JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX

And it's here that 'Folie á Deux' completely grounds to a halt. For all its many faults, 'Joker' was propelled forward by a series of escalating violent set pieces, building to its bombastic climax. There's almost a wonton lack of action in 'Folie á Deux', most of the plot revolving around either disconnected musical moments (we'll get to them) or extended courtroom scenes where characters rehash what had happened in the first film. There's very little that happens in this film beyond that, and when it does, Phillips seems more interested in looking back at the film he made than looking forward to the film he's now making. There may be narrative reasons for this - the best moments of the film come when returning characters Sophie (Zazie Beetz, 'Deadpool 2') and Gary (Leigh Gill, TV's 'Game of Thrones') testify against Arthur. Gill's scene in particular is the most powerful in the film, and you wish the framing of this moment (much like the framing of his character in both films) was more delicately handled. These scenes suggest that what Phillips is going for with 'Folie á Deux' is Arthur comprehending (or not comprehending) the consequences of his actions, which would help to shift his perception of himself as a potential prophet of chaos. The problem is, Phillips isn't placing that much emphasis on this transformation in Arthur (much like the film film, Sophie is framed more as an antagonist, much like all women of colour in these films). He's more concerned with the negative impacts this will have on Arthur himself, digging him further into his own agony. The endless repetitiveness of the courtroom scenes instead read less as important character development than Phillips doing a victory lap over how good he thought his first film was.

A consequence of the film's reliance on these courtroom scenes to drive the narrative forward is that very little actually happens in 'Folie á Deux', and certainly nothing near the kind of chaos you would expect where the main character is supposed to be The Joker. The only violence or chaos we see in the film is either inflicted on Arthur or in his imagination. The Crown Prince of Crime does no actual crime or cause any actual mayhem at any point in the film. For the most part, he is quiet and withdrawn, and while this makes a certain degree of sense with where the film takes the character, it makes very little sense considering where the first film left him and, even more so, the fact this film is supposed to be about The Joker. 'Folie á Deux' is more pitched as a morose drama, but the lack of action means very little drama to invest in, and Phillips' insistence on the never-ending misery in these films means no characters to invest in either. The whole thing feels utterly inert, and even bringing back the best creative collaborators from the first film (cinematographer Lawrence Sher and Oscar-winning composer Hildur Guðnadóttir) doesn't make up for the fact that we're watching a film sit in the one spot for two hours, with no impetus to go anywhere.

The one thing that could have made 'Folie á Deux' a more fascinating, unusual film was Phillips' decision to punctuate the film with musical numbers, mostly driven by Arthur and occasionally led by Lee, but within the fabric of the film, this decision feels more baffling than ingenious. Like so much of the film, it's obvious from the moment song enters the equation that these sequences add nothing to the film itself, further grinding down its already glacial pace. Phillips has described the film in terms accurate to that of a musical, that when a character reaches a heightened emotional point, only singing can fully express how they feel. That isn't the case with 'Folie á Deux', or certainly not to any kind of extent that makes sense. The first 20 minutes feel like an elongated segue to a song, but when they come, they seem to come out of nowhere (even the song choices make no sense), and the logic of what is real and what is imagined is wildly inconsistent.

We are led to understand that his connection with Lee prompts these musical interludes with Arthur, but it still isn't clear why this musical language has entered the equation, especially when the first film went to such agonising lengths to posit dance as Arthur's form of ecstatic expression. As a result, 'Folie á Deux' becomes a singular oddity. While so many film musicals of late have tied themselves into knots trying not to be a musical, 'Folie á Deux' is the first instance I've seen of a film actually trying to be a musical but having no clue how to actually do it. Like so much about these films, it strikes as arrogance on the film's part. The first film though a would-be gritty Scorsese 70s anti-hero film without realising that Scorsese, despite his fascination with anti-heroes, never actually sympathises or idolises them, that his films are warnings. This second film thinks that being a musical just means chucking some songs into the narrative without realising that the musical form is a complex series of narrative and stylistic choices that earn the right for the characters to sing. As someone who loves musicals, 'Folie á Deux' was the first time I experienced that sensation people who hate musicals talk about - when the characters start singing, I don't understand why and I wish they would stop.

Much like the musical numbers in the film, it's also not clear what Lady Gaga is doing in this film, or rather it is pretty clear but it's not a reason you want to accept. After blowing the screen apart in 'A Star is Born' and devouring every piece of scenery in 'House of Gucci', it's astonishing how carelessly she's wasted in this film. Lee (the film's version of Harley Quinn) is barely a character, mostly sitting on the sidelines feeding Arthur's ego and occasionally breaking into song. Maybe there's something there about the performative nature of Lee's chaos, a groupie trying on the clothes of her crush so she can impress him, but like every female character in these films, we're never given any degree of nuance to make that notion work. It also means that we don't see any actual chemistry develop between Gaga and Phoenix, despite her natural charisma and his careful, considered performance. The only reason you can see then why she's even in the film is to have Gaga sing some classic show tunes, but even then, she's never allowed to let rip and go for it because Phillips neither understands how to stage a musical number nor what purpose any of the songs serve. Of all the disappointments in 'Folie á Deux', wasting Gaga so thoroughly is easily its greatest.

A film critic must be aware of their biases when walking into a film, and I did have to check my own at the door for 'Folie á Deux'. I have very little love for the first film, one I found repulsive in 2019 and now just find to be juvenile misery porn dressed in a superhero costume. One thing I would never say about 'Joker' though was that it was boring. It's a highly provocative, at times disturbing film that gets under your skin, and even if I don't like the effect it has, I can't deny that it is powerful and potent. This is not the case with 'Folie á Deux'. Inert to the point of confusion, this is a sedentary granite block of a film, devoid of movement or energy. I kept willing for it to go somewhere, to do something interesting, to anger me or repulse me or upset me. All it did was bore me. I don't see why Todd Phillips needed to make this. I also can't see where he could take this next if he were to make a third film, because he's driven it to such a dead end that there doesn't seem anywhere else it could go. Its final minutes could, once again, have been a really interesting provocation, like so many things about these films, it never goes anywhere. It's only seems to be there because it's "cool".

You know when you're on one of those exercise bikes at the gym, and the dial that adds resistance to your peddling is broken, so it's just this endless repetitive spinning with no grit or pressure to work with or against? That's 'Joker: Folie á Deux' - endless, effortless spinning, going nowhere, achieving nothing.