Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Zazie Beetz and Brendan Gleeson
Distributor: Warner Bros
Runtime: 138 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2024
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This American thriller is a sequel to the 2019 film, Joker, which starred Joaquin Phoenix in his Academy Award-winning role as the ‘Joker’.
The film is a sequel to Todd Phillips’ comic book thriller movie, Joker. Phoenix is Arthur Fleck, and he is joined by Lady Gaga as his lover, Harleen ‘Lee’ Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn). The film recounts how Joker met Quinn, and is again directed by Phillips, who guided the 2019 film. The 2019 movie was loosely based on DC Comics characters, but the connection in this film is far looser.
The 2019 film focused viewers’ attention on Fleck, as a failed clown and inspiring comedian. Now, the Joker, is a mentally ill person institutionalised in an asylum, awaiting trial and facing the death penalty for murdering five people. The film pointedly explores the Joker’s psyche as a misunderstood comedian, who desperately seeks love and acceptance. In the hospital, Fleck forms an obsessive love relationship with Quinn, who is attracted to him.
The title of the film refers to the destructive relationship between two traumatised individuals – Fleck and Quinn. The film’s subtitle is French for ‘madness of two’, and used here it signals a shared delusional belief system, that is ‘transmitted’ from one person (Fleck) to another (Quinn).
Phoenix and Lady Gaga capture the nature of their mental disturbances in a dramatically compelling and convincing way. The film is a psychological thriller intended as a stand-alone movie, and is not an integral part of the DC Comic Universe. It embeds its thrills in a format, deftly using fantasy input at times, where Joker locates the ‘music’ that he believes lies inside him as a creative force. This is a film that gives the character of Joker, and Phoenix the actor, an entirely new look.
Phoenix is an actor who frequently takes roles that explore the dividing line between sanity and madness – reminding one of the outstanding performance he delivered in the brilliant 2013 film Her, where he dissociatively embeds the input provided by the computer voice of Scarlett Johansson into his delusional belief system.
In this film, Phoenix once again explores what separates reality and insanity and excels as the traumatised Joker. Did he kill those people, or was it a dissociated personality inside him, called Joker, who was responsible? This creative film extends Joker as a fantasy figure in thoughtful and engrossing ways. Phoenix and Lady Gaga, who sing, act, and occupy the main roles, are exceptional.
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