(Joker Folie á Deux spoilers…..analysis/rant )
Say what you will about Joker Folie Á Deux but I loved the flip in dynamic they did with Joker & Harley’s relationship. I loved the angel Todd took in introducing Harley when Arthur was in such a vulnerable place mentally & emotional. I loved how Harley was the manipulator & bad influence on him this time around instead of the other way around as it’s often depicted. Harley is smart, strong independent & as portrait in the film cunning. sure she was the literal representation of all of the people who didn’t quite got the message of the first film & only took it at face value, idolizing the Joker’s violent acts & how those actions created chaos & mayhem. I loved how she egged him on to get worst instead of well which touched on their inherently toxic dynamic that is so often seen as Joker twisting her around instead of her twisting him. it was refreshing & played well with Joaquin’s vulnerable, broken mentally ill Joker who never wanted to harm anyone, but simply got pushed to his limits by society & snapped. In Harley’s & everyone else’s minds who idolized that moment in Arthur’s life, who falsely projected on to him their own inner darkness & desire for chaos & wrongly believe that because he snapped he finally showed his true colors which is explicitly depicted in the film is simply not true.
Arthur continued to be a vulnerable, soft spoken man who simply wanted to be accepted & helped but fell through the cracks of an uncaring society since childhood. I am still processing the film as a whole, & have so much more to say. But Jesus in my opinion it was exquisitely executed & told the story it needed to tell.
for those of you who are complaining about the musical numbers & felt it was probably overdone, I ask you to view them from the point of view of Arthur’s unwell mental state. Imagine being trapped in a cage day in & day out, still being ridiculed for what was at the time your moment of “breaking into freedom” of “accepting” who you thought was your true self in a moment of absolute break down as a human being.
since the first film one of Arthur’s scape was music. & it only makes sense that what is in his mind is one of the very few things he still has control over so it makes perfect sense that after meeting Lee in that music class he will retrete into more & more elaborate musical numbers in his mind to help him cope with the street of the trial & the re traumatizaron of basically reliving all of the awful things that happened to him throughout his life & face the darkness that made him so twisted to begin with.
if you pay attention to when the director chose to include each musical it is always when Arthur is going under a lot of stress. When he is locked in solitary, even he is at the trial the lawyer is talking about all of the awful things his mother thought about him. When you look at it through that lense it only but makes sense he had to retreat into his mind, into something that would take him away from the reality he was living.
Arthur is a loving, gentle person but he also commited multiple murders, all under stress sure, but that doesn’t take away the fact that he actively chose to commit murder after murder after the first incident that lead to the death of the tree bullies in the train. You can write that one off as him defending himself rightfully so at first with the first man. But feeling that rush, that power the gun in his hands gave him he chose to take out his anger & frustration he carried with himself for his entire life probably on the other two & then on the rest of his victims.
this film exposes you to many ugly realities in society. & I can expand on those for another 20 paragraphs but I think I will stop here because I think the movie was excellently made. It was brilliantly executed & continued the first movie’s story in a way that gives the original tone & message of the story justice.
I honestly have to go watch it again & I am sure I will see even more well crafted gems into the story as I urge everyone to do. To rewatch it & try to experience it for what it is & not through tainted Harley Quinzel glasses of the violent fantasy of joker you think this mentally ill, vulnerable, low IQ portrait of the man should have been.
