Nihilist Night: Richard Hell Presents Joker 2
R
•
2 hr 19 min
•
10/4/2024
•
for some strong violence, language throughout, some sexuality, and brief full nudity.
Maybe the purpose of clown make-up—red nose, swollen lips, black accents about the eyes—is to make the clown look like someone beat the tar out of him. What could be droller?
Joker II: Folie a Deux (2024) was a box office flop, earning a little more than $200 million—slightly more than its budget. Fans and critics alike complained about a film that had promised mania and delivered depressiveness
In the first Joker, Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck was a furious prophet who set the city ablaze; in the sequel he’s lonely as a monk, caught in Dennis Potter reveries of popular songs behind the greasy bleak walls of Arkham Asylum. The romance of Harley and “Mr. J.” commenced some 30 years ago om the beguiling Batman Adventures animated show. The pinnacle was “Harlequinade” (1994) wherein the Joker pinches an atomic bomb, helpfully lettered with a letter A, just like in a Herblock editorial cartoon. This master criminal is himself mastered; the love of his life and thorn in his side is Harley Quinn, a cheerful Judy Holliday-style dumb blonde of a psychiatrist who became his unequal partner in crime. The Joker was a wise guy, but Harley was one of those foolish things put there to confound the wise.
In Folie a Deux, Harley is a different figure, a cracked true believer, and a liar who rebreaks Fleck’s heart. She comes to him in fantasies of Hollywood song; Lady Gaga’s fine voice and strangely languid persona (she looks like Barbra Streisand imploding) makes her a shadowy, grainy imago.
The film disappointed the fans who expected the Master of the Revels to return and burn the city down. Phoenix is too good an actor to cater to simpletons; in one year he played Jesus and the Joker, and few actors are going to come back from that excursion. Here Fleck is at last honest, and at last understands himself: he’s as like the sick, dazzling Mr. J as Balthazar the donkey is to a plumed carnival horse. I find it long, and I find it tough, but Joker II: Folie a Deux deserves reassessment as a mirror to the cult-wracked and incarceration-crazed USA of today.
Sat
17
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- Genre:Drama, Action, Romance
- Director:Todd Phillips
- Cast:Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson
