Spoilers hidden in clown makeup! 

Called “The Madness of two”, the love story of Joker and Lee, is set against the backdrop of the murder trial of Arthur Fleck, imprisoned in Arkham, in 1980’s Gotham City. 

It’s almost impossible to believe that the film’s director and writers would do this to a character they professed to come to love by the end of the first, admittedly divisive, Joker film. But it happened, and it’s up there for us the audience to be, let’s be real here, tortured with. You’ve been warned. 

They turned Arthur Fleck, the downtrodden character who took back his own power at the end of the first film, back into what he began this whole journey as – a victim. Even his Joker persona won’t save him from being objectified at his trial, for his lawyer keeps insisting he’s sick in the head and this “Joker” is the result, and the legion of fans out there clamoring for more are more aimless fan-atics and less revolutionaries. Though one person, a shiny little tarnished pearl set among the crazies at Arkham, stands out for Arthur in a very strong way. 

The single bright spot in the whole film, ‘cuz it sure is not the skeleton-thin Joaquin Phoenix trudging about Arkham like a cowed scarecrow, is inevitably Lady Gaga as the reimagined Harley Quinn, or Lee, as she introduces herself to Arthur. They meet, inevitably enough, at music class. And suddenly, Arthur’s heart finds song again! Lee loves Arthur, or rather Joker, with an intensity that actually shocks him awake for a short while. And we see small, short flashes of our beloved madman in his iconic makeup, as he madly pirouettes his way through representing himself at his own trial, defiant in his sharp-angled clown look, his voice flitting effortlessly between entertaining characters, accompanied by musical numbers straight from Jokers cerebral cortex, fully imagined and surreal, joyous and loud, impossible to deny or ignore. Which, remember from the first film, was the whole point folks. Gaga carries in every single musical number, and there is always a just barely-there sense of her singing being just the tiniest bit off, like you know that note and that note was wrong, but she did that on purpose to demonstrate Lee’s own version of reciprocating madness. It’s genius ya’ll, but rather than being any kind of uplifting, the duets especially that Lee does with Joker are a musical dive further into madness. Lee wants Arthur to split and for Joker to explode and entertain and be alive, and nothing will stand in her way. Even enduring an, I kid you not so be prepared for it, totally awkward sex scene. 

It turns out, the villain of the film is actually Lee herself. Her carefully crafted fan-cast ways are quite believable, a testament to Mother Monsters excellent acting abilities, but in fact it’s all wrong. In what is arguably DC’s most legendary abusive relationship, Joker is the villain and Harley Quinn is his, however willing, victim. Definitely not the other way around, which is what is presented here in Folie au Deux. And while I applaud a Harley Quinn offered to us as a calculating femme fatale finally, this reduces our formerly powerful Joker to a shell of even Arthur Fleck. This is not what we, the audience, are here for. 

The amount of abuse Arthur suffers throughout the film is appalling, and made more so because there is no delicious payoff like in the first film. Joker does not snap and go on a killing spree, or give a joyously psychotic rant, no, he confesses. Traces of the Joker makeup he wore so defiantly in court still remain, but our clever mastermind clown prince of crime, or what he could have been, is reduced to this blubbering, maniacally laughing, apologetic thing on his last stand. 

After the trials inevitable conclusion, the torture doesn’t end for poor Arthur, oh no. Lee is gone, the music in his head has ceased, and things at Arkham with everyone’s favorite singing guard Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson) is about to take a turn for the seriously worse. 

The movie has a well-earned R rating and though it isn’t graphic per se, no one in the audience wanted to share head-space with the strongly implied image of Brendan Gleeson having to act out raping Joaquin Phoenix, broken and beaten and lost, utterly powerless. 

Also, tell me in a movie that we’re set in the 1980’s without telling me we’re in the 80’s – damn near every single last character is smoking. Like, constantly. Throughout most of the musical numbers too. Hell, the first thing Arthur Fleck says of any note in the movie, is to ask his interviewer for a cigarette. Likely even unconsciously divisive with the audience, the smoking emphasizes the melancholia of most of the characters and indeed, the very grungy atmosphere of 80’s Gotham City. 

The director already said that this version of the Joker isn’t the “real one”, which harkens back to the time of the TV show Gotham, who gave credence to the notion that Joker ideals and madness could be spread like a plague and therefore anyone could in theory be Joker, and this theory holds at the very end of the film and what the assassin does to himself in the blurred, blood-soaked background. Which, hey, I’m fine with the idea of these Joker films being one-offs in a separate but attached DC-verse, but it only makes one pity poor Arthur Fleck even more. Not even the real madman, just a depressed little would-be clown, betrayed by everyone, totally alone. All Arthur ever wanted was to entertain people, and surely the sequel does that idea up big, with larger-than-life musical numbers, dancing and costumes and a love story for two very widely known characters, but in the most grim-dark depressingly bleak manner possible. It mostly really is all in Arthur’s head, after all. None of the truly beautiful parts are real. And that thought is truly depressing, for it’s as close to real life as one is going to get inside the DC-verse. It’s kind of like we the audience are betraying Arthur too, because we’re watching his life unraveling as a form of consumer entertainment. And I don’t watch films for a guilt trip, thank you. 

One could say that no matter what strong opinions one has about the movie – and there are many, the Press section in my theater when I saw the film was absolutely abuzz with mostly strongly negative emotions – harkens back to the old thought of, it doesn’t matter if the conversation is positive or negative, you’re still talking about me. Even so, with the film hitting theaters recently and opinions pouring in, scales are leaning more and more towards, “I don’t like it.” Giant do-ups of grandly realized musical numbers, arguably a pair of the biggest stars in the artist world today in the titular roles, and a whopping you-wouldn’t-believe-how-much budget can’t save the Joker sequel from the folly of its own aspirations of … I’m not even sure what. See the film, and you tell me what you think is being presented here. 

Listen in for the tears of a clown in Joker Folie au Deux in theaters now!