Joker Folie à Deux Movie Review: If you think Batman and Robin are the deadliest combination in the caped crusader’s universe, your opinion may change after watching Joaquin Phoenix’s sequel to Joker. In Todd Phillips’ sequel to his 2019 blockbuster, an origin story for Batman’s most feared nemesis, Arthur Fleck and Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn complement each other, complement each other and overthrow each other. It is a worthy sequel to the first part, staying true to its ethos despite the changes in syntax and setting.

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Appearance: Lady Gaga

“Joker Folie à Deux” begins a few months after the end of the first part. Arthur Fleck aka Joker is in Arkham Prison and has killed six men, including legendary television host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) on live television. He goes about his everyday prison life with unusual lifelessness before he meets Lee, alias Harley Quinn, in the neighboring institution. They bond immediately, and Lee expresses her longstanding admiration for Arthur’s actions. She gives him a reason to live, to escape, to start a new life by trying to be acquitted in an upcoming trial.

Like Bradley Cooper’s Oscar-winning 2018 romance A Star Is Born, this Lady Gaga film is a musical in which she plays the proverbial Manic Pixie Dream Girl. But manic is the operative word here. She brings a different, direct weirdness to the sequel, which is spiced up by her musical flights of fancy with Arthur. She doesn’t quite embody Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn style in the film, as her full transformation is still in its early stages. We see hints of the evil clownette she eventually becomes, here in shadowy eye makeup and there in a devilish glitter. But overall she remains the likeable madwoman that we want to live vicariously through. Watch her politely say “sorry” before breaking the window of a street store with a chair, or listen as she inserts a conditional insult into a voicemail. Subtle, delicious, crazy.

Her character represents the pervasive madness that spans all ages, economic backgrounds and ethical codes. She makes Arthur embrace his own madmen and makes him feel seen, just like he did for so many of them when he shot down six men. He committed these crimes because he craved attention. But after getting the love he longed for from Lee, he believes he is no longer the same person and now he needs to be given another chance. But this humanizes him and puts him at odds with many, like Lee, who idolized him. Admitting he’s crazy might get him out of prison on legal grounds, but it would also knock him off the pedestal he’s been placed on by those who see madness as the rule and reason as an outlier, a crime.

Given the character history, the Joker sequel may remind you of Matt Reeves’ 2022 superhero film The Batman, in which Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne seeks revenge only to eventually realize that the same V-word would come back to kill him bite. It also happens to be fitting that Joker 2 was released on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti in India, for it asks questions that the Father of the Nation posed before a conflict-ridden country: whether to forgive and practice non-violence or rely on the use of force is supposed to be short-term justice. Like Gandhi, Joker is a polarized figure who, willingly or unwillingly, sparked a revolution of which he is now a slave. Co-writers Todd Phillips and Scott Silver give Joaquin’s character the organic closure that was missing in the first part.

It’s another Joaquin show

Joaquin slips into the role of the Joker as if the first part had just ended yesterday. It attracts you like a magnetic life force. A smile makes you light up, a grin makes you laugh, and that maniacal laugh makes you run for cover. His Oscar-winning performance gets even more flesh here, helping to add more color to his clown. While Lady Gaga can easily hold her own in front of an acting powerhouse like Joaquin, he surprises you with his singing (as Joker, mind you) that harmonizes with Lady Gaga’s Grammy-winning vocal box. Joaquin is just as effective whimpering in his cell as he is letting his green hair down while shaking a leg.

Here too, the Joker-Harley-Quinn chemistry works because of the eccentric real-life personalities Joaquin and Lady Gaga. “Crazy” is nothing new for her, as she began her career as a pop icon by dressing up just as outlandishly as the Joker. They laugh along as Arthur and Lee overcome their destructive sides and their contempt for their parents. They kiss passionately while in the background the prison they are in burns to the ground. When a guard forbids them from touching each other, Arthur and Lee kiss over the prison bars in a cloud of smoke. It’s not crazy, but it’s hopelessly romantic in every sense of the word. Who is Lee to Arthur? Is she his evil shadow that we see in the first animated series, or is she the mother he never had? “(I’m) a whining, silly child again,” Arthur sings after falling in love with Lee.

The crazy music format (by Hildur Guðnadóttir) fits seamlessly into the narrative of Joker 2, because music is the language of crazy people. Or as a character in the film puts it: It’s about “balancing the inner fractures”. It also adds a shiny, fairytale quality to the otherwise grim proceedings. The cinema is itself a character in the film. A TV movie about Joker’s lobbying for his justice. Musical interludes are peppered throughout to stage the madness in the characters’ heads. Arthur even jokes that he killed De Niro’s character because he was the “bad actor” in the movie that was playing in his head. Because what is madness but the blurring boundaries between real life and fantasy?

Interestingly, Harvey Dent, who later becomes Two-Face, is the prosecutor leading the case against Joker. It’s not an Easter egg to create the universe, but rather to underscore how conflicted the critics of Joker are – they wear a human mask and costume while inside they’re all clowns. Fools are born from the cracks of society, celebrated for cracking jokes, and then banished for lashing out at the very society that created those cracks in the first place. You may not get the last laugh, but when the dust settles, who’s the real joker?