Joker: Folie à Deux 2024 Review
Joker is something I came across five years ago at the Venice Film Festival, and I was furious and felt like I had been wronged because of it. To get back at it, I tried to pen down ‘what I considered a review;’ readers appeared to believe it was half baked. The title “Review,” captured the essence of “expressed my fury with words.” Turns out, I was lucky enough to find out that no, I could have cooled off. I had a notice I shredded with too much freedom, and was capped in five hours during which I could not access. In this period, I had to rationally decide no matter how hard it was to spoil a plot for uncapped first anger, there was nowhere to reveal plot details.
For me, the most intense moments are when I am a live TV caller in as a forward and Murray Frankie’s Bowman Father may only portray the half rhythmic Joe Phillips’s Joker-in-Fleck. While in the peak hot pause late show hosting toward mockinghim of loosest constrain the lord not because formal setup a deck has shove Arthur mock a real Superman. With standing when the Joker first appear and stoically there must gaze incomprehensible. Every mean c), from are rof Franklin’s aiming to clown of decree g lates the view of Arthur The Crown Fleck sees Franklin lying devoid of a mind to. But Arthur survives the celebrations and failure: No mind he is in live. Arthur does in Frankfurt.
My shock was disturbing in a way. It all stemmed from how I felt towards certain sections of the narrative that bore traces of R. Budd Dwyer’s 1987 on-air suicide. I have to confess, and it is shocking to admit this, that I came across footage of him taking his life. A lot of it was sanitized for television news, but at the time, I had enough insider goodwill to view a tape of his unedited footage – which, to put it bluntly, I wish I could forget. The parallels I saw between Philips' direction and his life seemed far too coincidental. Or rather, I expected Oprah’s and Phoenix’s (and De Niro’s) betrayals of the film to, in my most generous interpretation, “commit suicide” adopting cynical opportunism.
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| Joker: Folie à Deux 2024 |
If you were wondering, now you do. I quoted: "In contemporary mainstream films, dark and edgy are flavors of marketability, and it has particularly comic book where it can be utilized."
Now I'm back on the Joker round for “Joker: Folie a Deux Watch on hurawatch,” which as you know it's a by Todd Phillips who, like with the first film, wrote and directed it, a musical. I am thankful Phillips did not pen the songs. Mostly, it is a jukebox musical with fragments of The Great American Songbook and “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” or ‘60s International Pop—a rendition of “To Love Somebody” costumed by the Bee Gees and later Janis Joplin, among others. My strongest critique for it is that at least in my view, does not stand marketing, not as one would hope it does.
How one justifies the second "Joker" film being a musical is a conversation on its very own. Fleck, the man who draws a very stark divide between himself as a civilian and himself as a “Joker” is a sad case. Arthur Fleck, as with many other movie characters, plays out his sad life in a tragicomiс way. This existence, as troubling as it is, does appear to the mind of a man enmeshed in a singular existence, a mind shrouded in liquid and theatrical delineation, my contemporary art form classical enmeshed reality lifted into a ‘show’ of some sort. Making sense of any director's thrust, at least, in this case, bounded within the word ‘musical’ does really not seem too far farfetched. Such offers means to slip out of some otherwise frantic straits. Thus, the film is lacking a narrative, logical, psychological and aesthetic cohesion all at once. To some degree though, aka because first and foremost the work is a musical it can be 'free' from incoherence in rational, illogical structure and still, by definition, transcend reality.
As the movie keeps on telling you, the story starts after the brutal murder which capped off ‘Joker.’ Arthur/Joker is walled up somewhere in the diabolical, mill-like brain wards of Arkham along with other psychos, and during one of his mindless walks to a session, he is merely seconds away from an elbow right back from a daughter whom azial fills. Lady Gaga’s Lee Quinzel is not fully Harley Quinn (DC fans muted her lack of transformation), which is why they are both colluding to optimize joint imprisonment with Arthur passing the time in limbo waiting for trial, which Lee for some reason was allowed to as a some sort of passive viewer who dreamed of citizenship. (This is explained well enough, if far from convincingly.) Arthur smirking and sulking in his Joker-less visage but don’t worry, he gets to wear it a lot, either in delusional song visions or during the trial. And then he goes, well, ‘Joker.’
Of all the stunningly lengthy films, this captivates us through the trial and a love story.
Like the snow cones in the 8th or 9th hour of the movie, there are some hilariooous snow cones around like Joker as a southern lawyer.
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| Joker: Folie à Deux 2024 |
Phillips delivered us a remixed genre of nihilistic slop with “Joker,” and the paper thin story is no different.
As “Joker Fan Service” became the new buzzword from previous screenings, I somehow see this as part entertainment. I do not take away from the fact that he’s a pop culture phenomenon as he is, but did I need to remind anyone that we’re dealing with a fictional person? Why do we even need to ask “What does ‘Joker Fan Service’ really mean ‘Charles Manson Fan Service’” right? Disturbing and grotesquely twisted gets thrown into that mix about the world we live in if we’re dealing with something like that.
The only other positive remark I can give to do with the film is performance, specifically the disconnect to audience appeal. Both Gaga and Phoenix seemed to fully commit to their characterizations and each other’s engagements. The different types of performances captured in their singing, for example, subdued and imperfect “real lives” versus unapologetic, belting-grade boasting in their fantasies. Mostly she does manage, but in the end, what he accomplishes disintegrates into sheer self-indulgent exhibitionism (his ostensible Joker “dance” boils down to a pre-Yoga stretch). By whichever perspective you opt for, it’s impressive in a shocking way, although strikingly only on one virtuous level.
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