Author:
Simulacrum
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Date:
10/6/2024 9:35:14 AM
Subject:
Joker: Folie à Deux
This is far from the best movie I've ever seen. It doesn't fully succeeded at what it was trying to do, but I don't think it deserves the trashing it's getting.
The musical thing was maybe not the right call, but it's one way to consolidate Arthur Fleck's and Lee Quinzel's problems, which boil down to how bridging the gap between reality and fanciful expectation is sometimes impossible.
The point the movie makes over and over is that Arthur Fleck is not the Joker you're looking for. He is incapable of sustaining the chaos and violence his shallow, anarchic audience wants. What he really wants to do is entertain and be loved for it. Lee Quinzel is the distillation of the future criminal mob the real Joker will recruit, and she -- like the mob -- finds the purest entertainment in the idea of nihilistic violence. She spends the movie hanging onto the belief that Arthur can go there (hence her "That's Entertainment" refrains), and when he disappoints her, she abandons him - or rather, she abandons this "messiah."
The music is ALWAYS purposefully attuned to where Arthur and Lee are on this trajectory. It's much more intentional than any soundtrack I've heard, so I don't think it's a problem. The real problem is that critics and audiences had expectations going in that they would see the further creation of Joker and the blossoming of Harley Quinn. The movie instead makes Arthur the catalyst for the real Joker.
What I didn't like about the second movie was the same thing I didn't like about the first movie. It was too grueling to watch in places. Joaquin Phoenix may have starved himself, but in my opinion he didn't have to. The gulag incarceration scenes weren't necessary for a movie about a super villain. Gotham may have been a pig sty, but it don't have to be. Everything was unnecessarily miserable. But this may have been intended as a counterpoint for Arthur's and Lee's dreams.
Anyway, I don't want to see the original movie or this one again, but it wasn't as bad as people are making out.
