The shallow provocations of “Joker: Folie à Deux”

At least the first Joker film, Todd Phillips' 2019 Gotham villain-antihero origin story, had the bravery to take its protagonist's revolt to harmful extremes. The abused, neglected and damaged Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) – cursed as a son, lover and comedian – exacts violent revenge that quickly wins him fans and followers. The film's anti-lutocratic insurrectionary spirit is inspired by the injustice of right-wing vigilantes; It is a fascist fantasy dressed up in egalitarian justice. In Phillips' new sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, he revisits the frantic ideology that gave that earlier film its energy, dubious as it may be; The sequel is merely inoffensive, grand in its production scale but insignificant in its dramatic substance.

In “Folie à Deux,” Arthur is locked up in Arkham Asylum for the murders he committed in the previous film – three attackers on the subway, a former colleague, and a TV host he kills on live television – waiting its process capital costs. (He is responsible for his mother's sixth murder, which he freely admits but for which he has not been charged.) Arthur is the local celebrity and he has the help of a capable lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine). Keener), who has a plan to spare him the death penalty. She intends to portray him as not responsible for his actions, on the grounds that he has a split personality due to the abuse he suffered in his childhood – Arthur is the mild-mannered comedian, Joker is the angry killer who in times of crisis Power takes over. But before the case ends up in court, Arthur's private life changes: At a music therapy group session, he meets Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), a patient who is an expressive and enthusiastic singer and also a fan of his. Arthur and Lee quickly fall in love and, with the help of sympathetic guards, forge a relationship that she is able to imaginatively deepen over the course of his trial, although Arthur's self-portrayal as mentally ill, in keeping with Maryanne's strategy, tests the couple's bond. (On the way, Lee transforms into the character of Harley Quinn.)

The driving force behind “Folie à Deux” is music. In Joker, it was established that Arthur watched classic Hollywood musicals on television with his mother. “Folie à Deux” shows the imagination formed by this experience: Arthur's inner life is expressed in song and dance, in sequences that range from intimate duets with Lee to powerful production numbers on grandiose sets with large casts and extravagant action. While “Joker” was largely inspired by Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy,” “Folie à Deux” is based on James Thurber’s story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (published in The New Yorker in 1939), in which the everyday life of a suburban businessman inspires wild fantasies of which he is the hero, and “Pennies from Heaven”, Dennis Potter's 1978 television series starring Bob Hoskins, in which the protagonist, a sheet music salesman, expresses his feelings expresses fantasies through lip syncing to classic era pop records in staged musical productions. There is no lip syncing in Phillips' film; rather, Phoenix (who is hardly a trained singer) and Gaga (who is one of the most distinctive pop singers) actually sing.

This singing is one of the most highly regarded aspects of the film's production: Gaga and Phoenix perform live on set while the cameras are rolling. (They're not lip-syncing to their own pre-recordings, as is often the case in movie musicals.) Some of the singing is on an intimate scale, in tight spaces and close-ups, and Gaga doesn't just reduce her voice – she deglamorizes it and actually does so throughout, removing much of the vocal shine and splendor in favor of a less professional finish. Strangely, the result seems like a directorial affectation, a deliberate restriction of her style. Furthermore, the other key aspects of these musical scenes, from their orchestral or big band accompaniment to the brilliant pomp of their filming, work against the spontaneity, intimacy, subjectivity and immediacy that the vocal performances are intended to convey. Whether the musical numbers feign realism (as in Arthur imagining himself strutting his stuff in the asylum's common room) or sink deep into fantasy (as in a mock wedding with a jazz club gig attached), Phillips stays on point the surface and borrows it from little physicality, little feeling to match the songs.

Filming music and dance may come even closer to the graphic abstractions and wild impossibilities of comic art than filming action, however powerful or violent, but the musical images in “Folie à Deux” remain far from one comprehensive claim removes visual conception; For the most part, it's just banal visual shots that convey little sense of style despite the elaborate equipment. (The droning instrumental accompaniments, which sink the singers' voices into their enveloping textures, don't help either.) It seems as if Phillips was content to evoke the idea of ​​musical fantasy scenes, barely giving them an identity of their own. His earlier films were also not hallmarks of cinematic lyricism, but the close ties of the Folie à Deux fantasies to the plot and their primary role in depicting the protagonist's mental states make these sequences all the more prosaic.

That “Folie à Deux” fails to get more than symbolic expressions of emotion from its two great leads says as much about films based on comics and genre films as such, as it does about Phillips' directorial choices. With their simple plots, simple psychology, and strongly paced dialogue, comic book adaptations are made for the crude B-movie or TV productions they received decades ago – but few directors not named Orson Welles could do that Conjure up the extravagant visual art universe that makes comics so enticing on a budget. However, the films' elaborate and likely expensive implementations tend to dictate the results: Because the films are expensive to produce and must be aimed primarily at fans of the source material, key artistic decision-making is shifted in favor of promotional reasons, from the set to the boardroom . The expectation that fans analyze details in a Talmudic manner over the course of several films in a series leads to a tendency towards overemphasis on literalism. When a guard shaves Arthur to prepare him for a meeting with Maryanne (since you can't trust an inmate with a razor), he cuts the corner of Arthur's mouth, and the tiny drop of blood might as well make an opera aria of its own, so blatantly is it emphasized . Fear the Worst: I won't give it away, but when this trickle appears again, it is in a scene of great dramatic moment in which the underlined detail is heavily devalued and vulgarized.

“Folie à Deux” is also a brutal story that includes wanton violence and cruel inflictions. The film's one true horror scene involves sexual abuse, a sequence whose innuendo is chilling in its generality and the imagination in its unrepresented details. This scene is notable for the torment Phillips puts into it, and this stands out in another way too – its seeming detachment from the action that precedes and follows it. Even this remarkable and emotionally charged scene seems to have emerged from a cinematic machine designed not to convey an experience beyond reason, but to produce a commodity called darkness.

The film does not allow its events to unfold organically; it inserts them onto the screen with demonstrative self-evidence. There is a moment that remains in the memory as an authentic moment of life: When Lee, a minimum security patient, meets Arthur, whose maximum security protocol requires that his hands be tied behind his back, even in the music group – and, by After putting on the handcuffs, he offers her a finger to shake hands with. In contrast, scenes with intensely expressed emotions (such as when Arthur, alone in the asylum courtyard, makes loud and pained noises that could be laughter or tears) seem calculated – particularly for the display of acting effort. Phillips tries to make his actors effective, but neither the script nor the filming are up to their demands. In a major courtroom scene, Arthur speaks in a strange set of highly theatrical accents, equally accomplished in their eccentricity as they are detached not only from the film as a whole and the specifics of the scene, but also from Phoenix herself, who is almost disembodied seems to be. filmed with a superficial indifference to physical presence. The film seems not only planned, but decided, and what happens while the camera is rolling only becomes clear in retrospect.