Movie review Joker Folie à Deux, directed by Todd Phillips

Joker Movie Trama: Madness for Two

The Joker, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is never a trivial character. He wasn't in the first chapter, winner of the 76th Venice Film Festival, and he isn't in this new installment, called Folie à Deux. It is not a predictable comedy, but a complex film, composed of several stages, deep and theatrical, as in the style of the main character. There are no expectations to be disappointed, because there can be no expectations that a character like the Joker can meet. He escapes the dynamics of his predecessors in comic roles to sink into the roots of his own inner meaning, but he also cannot be categorized among the usual protagonists of cinema because of his origin and background. The troubled Joker finally seems to find his soul mate in the feisty, eccentric Harley Quinn, played by Lady Gaga. For the protagonists of this new narrative, love seems to be in the details of madness, a madness that is at times analytical.

The film was directed by Todd Phillips

Todd Phillips' direction combines a courtroom drama set against the backdrop of the prison system with a musical, trying to compose a complex society in which Joker is taken by the outcasts as a reference of a common condition, a struggle first and foremost against themselves. In fact, the sense of narrative seems well defined in the introductory short film, where Joker becomes a victim of his own shadow, which does not allow him to experience self-realization or what he imagined this moment to be.

As the trial date approaches, Arthur (Joaquin Phoenix) meets Harley (Lady Gaga) in the same mental hospital and prison where he was incarcerated, and from there the spark of mad passion is ignited and the musical takes shape. Joker faces the harangue among himself, defending himself to the jury, while violent, imaginary scenes, perhaps the result of madness, alternate in the narrative, alternating humor and impulse of theatricality, as if the protagonist contemplates an escape from reality, taking refuge in scenes that exist only in his head.

The main cast of Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga is sublime, but the performances of Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener and Zazie Beetz also stand out, for a feature film that alternates between more soporific and effervescent moments, with the musical providing a colorful twist to the Joker character.