Joker Folie à Deux: A story born from the cracks of society

If you think Batman and Robin is the most lethal combination in the caped crusader's universe, your stance may change after watching Joaquin Phoenix's Joker sequel. His Arthur Fleck and Lady Gaga's Harley Quinn match, complement, and jettison each other's crazy in Todd Phillips' sequel to his 2019 blockbuster, an origin story of Batman's most feared nemesis. 

It's a worthy follow-up to the first part, which remains true to its ethos, despite the tweak in syntax and setting.

Enter: Lady Gaga

Joker Folie à Deux kicks off a few months after where the first one ended. Arthur Fleck aka Joker is in Arkham jail having killed six men, including legendary television show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) on live television. 

He goes along his mundane prison life with uncharacteristic lifelessness, before he encounters Lee aka Harley Quinn in the neighbouring asylum. They connect instantly, with Lee expressing her long-standing admiration for Arthur's actions. She gives him a reason to live, to escape, to start a new life by trying to get acquitted in an imminent trial.

Like Bradley Cooper's Oscar-winning romance, 'A Star Is Born' (2018), this Lady Gaga movie is also a musical in which she plays the proverbial Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Yet, Manic is the operative word here. 

She infuses a different, straight-faced kind of crazy into the sequel, further spruced up by her musical flights of fancy with Arthur. She doesn't go all Suicide Squad-Harley Quinn on the film, as it's still early days of her full-blown transformation. We see hints of the evil clownette she eventually becomes, in a shadowy eye makeup here and a devilish glint there.

But for most parts, she remains the relatable lunatic we want to live vicariously through. Watch her say "excuse me" politely before smashing a street shop window pane with a chair or listen to her sliding in a conditional abuse in a voicemail. Subtle, delectable, crazy.

Her character represents the omnipresent insanity that cuts across age groups, economic backgrounds, and ethical codes. She makes Arthur embrace his own crazy, and makes him feel seen, just like he did for so many of them when he shot down six men. 

He committed those crimes because he craved attention. But after he gets the love he longed for from Lee, he believes he's not the same person anymore and must be given a fresh chance now. 

But that humanises him, thus putting him at odds with many like Lee who'd deified him. Admitting he's insane may get him out of jail on legal grounds, but that would also push him from the pedestal that he's been put on by those who see lunacy as the rule and sanity as the outlier, as the crime.

Given the character arc, the Joker sequel may remind you of Matt Reeves' 2022 superhero film The Batman, in which Robert Pattinson's Bruce Wayne swears by vengeance, only to ultimately realise that the same V-word would come back to bite him. 

It's a Joaquin show again

Joaquin slips into the Joker shoes as if the first part wrapped just yesterday. He draws you in like a magnetic lifeforce. A smile makes you light up, a grin makes you chuckle, and that maniacal laugh makes you search for cover. 

His Oscar-winning act gets even more meat here, which helps him add more colours to his clown. While Lady Gaga effortlessly holds her own in front of an acting powerhouse like Joaquin, he surprises you with his vocals (as Joker, mind you) jamming with that Grammy Award-winning voice box of Lady Gaga. 

Joaquin is as effective when he's whimpering in his cell as when he's letting his green hair down while shaking a leg.

The Joker-Harley Quinn chemistry also works here because of the eccentric real-life personalities of Joaquin and Lady Gaga. Crazy is not new to her as she used to dress up as outlandishly as the Joker when she started out as a pop icon. 

You chuckle along when Arthur and Lee bond over their destructive streaks and disdain towards their parents. They kiss passionately as the prison they're at is burning to the ground in the background. 

When a guard forbids them from touching, Arthur and Lee kiss across the prison bars via a smoke puff. It's crazy, but hopelessly romantic in its most literal sense. Who is Lee to Arthur? Is she his evil shadow that we see in the opening animated stretch, or is she the mother that he never had? "(I'm) a whimpering, simpering child again," Arthur sings after falling in love with Lee.

The madcap musical format (by Hildur Guðnadóttir) lends itself organically to the narrative of 'Joker 2' because music is the language of the crazy. Or as a character puts it in the movie, it's how one "balances the fractures within." 

It also brings in a glossy, fable-like quality to the otherwise grim proceedings. Cinema is itself a character in the film. A TV movie made on Joker lobbies for his justice. Musical interludes are peppered all over to stage the lunacy in the characters' minds. 

Arthur even jokes that he killed De Niro's character because he was the "bad actor" in the movie playing in his head. For what is insanity, but lines blurred between real life and fantasy?

Interestingly, Harvey Dent, who goes on to become Two-Face, is the state attorney fighting the case against Joker. It's an Easter egg not for the sake of universe-building, but for the purpose of underlining how two-faced the critics of Joker are – putting up a human mask and costume while they're all clowns within. 

Jesters are born out of the cracks in society, celebrated for cracking jokes, and then banished for cracking a whip on the very society that created those cracks in the first place. They may not get the last laugh, but when the dust settles, who is the joke really on?