Joker: Folie à Deux

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Todd Phillip's independent variation on the villainous clown Joker from the Batman comics was a worldwide phenomenon in 2019: as a lonely outsider who, in a bloody act of self-empowerment, rises to become the avenger of losers of every stripe, Joker became a folk hero on and off the screen, washing more than a billion dollars into box offices. The fusion of the borderline specialist Joaquin Phoenix with the title character and Phillips' dark vision of a New York alias Gotham as a symbol of a society in free fall apparently fascinated far more than just the global target group of angry young men. The sequel film basically only deals with the question of whether the six-time murderer Arthur, aka Joker, will be convicted in court or declared insane, and it confronts him during the waiting period in custody with a female admirer who encourages him to sing and to new anarchistic flights of fancy in court and in front of his fan base on the street. The gag here is that the magnificent Lady Gaga plays this muse and, in her wake, the film mutates into a musical, the method actor Phoenix into an eccentric entertainer who, at the side of his unexpected partner, imagines himself to be a superstar. This narcissistic self-aggrandizement and the simultaneous hope for a small apocalypse that sweeps away all of life's adversities is brilliantly conceived once again, even if the story lacks substance for a length of 138 minutes. The brilliance of the visual and musical craftsmanship makes up for the shortcoming to some extent, but it is not enough for another throw. To quote one of the song lyrics: you come out of the theater “bewitched” by many gripping ideas, but not “bewildered” by a world view like the first strike.