By Brendan Schilling
11/19/2024
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“We’re gonna build a mountain, from a little hill…” This is a phrase often repeated throughout the movie. Harleen Quizel or Lee (Lady Gaga) is in a wedding dress. Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is in a white tuxedo.
“Gonna build us a heaven, from a little hell, gonna build us a heaven and I know darn well…”
Lee plays the piano. Joker starts tap dancing. His hands are in his pockets and he moves side to side. He swings his arms and spins around. Harley dances wildly in front of the piano. Joker moves up and down off the ground. Everything escalates and crescendos. Then, the final note plays and the lights snap off.
The movie has to be felt in an intuitive way, rather than picked apart mechanically. It has a dreamlike quality. People laugh during courtroom scenes and occasionally cheer. Convicts watch Athur Fleck on TV. The film is also a musical. Characters break into song. Arthur does performances and many sequences are in his mind.
Throughout the movie, Arthur must react to his perception of himself. “Did I deserve this?” Certain actions may not be real, but the emotions behind them are.
Lady Gaga’s outfits are flamboyant, her singing theatrical. In fact, Phoenix and Gaga are both talented singers. They “acted their asses off.” In addition, the film was well shot. There was good lighting and it looked amazing. This usually isn’t the case for courtrooms or jails. Through Arthur’s imagination, he turns mundane environments into lavish stages.
So what happened? On Rotten Tomatoes, the critic and audience scores are both at 32% These are horrible! Are people right, or are they missing something?
Much of this film subverts the edginess of the first. In an Esquire interview, the director commented that Joaquin’s portrayal of Arthur was heartbreaking. But everyone was only interested in the sensational part; the intrigue of the murders, when Arthur wanted people to understand who he was.
Our lead isn’t supposed to be cool, or someone you look up to. He’s an incredibly sad, broken individual. There is a scene where Arthur has to escape from a group of obsessed Joker superfans. It’s not very long, but these fans could represent a fictional type of person who enjoyed the first film for all of the worst reasons.
The character returns to being Arthur Fleck. During much of the movie he is struggling with the icon he made. He mainly adopts his “Joker” persona during his performances with Lee.
For instance, the film opens with a Looney Tunes style animation where Joker (the performer) is dealing with his shadow. The shadow steals his makeup and clothes, then wrecks a bunch of havoc. Then, they merge together. Arthur is blamed and the police beat him.
From there, he is determined to be competent to stand trial. His lawyer is pushing him to claim he has a double personality. The opposing counsel is District Attorney Harvey Dent. Some on the internet have nicknamed him “Smarmy Dent.” It would have been better if the movie further played up his “smarminess.”
Arthur meets Lee in a singing class at Arkham State hospital. A musical guard helps him get in because he wants to show off his skills. The fact that Lee is manipulating Arthur is revealed early on. She claims she grew up in the same neighborhood as him. This is untrue. Her father didn’t die in a car accident. He’s alive and rich. She admitted herself to Arkham State hospital on purpose. Arthur imagines her shooting him, but ultimately doesn’t care that she lied because he’s so enamored.
Some complained that this film was a relitigation of the first movie. This isn’t really a problem as a lot of what’s happening is in Arthur’s mind. We get information from his therapist and testimony from a woman named Sofia, whose apartment Arthur broke into in the previous film. His lawyer questions the court appointed psychologist. Through this, we learn details of Arthur’s childhood. He is also interviewed by a “made for TV” documentary producer. This is meant to make us think about how we consume media.
One of the most iconic scenes in the courtroom is when they question Mr. Puddles, a clown whose life Arthur spares in the first movie. He describes the aftermath of his survival.
Some complained that the plot structure was chaotic, uneven, paper thin, etc. This wasn’t really a plot heavy movie. It was meant to be a loose association of simultaneous experiences.
Another potential complaint is that all the songs are about being happy. With mental illness, joyful, euphoric feelings are often on top of a constant backdrop of pain. Another potential complaint is that the leads didn’t have any chemistry. This is flatly untrue.
The first movie involved the humiliation of holding down a job while having uncontrollable compulsions. The second movie emphasizes something else. How people view relationships when they feel all alone, a problem all too common nowadays.
Perhaps the weakest part of the film involves its spoilers. The ending wasn’t terrible but doesn’t reach its full potential. But the rest of the movie was still an awesome experience and worth watching.
Spoilers…
Near the height of the movie, after performing on court TV as Joker, Arthur returns to jail and is raped. Guards strip him down and smear his makeup with a wet towel. The scene is brief and not shown directly. It’s an insecure, vulnerable moment for a struggling character. This emphasizes the uglier aspects of his life.
Next, Arthur reveals in court that there was no double personality. That he is the one who committed the murders in the first movie. When Arthur abandons his Joker persona, Lee leaves him. Then a bunch of Joker superfans blow up the courtroom and help him escape. Arthur is frightened by them and runs away.
He meets Lee at the iconic “Joker Stairs.” She tells him there was no Murray Franklin (late night host Joker kills in the previous movie). The Joker wasn’t real. Then, Arthur appears back at Arkham State hospital. This raises a bunch of questions. Was their relationship real? Was the trial real? Is he back at Arkham awaiting death row? Was he initially at Arkham because of other murders he committed? Did Arthur hallucinate Lee on the stairs? Maybe not. After all, she is shown to have cut her hair. But surely he hallucinated her earlier in solitary confinement?
Finally, a man kills Arthur and carries on the legacy of the Joker. He proceeds to scar his own face – an allusion to Heath Ledger. Even though the face scarring is blurry and in the background, this attempt to link the movie to the Dark Knight was a stylistically bad choice.
Furthermore, the prisoner who kills Arthur is a guy we only see a couple of times staring at him across the hall. This makes it feel like random prison violence. It would have been different were Arthur killed on the street, or murdered by a betrayed Joker fan. Some could say that was the whole point. That the obsessed individual is a random person. But the effect here is mixed.
A few issues notwithstanding, this was still a beautiful movie. Gaga’s singing is theatrical, her outfits flamboyant. This movie must be felt intuitively rather than picked apart mechanically. Many elements are like a dream. But that dreaminess comes from within Arthur. Not just from the outside, but from a deep need.