This Guy Again

I admit it: I put off watching Joker: Folie à Deux for as long as I possibly could. I hated Todd Phillips’ first film, which somehow conned people into thinking “What if Martin Scorsese made a Joker origin story” was a viable pitch for a two-hour psychodrama that doesn’t understand anything about either of those people. (Yes, for the purposes of this argument, the Joker has to be a person.)

But the comic-book bubble was still strong enough to carry Joker to ridiculous heights. Phillips’ movie went on to make a billion dollars and win two Oscars, so of course Phillips would get to make another one. And this time, there’d be no pushback from a nervous studio. Taxi Driver King of Comedy Joker was a smash, so let’s see what Todd does this time!

Well, what Todd did this time was harvest a different Scorsese picture: New York, New York. That’s right, kids – you thought it was cool when Joaquin Phoenix danced down a staircase to Gary Glitter, so the sequel’s going to be a full-on jukebox musical set in the minds of the incarcerated Arthur Fleck and his fellow Arkham inmate, Lee Quinzel … whom savvy audience members might recognize as his future lover and accomplice, Harley Quinn!

It could have worked. Certainly there’s a way to do a Joker and Harley musical; both characters are excessive, amped-up personalities, and what is the musical genre but a license to go sailing over the top both stylistically and emotionally? But even with that license, Phillips imposes a suffocating restraint on his actors, trapping them in a courtroom drama, of all things, with Arthur on trial for the murders he committed in the first movie and Lee standing by her man, convinced their love is one for the ages. Somehow, of all the possibilities offered in a Joker sequel, this was the way forward: A static, leaden affair that spends massive chunks of its running time having people discuss what happened in the last picture, and why it was bad.

As in the first film, the film is loaded with genuine talent that’s given nothing to do. Catherine Keener scowls as Arthur’s lawyer, who has an idiot for a client and seems to know it; Brendan Gleeson scowls harder as a mean Arkham guard. Steve Coogan is there as a journalist whose interviews with Arthur might have given the film a spine, if it used him with any consistency, and Industry’s Harry Lawtey struts around as D.A. Harvey Dent, who – given the fact that Bruce Wayne would be about six or seven years old at this point in the Gotham timeline – is destined to become Two-Face in twenty years or so, but right now just seems kind of self-absorbed. Surviving characters from Joker the First return to testify in Arthur’s trial, and I hope Zazie Beetz and Leigh Gill were paid really well for their time.

And in between the courtroom scenes, the romance between Arthur and Lee plays out in song. Sort of. Phillips isn’t just riffing on New York, New York but also the movie adaptation of Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven, where miserable characters sang Depression-era standards as a way to escape their despairing lives … and Phoenix and Gaga are handed the most literal songbook imaginable, with Phillips choosing tracks that directly state the plot point of the moment: “For Once In My Life”, “If My Friends Could See Me Now”, “When You’re Smiling”, “Close to You”, and so on. It’s ironic, I guess, since the film never gives Arthur or Lee the triumphs they’re singing about, but it’s also exhausting.

The hopelessness is the point of Pennies from Heaven; New York, New York is about a rocky romance between two performers that doesn’t last, but helps them reach new creative heights. You don’t have to vibe with their downbeat tempos, but at least they’re intentional – and orchestrated by people who know what they’re doing with their respective texts. With Folie à Deux, as with its predecessor, there is no sign Phillips understands anything about the world he’s created beyond the most superficial level – What If Comics, But Scorsese – and the sequel’s nihilistic final twist suggests he hasn’t even though it through that far. That’s Life, amirite?

I’m so tired.

Much more engaging as both art and entertainment is Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, freshly released on Blu-ray in Criterion’s Janus Contemporaries imprint. It’s also about soulmates, but in a far more lyrical and considered fashion; that’s what happens when an artist applies himself, I guess.

The Beast opens in the near future of 2044, in a world where emotions are a liability and can be purged at the genetic level if an individual wants to become more focused and efficient. The process requires one to experiences one’s past lives, which can prove both enlightening and devastating.

Léa Seydoux is Gabrielle, who elects to have herself purged only to discover that her previous incarnations all ended tragically due to her repeated encounters with a man named Louis (George MacKay) – who, as it happens, she’s also met in this life, on the way to her first purging appointment. Are they doomed to repeat their cycle, or will Gabrielle’s purging set her free? And who or what, exactly, is the beast of the title?

Bonello and co-writers Benjamin Charbit and Guillaume Bréaud stitch several of Gabrielle’s past lives together into a rich quilt, hitting the same themes of longing and impermanence that you’ll find in Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle and Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, with a subtle callback to the visuals of Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin for good measure. Shot by Josée Deshaies in varying aspect ratios to represent Belle Epoque Paris, 2014 Los Angeles and the future “present”, the result is a sinewy, seductive mood piece, using the language of genre to tell an older and more elemental story about free will and destiny, the lure of a bad romance and the way we are the sum total of our experiences.

It’s got ten minutes on the Joker sequel but feels half as long, and it’s the first film I’ve seen in a really long time where George MacKay seemed to have some range – though it’s possible that’s just because Seydoux is so watchable and layered opposite him as the various Gabrielles. It’s her movie from start to finish, and she’s utterly mesmerizing.

Janus Contemporaries releases don’t go terribly deep into their films, which is too bad – I would have loved a Bonello-Seydoux commentary track or a look behind the scenes, just to see how the film’s aesthetic was planned out. We do get Bonello’s episode of the Criterion Channel’s Meet the Filmmakers interview series, in which he walks us through the themes, inspiration and structure of The Beast, so that’s not nothing.

Warner’s 4K disc of Joker: Folie à Deux is a proper special edition, though, with a 45-minute production documentary and four shorter featurettes that delve into the music, the production design, the cinematography and the opening animation by The Triplets of Belleville’s Sylvain Chomet, who evokes the texture of old-school Looney Tunes shorts without quite capturing their energy or appeal.

At least it looks great. Both discs do look, honestly. There’s no 4K edition of The Beast, but the Blu-ray’s 1080p/24 master is sufficiently sumptuous, each of the film’s varied visual palettes coming through as intended. And Warner’s UHD presentation of Folie à Deux offers a razor-sharp rendering of the split-format IMAX version, with its hallucinatory deviations breaking through the sickly, grainy look of Lawrence Sher’s 2019 aesthetic in vivid detail … though Phillips can’t keep that consistent either, abandoning the visual language to open up the image for maximum impact during the climax. It’s all empty bombast anyhow.

Joker: Folie a Deux is available now in separate 4K and Blu-ray editions from Warner Home Entertainment; The Beast is available on Blu-ray from Janus Contemporaries.

Up next: Criterion and Arrow give No Country for Old Men and Demolition Man the special editions they’ve always deserved. Seriously!