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JOKER: FOLIE Á DEUX

"A Light Still Shines in the Darkness, but Here the Darkness Overcomes It"

What You Need To Know:

JOKER 2, subtitled FOLIE Á DEUX, takes Arthur Fleck, aka The Joker, to his murder trial, where his lawyer uses an insanity defense. Meanwhile, Arthur falls in love with Lee, a blonde inmate at Arkham Asylum. Lee is an arsonist who participates in a musical therapy group that Arthur’s personal guard allows him to attend. The milieu of the class inspires them to sing to one another. Also, Arthur imagines performing fantasy numbers with Lee. Will their romance help Arthur to reform? Some major plot twists provide the answer.

JOKER: FOLIE Á DEUX is partly a musical. The songs, which include three famous pop music spirituals, are a high point. They even seem to help Arthur change for the better. However, the rest of the movie has a frequently dark mood full of chaos. The chaos ultimately overcomes any positive content or messages. Also, a shocking twist at the end is depressing. JOKER: FOLIE Á DEUX also has lots of strong, gratuitous foul language, a carnal love scene, and some extreme and disturbing violence. So, media-wise viewers will not find this JOKER so amusing.

Content:

(PaPa, HH, Ro, BB, CC, FR, Ho, LLL, VVV, SS, N, A, D, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Dark, seemingly pessimistic, mixed pagan worldview with a strong humanist and somewhat nihilistic view implying that the world is run by a dark and evil fate that saps and destroys life and any expectation of goodness or happiness, mixed with some Romantic, moral and Christian/redemptive elements extolling emotion, compassion and the possibility of redemption and a paradisical happiness (three songs include lyrics about going joyfully to Heaven and other songs are centered on the positive power of love), plus there’s some moral relativism and antinomianism, and insane asylum guards jokingly order a notorious inmate to kiss another male inmate with effeminate traits and the notorious inmate does and the effeminate man follows the other man, though mothing else occurs between them;

Foul Language:
At least 51 obscenities (including 35 or more “f” words), one profanity mentions the name of Jesus, one GD profanity, and two or three scenes with obscene finger gestures;

Violence:
Some very strong and disturbing scenes of violence and some lesser violence such as a character is stabbed repeatedly in the stomach and appears to die, a character shoots another character in the stomach, guards beat up a patient in a mental facility after he goes too far, a bomb explodes off screen, but it fiercely shakes a nearby building, and many people are hurt or appear dead, police shoot a criminal who just exploded a bomb, a character hits another character hard with a chair and uses a large outsized gavel to hit a judge in the head, but it’s a fantasy, a cartoon character kills several men, and three cartoon policemen think another cartoon character did it and beat him to death (blood splatters and the blood turns the screen totally red and then the screen becomes a red curtain that opens on a stage), character pretends to shoot herself dead with her fingers, and a character set fire to some papers in a movie screening room and the flames engulf one wing of a mental facility;

Sex:
Partially depicted fornication scene, couple kisses three or so times, and guards in an insane asylum goad a man into kissing another man, and he does, but without passion;

Nudity:
Some images of upper male nudity;

Alcohol Use:
No alcohol use;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
Lots of cigarette smoking, and no illicit drug use, but patients at a mental facility take pills to medicate their psychoses; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:
Repeated lying, title character gets out of control several times and man on the stand in a jury trial recounts how witnessing a brutal murder has haunted him ever since, but this has a positive effect on the vicious criminal on trial, pricking what little conscience he has left (it’s perhaps the most moving, best acted scene in the movie).

More Detail:

JOKER 2, subtitled FOLIE Á DEUX, takes Arthur Fleck, aka Joker, to his murder trial, where his lawyer uses an insanity defense, while he falls in love with a blonde inmate at Arkham Asylum, an arsonist who participates in a musical therapy group that Arthur’s personal guard allows him to attend. JOKER: FOLIE Á DEUX is partly a musical, and the songs, which include three famous pop music spirituals, are a high point, but the movie ends with a shocking twist that eliminates any need for fans of Batman and his supervillains to see this movie, or the first movie for that matter, and JOKER 2 has lots of strong, gratuitous foul language, a carnal love scene, some extreme and disturbing violence, and a frequently dark mood full of chaos that overcomes any positive content or themes.

The movie opens with a cartoon shot in the style of the old Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoons. The Joker is having trouble with his shadow, which keeps doing bad things. He finally gets his shadow under control, but three cops appear and beat him relentlessly, until the screen becomes totally red with blood.

The blood becomes a red cartoon curtain, and the curtain parts to reveal a dim hallway in the Arkham Asylum, among the cells where they keep violent offenders. Arthur Fleck is one of the prisoners. His guard, a jovial Irishman named Jackie, asks Arthur for a joke of the day, but Arthur doesn’t answer. Arthur has sunk into a gloomy depression. He goes through the motions of walking down the hall, taking his prescribed “medication” and emptying his overnight waste bucket.

However, Arthur enjoys causing chaos among the other inmates in the lunchroom. Also, he consults with his lawyer, Maryanne, who’s trying to get him declared insane at his upcoming murder trial.

Shortly thereafter, Arthur’s personal guard, Jackie, visits the musical therapy group, where Arthur makes eye contact with a pretty blonde inmate singing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” with the group. Arkham’s director agrees to let Jackie sign up Arthur for the group, and a romance blossoms between Arthur and the blonde inmate, Lee Quinzell. The musical therapy group inspires them to sing to one another, and Arthur imagines some fantasy musical numbers with Lee.

Lee tells Arthur that her mean mother had her committed to Arkham after Lee tried to burn down their apartment building. One night, while watching the “That’s Entertainment” number from the Fred Astaire musical THE BANDWAGON, Lee gets upset when Arthur refuses to leave the room with her because he’s engrossed in the movie. So, she walks to the back of the room and secretly sets fire to some papers. The flames expand. Panic ensues. In the bedlam, Arthur and Lee escape to the prison’s expansive front yard, where they frolic and then try to climb the fence, but they are caught.

Arthur’s murder trial begins. This leads to several major plot twists. Will Arthur escape with Lee? Will the Joker be able to menace Gotham City again?

The songs in JOKER: FOLIE Á DEUX include three famous pop music spirituals, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “When the Saints Go Marching In” and “Get Happy,” the Judy Garland song about Judgment Day and Heaven. It’s interesting to note that all three of these numbers have lyrics celebrating going joyfully to Heaven. All the songs in the movie are a high point and hint there may be a chance of some kind of redemption for Arthur. However, the movie ends with a shocking twist that obliterates any rational artistic or business sense to making this JOKER movie. Also, the final plot twist ironically eliminates the need for anyone to watch the first movie or this new one.

Arthur’s growing personal relationship with Lee seems to inspire him to become a better person. However, their relationship is also based on Lee’s obsession with the chaotic, evil side of Arthur’s personality, the Joker. Hence, the movie’s subtitle, FOLIE Á DEUX, which is a French psychological term for cases where two people share a single delusion or psychosis. Of course, it isn’t good when Arthur is encouraged to embrace the Joker side of his personality. There’s a dilemma for Arthur here, though. The more he acts like the chaotic personality of the Joker, the more likely the jury will decides he’s insane. However, the less he acts like the Joker, the more likely the jury will declare he’s not insane and should be executed.

Lee isn’t the only person wanting Arthur to be more like the Joker. The Joker’s disturbed fans on the streets also want him to BE the Joker and lead their crusade against conformity.

In the first movie, the filmmakers made the story all about class warfare. In that movie, the Joker becomes a hero to rioters who hate rich people and the system, and one fan even expresses his admiration and hatred by murdering Bruce Wayne’s father and mother.

In this sequel, however, the filmmakers seem to take the position that a public obsession with chaos and violence, or with a chaotic, uncontrolled famous person like the fictional Joker, or a real life killer like Charles Manson, is bad. Even so, the filmmakers still seem to buy into the defense lawyer’s attitude, who preaches that her client, Arthur, isn’t totally responsible for his past actions, because of all the abuse he’s suffered. So, there’s still a kind of moral relativism and an antinomian, or lawless, attitude in JOKER: FOLIE Á DEUX.

JOKER: FOLIE Á DEUX also has lots of strong, gratuitous foul language. In addition, though the violence doesn’t seem quite as extreme as the first movie, there are some disturbing, bloody moments. Also, the movie has a partially depicted carnal rendezvous between the two lovers, when the guards allow Lee to visit Arthur’s cell. Finally, the shocking twist at the end is rather depressing and unsatisfying, even though it perfectly reflects what seems to be the writers and the director’s dark, pessimistic, confused worldview.

So, media-wise viewers will not find this JOKER so amusing, much less enlightening or inspiring in any real sense, despite the positive lyrics in most of the songs.


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