Drive in Saturday Tuesday Movie Review: Joker: Folie à Deux
The Drive-In Saturday Tuesday Movie review series is, of course, named after the Bowie song, but often has little more than that related to Bowie. For more Bowie, come back tomorrow…
Movie: Joker: Folie à Deux (Madness for two)
Bowie Connection: Neither Bowie nor his music are in this movie; however, there are several tangential connections. Most obviously, there is Lady Gaga, the co-star, who has a Bowie tattoo (which we don’t see in the movie), acknowledges Bowie as an influence, and did a Bowie tribute at the 2016 Grammys. On a more abstract level, the movie is about characters who take on personas involving costumes and makeup, worshipfully followed by a subculture of fans. This is Bowie-esque on its own, and added to it is the movie’s theme of madness, which was also a recurring Bowie theme. It’s also worth noting that Bowie himself was considered for the part of the Joker in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie, though Jack Nicholson got the role instead, and some comic artists base their depiction of the Joker on Bowie.
Experience: Late drive-in season means the movie starts earlier, so it’s easier to stay awake, and it’s colder, which means we watched it in the car. I still got a sundae (we went to the Jericho, which has ice cream through the end of the season). This time, I got the special, called “The Joker,” which was kind of a French toast sundae—actually quite good.
Movie review (Spoiler Alert!): Let me get this out of the way first—I liked this movie and like it more the more I think about it. I know it is getting bad reviews, but I’ll also say that everyone I know who saw it also liked it. I’m guessing the negativity comes from its defiance of expectations and, much like its predecessor, because it is an adult movie. That the central characters, the Joker and Harley Quinn, are comic book supervillains is only used as a device to reveal that our perception and expectation are based on a myth that repeatedly runs up against realities that don’t care.
Does that sound familiar? To me, it’s analogous to Trump and MAGA. Most of the movie is a series of sequences that proceed in a way that leads us, the audience, to expect the Joker we know from other movies and comics to emerge from the simple, highly disturbed, weak, and inert Arthur Fleck. But none of these sequences ends with the rise of a criminal mastermind, or even a character we see perform any crimes or acts of depravity at all. There’s an attempted prison break that doesn’t work. There’s Lady Gaga’s repeated statement that “we’re going to build a mountain,” which an ancillary character eventually asks, “What does that even mean?” (They never build a mountain). Fleck sits down for an interview with an annoying reporter—in a cage—and we expect the Joker to emerge and kill the reporter. Doesn’t happen. Harvey Dent is the prosecutor, in a courtroom like those in other movies where we’ve seen him attacked, scarred, and transformed into the villainous Two-Face—doesn’t happen. Fleck dons Joker regalia and takes over his own defense in court, leading everyone to expect something diabolical or even clever, which also never happens. I’m leaving a lot out, but this buildup-to-disappointment happens again and again.
Eventually, Joker’s followers, including Gaga and a young fellow-convict wannabe, grow disillusioned. I wasn’t taking notes, but at one point, Gaga’s character says something like, “All we had was the illusion, and you blew it up,” before abandoning Fleck, who gets captured again and brought back to jail.
At another point, someone bombs the courthouse where Fleck’s trial is taking place. A shaken Fleck staggers out and is whisked away by adoring fans who gleefully speculate that “they” will next blow up the whole city.
Fleck’s Joker has become the reciprocal of nihilists’ hopes and dreams to “tear it all down” without any thought about what comes next. They see Gotham City, a stand-in for New York—as Trumpists describe New York—as a 70s-style hellscape that, if it actually existed, might merit being shaken up, if not literally blown up.
But none of this comes to pass, and Batman has nothing to do with any of it (neither he nor Bruce Wayne are mentioned in this movie). Near the end, Fleck confesses, “There is no Joker, only me.”
A movie exists within its time, and this movie was made in the time of Trump. Trump’s nihilist fantasy of “tearing it all down” is what his followers read into the lunatic and virtually incoherent ravings of an insane, clown-like figure who captures media attention. But it’s all an illusion—an unhealthy illusion that can result in death and mayhem, but an illusion nonetheless.
If we were waiting for the Joker to emerge as an anti-hero, we leave not only disappointed but shamed—this guy isn’t admirable in any way. He is not like the Joker in any other depiction of the character. But I am reminded of another Batman movie—Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, featuring Danny DeVito as the Penguin. In that movie, the Penguin is depicted as a monster, but nobody other than Batman sees that, and he’s nearly elected mayor on the basis of what others project onto him. The other movie I think of is Peter Sellers’ Being There. If you come to this movie expecting Being There, you’ll like it. If you’re expecting a comic book movie, you might not be.
And, oh yeah, it’s a musical!
Rating: Holy sad clown, Batman, this movie gets three joy buzzers of doom!