Joker: Folie à Deux Review

 

I'm more and more convinced that there's an inability to grasp meaning in narratives that leaves modern critics clueless of how plot can depend on and be driven by theme (how form follows content), and really in how to think about theme. The evidence of which is that Joker II has only a 33% rating on RT, especially from critics saying the story doesn't go anywhere. The story was always about something most of them don't get (rather than whether he gets out and "wins" etc.): where will the people with psychological struggles wind up in the end? Will they simply suffer a materialist lex talionis? Will they escape and own being mad "heroes"? Will they be allowed to find some progress of healing in peace? Or will they be manipulated by those who romanticize and push the psychotic break and then toss them  away when they can't live up to the calling because they really do want rest from ills the manipulators would just use as fuel for the rockets they can't fuel themselves but can craft and control, and then will the ideological, dark-romanticist manipulators hijack the story when they (we, the bungled and the botched, to use Gilliam's paraphrase of Nietzsche) are spent and tossed, conscript it as an origin story in some sham mythology? (oh yea, almost forgot, from some of the theories that went around with the first film: will they be used as theory fodder by religious "insightful" gurus).

 

(And let us not forget the plan by some "christians" in America for the diagnosed: blame all of us [and probably infringe other of our rights on that basis] for gun violence that could have been avoided by sensible regulation that makes it harder for the few who have done it to get the guns to do it with in the first place.)

 

On another front: I wasn't sure what to expect of the whole "musical" thing, but I think it worked. Phillips is said to have "struggled" with calling it a musical, and I think that sums up the uniqueness of the use it makes of music. When the musical numbers are so clearly NOT in the real world of the narrative, it can't really be a musical (when they sing Sunrise Sunset in Fiddler on the Roof, the singing is not how the things would have been said, but it really is a wedding scene in the material world of the narrative . . whereas there is no show stage where J and H have a Sonny-and-Cher style show), but they are definitely musical numbers for conveying particular theme material (not action-film-soundtrack uses of rock songs etc., or even the use of the marching band theme in the first film).

 

And beyond that . . . I like that it wraps out as its own thing but could also provide fodder if they want to, say, bring Gaga or another like her in as HQ in a sequel to the newest Batman (but given her comments on her focus in handling the music, in purposefully NOT singing as she has been professionally trained to do, but rather as a real untrained, rough and raw character would, I don't think she will be interested in pursuing the type of character there is in that kind of action movie, rather than this more crossover-genre film), . . . but it doesn't have to be more than the most basic fodder: you could bring in the new Harvery Dent and Joker and the most basic physical fact but not need to have any more continuity than that with the two Todd Phillips films, and leave them to be their own unique cinematic project.