In a sentenceTwo hours of a man on trial who keeps drifting off to sing, and after an hour so did we
Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is a patient at Arkham State Hospital, thin, medicated and mostly silent, waiting for the trial that will decide whether the state can execute him for the murders that made him famous. His lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), wants a jury to believe that the Joker is a second personality and Arthur its victim; the prosecutor, Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey), does not. In a music therapy class Arthur meets Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), a patient who knows exactly who he is and likes him for it. Brendan Gleeson is the guard who runs his wing. When Arthur is happy, or frightened, the film stops and he sings.
Todd Phillips’s sequel has one honest idea, that Arthur Fleck was never the man his fans wanted him to be, and spends 138 minutes and a dozen borrowed songs saying it. Phoenix and Gaga are worth watching; the courtroom is not.
Todd Phillips has made a sequel designed to disappoint the people who liked the first film, and he has done it on purpose. Joker (2019) left Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck dancing down a flight of steps in a red suit while a city rioted in his name. Joker: Folie à Deux finds him some time later in Arkham, thin, drugged and queueing for his pills, waiting for the trial that will decide whether the state can kill him. It is a prison film, then a courtroom drama, and throughout it is a musical made from old standards. We have some respect for that. We spent a good deal of the 138 minutes wishing the film would do something with it.
Phoenix is as committed as before and plays Arthur here as a man who has been switched off. The laugh is mostly gone; what is left is a wet-eyed stillness that comes alive only when Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) looks at him. He sings the way Arthur would sing, cracked, slightly under the note, out of breath, and the film never lets him get better at it. That is the idea, and it is a good one. Gaga plays Lee small and watchful, a patient who knows exactly who Arthur is and likes him for it, and she sings under her ability almost throughout.
The music therapy scenes moved us more than we expected. A dozen patients, an upright piano, Arthur mumbling a lyric and Lee singing back at him from the other side of the circle, and Phoenix lets a little of the old wish, to be looked at kindly, back into his face. Brendan Gleeson runs the wing as Jackie Sullivan, all jokes and shoulder-claps, and we can see how quickly the jokes could turn. It is the only stretch of the film in which the singing means something to the people doing it.
Lawrence Sher lights Arkham in green fluorescent and sodium orange, wire cages and wet tile, and shoots the fantasy numbers in the saturated red and gold of a variety programme, a curtain and one spotlight, so the switch between the two is never in doubt. Mark Friedberg’s hospital is a long grey box with the paint coming away; his courtroom is dark panelled wood with a public gallery built like a theatre balcony, in case anyone missed the tagline. Arianne Phillips keeps the red suit for the daydreams and dresses the real Arthur in institutional grey that hangs off him. Hildur Guðnadóttir’s cello returns, low and mournful, and now has to share the film with a dozen show tunes. The two never agree, and we decided that was deliberate and still did not enjoy it.
The trial takes up most of the second half and it is where the film goes flat. Catherine Keener’s Maryanne Stewart argues that the Joker is a second personality and Arthur his victim; Harry Lawtey’s Harvey Dent argues that he is not. Witnesses from the first film, Zazie Beetz’s Sophie Dumond and Leigh Gill’s Gary Puddles, come back to tell us things we watched happen. Jeff Groth cuts these scenes at the pace of an actual trial, long two-shots, nobody hurrying, and they sit there. Steve Coogan turns up as Paddy Meyers and gets the one funny scene. By the middle of the trial we had stopped following the argument and started checking the time, and the film, which is about people wanting the wrong things from Arthur, would presumably say that was our fault. We do not accept that.
The songs stop the story rather than carry it. Two or three of them, staged as a television special with the pair in matching suits, come alive; the rest arrive, make the same point about fantasy and retreat, and fade back into the grey. Lee is the larger loss. The script by Phillips and Scott Silver gives her wants but almost no history, and Gaga, who could fill the courtroom on her own, is kept in the gallery.
The first Joker borrowed its lonely man and his talk show from Scorsese and was accused of glamorising him. This one looks to have been made partly to answer that charge, which is an unusual and not dishonourable reason to make a sequel. It is not, by itself, a story. Watch it for Phoenix and Gaga in the music room and for the numbers that catch fire, and be ready to wait between them. It runs 138 minutes and carries a 15. Nobody sings during the trial; we rather wished they had.
The reviews are split almost exactly down the middle, and the spread is wide. Most critics agree on what Phillips has made: a musical sequel that keeps Arthur in prison and the courtroom and lets fantasy numbers stand in for much of the plot. They disagree about whether that is bold or perverse. The praise clusters around the performances, with Phoenix’s commitment and Gaga’s low-key charisma noted even by reviews that dislike the film, and around the musical sequences, which several critics call the most alive thing on screen. The reservations cluster around the songs themselves, the thin writing of Gaga’s role, a slack middle stretch and a sense that the film has less to say than the first. The Telegraph and Time Out find the risks worth taking; The i Paper and The New York Times find it dour and self-indulgent. The AV Club reads its coldness as deliberate, an attempt to dissatisfy the fans who made the first film a hit.
The sequel is just as bleak and formally daring as the original, with a powerful performance from Phoenix that makes viewers care for Arthur despite his derangement.
Read the full review →Phillips charts a subversive course for the sequel, keeping the realistic tone with Arthur mostly in prison or court, where musical fantasy numbers provide relief; Phoenix is transfixingly unsettling and the film maintains tinderbox tension despite not matching the predecessor's impact.
Read the full review →A bold, often brilliant jukebox musical sequel with zero merriment; Phoenix and Gaga deliver strong performances in a bleak, multi-genre mix that takes risks and avoids obvious routes from the original.
Read the full review →The film is a beguiling musical romance between murderous psychopaths, with an oddly hopeful tone and genuine originality in its approach to the character.
Read the full review →The film is a bold but indulgent musical sequel that replaces the original's gritty narrative with a romance/courtroom mashup lifted by Lady Gaga's charisma, though it offers little new overall and suffers from thin characterisation for her role.
Read the full review →The film is a sour, contemptuous slog that aims to dissatisfy fans with its affectionless approach and undermining of expectations. It features some mesmerizing minimalist musical duets but overall feels like a perverse joke that prioritizes alienation over engagement.
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1981 · Depression-era misery with the cast lip-syncing to old records; the film this one wants to be.
1986 · Dennis Potter puts a sick man in a hospital bed and lets him dream in show tunes.
1982 · Scorsese’s lonely fan and his talk show; the source Phillips keeps returning to.
2000 · Von Trier, Björk, a trial and musical numbers that hurt; bleaker and braver than this.
2002 · Murder, a courtroom and the press as a chorus line, done with actual pleasure.
