Cinema Review: Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)
Directed by Todd Phillips
Written by Scott Silver and Todd Phillips (Based on Characters by DC Comics)
Produced byTodd Phillips, Emma Tillinger Koskoff & Joseph Garner
Main cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener and Zazie Beetz etc.
Cinematography by Lawrence Sher
Music by Hildur Guðnadóttir
*** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ***
In 2019, Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix, as director and lead actor, unleashed Joker (2019) on the cinema public. It became an enormous critical and commercial hit, with Phoenix winning the ‘Best Actor’ award at the Academy Awards. Unsurprisingly, a sequel now reaches us. While the original 1980’s set period drama worked superbly, echoing the structure and themes of Scorsese’s King of Comedy (1982) and Taxi Driver (1976), the follow-up Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) is altogether different. In fact, given it experiments with musical, romance, crime, court-room and psychological horror genres, it is an altogether riskier film, which while compelling and fascinating, doesn’t always connect to a satisfactory whole. But perhaps that is the point. It is intended to reflect an inconsistent mind and unreliable narrator, a fractured soul in Arthur Fleck.
For me, in Joker: Folie à Deux (2024), Todd Phillips masterfully employs cinematic techniques of fragmentation and ambiguity to deepen the exploration of mental illness, echoing the disorienting and fractured experience of his protagonists. The film, much like its predecessor, blurs the lines between reality and delusion, but this time the ambiguity is intensified through musical elements, dreamlike sequences, and multiple perspectives. Phillips’ use of disjointed timelines and unreliable narratives immerses the audience in the chaos of Arthur Fleck’s (Phoenix) and Harley Quinn’s (Lady Gaga) unraveling psyches.
The musical numbers, set against stark, gritty environments, feel both fantastical and unnerving, reinforcing the characters’ distorted perceptions of the world. Moments of quiet introspection are suddenly broken by violent outbursts or surreal interludes, mimicking the unpredictability of their mental states. The film’s visual style shifts between stark realism and surreal imagery, reflecting the internal fragmentation of Arthur and Harley’s minds, keeping viewers on edge and questioning what is real.
Phillips’ direction ensures that the story remains rooted in ambiguity—much like the first film—inviting viewers to interpret the characters’ mental states without offering clear answers. This cracked narrative style doesn’t just illustrate their mental illness; it pulls the audience into it, making Joker: Folie à Deux a bold and unsettling exploration of madness through form as much as story. As such there isn’t much plot to speak of as Arthur’s journey essentially follows him from Arkham Asylum to court, with episodic splashes of song and dance in between, before we get to the climactic court room scenes.
As aforementioned, in Joker (2019), Todd Phillips drew heavily from Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1982), particularly in its portrayal of a lonely, unstable man seeking fame and validation in a world that cruelly rejects him. Arthur Fleck’s obsession with talk show host Murray Franklin mirrors Rupert Pupkin’s fixation on becoming a comedy star, and both films explore the dangerous consequences of societal alienation and delusional aspirations. The gritty, urban backdrop and character-driven narrative made Joker a powerful homage to Scorsese’s psychological explorations of fame and madness.
With Joker: Folie à Deux (2024), Phillips shifts toward a different Scorsese film for inspiration: New York, New York (1977). Much like Scorsese’s semi-musical about a turbulent romance between two performers, Folie à Deux integrates musical elements and centres on the chaotic relationship between Arthur and Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga). The film’s blending of harsh realism with the stylized, dreamlike sequences of musical numbers echoes New York, New York’s mix of glitzy performance and dark personal struggle. Thematically, both films explore how dreams of stardom can clash with mental instability, but Folie à Deux takes it a step further by embedding this conflict within its characters’ delusions, making the musical sequences feel like an escape from—or reflection of—their psychotic minds. This potential homage to New York, New York allows Phillips to expand Joker‘s cinematic language, fusing psychological drama with surreal musical spectacle.
Joker: Folie à Deux (2024), at time of writing, has polarized critics and cinema-goers. As someone who watches a lot of “art-house” and European cinema, I can see why this film is dividing opinion. This is what happens if Jacques Demy, by way of Bergman, were given $200 million to make a DC comic-book film. Todd Phillips takes many risks in form and structure, most notably denying the audience catharsis at the bleak finale. It is truly downbeat and it felt like Phillips and Phoenix were finally done with this clownish killer and anti-hero.
As a cinematic experience the musical score is striking. Moreover, the production is grey and oppressive and claustrophobic, set in enclosed cells and shadowed court rooms. There is little light in this film nor even a shadow at the end of the tunnel for Arthur and Harley. Phoenix is fantastic again, while Gaga’s romantic partner-in-crime is under-cooked as a character. Nonetheless, Gaga still sparkles amidst this gloomy, musical, existential journey into the mouth and down the throat of madness.
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