tapdance now and then…rules of the game.
Joker: Folie a Deux is about a man with two personas — Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), the abused and traumatized child who wants to be loved and adored for who he is deep down, and the giggling sociopathic showboat known as “the Joker” (also Phoenix).
Both Arthur and his alter ego delight in fantasies of singing and dancing with his new lover (Lady Gaga‘s Harleen “Lee” Quinzel). Alas, Lee is primarily in love with the dynamic criminal, clownface sociopath and crazed performer of legend.
The big emotional climax of Joker: Folie a Deux arrives when Arthur Fleck confesses who he really is and that “Joker” is an inauthentic, sensationalized media persona, and subsequently realizes that Lee doesn’t have much of an attachment to the traumatized child and is entirely attracted to the eccentric and generally venal Joker.
The only portions of the film that deliver feelings of peace and serenity are the musical dream sequences with Arthur and Lee singing and dancing to a series of classic love songs.
The thematic import of Joker: Folie a Deux is a hard one. You could call it cruel. Todd Phillips and Scott Silver‘s film is essentially saying that glorious, fanciful, all-accepting love — the kind that young naive men might long for — is a nice dream but basically for the birds.
Because women tend to prefer the rogue, the conqueror, the operator, the headliner, the charismatic personality. This is the basic way of relationships, the film is saying.
Joker: Folie a Deux is therefore a massive downer of a movie, and yet it has to be respected for its refusal to entertain (except during the song-and-dance sequences) and for the general integrity of the scheme.
It’s a movie that’s impossible to love, but you can’t accuse Phillips and Silver of not dealing straight cards. It really is a “fuck you” to the escapist attitudes of D.C. fanboys, and I for one respect what it’s up to. It’s a serious art film, defined by a certain morose integrity. It’s going to be hated by almost everyone. But it’s not trash. Far from it.
For me, a shorter length would have improved matters. 110 or 115 minutes as opposed to 138.
Incidentally: I was more than a little bothered by Phoenix’s cigarette smoking in the film. In almost every damn scene he’s got one going, and I suspect this is because Phoenix himself is a heavy smoker, and that he collaborated closely with Phillips and that before anyone realized it Folie a Deux had become a lit-cigarette movie with ashes dropping all over the place.
