Joker: Folie à Deux: My Shadow and Me.
Joker: Folie à Deux 2024
★½
This review may contain spoilers.
man do people not like this movie and um.. yeah. please don't beat me up I kind of liked it? but don't beat me up I'll state I have terrible opinions.
the title is saying that he has become disillusioned with the two halves of him, The Joker is me, Me and My Shadow. that is what it means to me.
to seemingly discount the movie as bad and boring I feel does a lot of disservice to what Todd Phillips was trying to do here, which is further explore his characters in a different and unique way, to take Arthur to his logical extremes for me it make sense that this thing was a musical, to that degree it being a jukebox musical also make sense, each piece chosen here is purposeful and has a lot to say about where the character is at, in for once in my life, Arthur laments about having someone who finally gets him, in this big brass number he jumps around like a lunatic and belts out, slapping his chest and stomping around, one complaint man do I wish there was no auto tune, in a bunch of interviews they talk about the singing being bad on purpose but it sounds like they tried to fix it, I wish it was just bad and off key, much of the songs are in a similar vein to this song, a song that matches the words a character would be saying at this point in the movie while they dance around an area and play in this imagination like world,
Early on we are presented with a narrative that could lead him out of the death penalty’s is Arthur experiencing multiple personalities, I feel like the answer here is clear no of course not, but the film almost tries to convince you that he is, the film has something a bit more intresting to say and that is that Arthur’s shadow side is taking control of his regular side, he is essentially saying that this symbol that he created by accident has gained meaning far beyond anything he thought once was capable of, Arthur states in the first film that he did not intent to start those riots that he is not political, that he stumbled into this narrative and has been running with it because he was getting attention,
When it came down to it he was a mentally ill man who just wanted to be seen which is really tragic and the only people who saw him for who he was are people that misinterpreted him or used him for there personal gain, that ending furthers prove this point, he died a nobody the same way he lived, nobody knew who Arthur truly was, they didn’t care about him at all and now that he is dead, he will go unmentioned for the rest of time.
I feel it’s important to mention the movie messed with reality and fiction and so it’s kind of a what do you think is real vs fiction set of events, except for the musical numbers there is one scene that I struggle with admitting that it’s fiction or reality and that is the scene where she puts a gun to her head, while my interpretation is she is dead and she isn’t talking to Arthur on those steps I totally see a reality where Arthur imagines Harley putting the gun up to her head given the fact this is the first time we exit Arthur’s POV and enter someone else’s.
I think that the ending to this film is a cool bit of meta commentary, Todd Phillips wanted to tell an intimate and deep character study and he had to disguise it as a joker film, much like Arthur had to disguise him self as the joker for people to understand him, ultimately the film is only going to be remembered as that Joker movie that bombed and was bad not for anything that Todd Phillips tried to achieve.
I do agree mostly with what everyone is saying, it is kind of boring the cinematography may be good but that doesn’t make up for the pacing of the film, it doesn’t make up for the long breaks where Arthur sings a song, yeah he is expressing himself emotionally but visually it’s kind of uninteresting, there is no choreography aside form kind of just dancing around.
It comes down to it’s a well written essay and character study that really isn’t that visually interesting to look at and if I wanted to read an essay, I would’ve done that, That being said it’s not as bad as everyone said it was, not the worst movie of the year by far, not the best either by a wide margins, it’s just eh?
notes below
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- liked the opening cartoon.
- me and my shadow?
- is this how Arthur see's how he was caught it would make sense that he wouldn't be the joker 2 years later the shadow leaves him holding the mic at the end of this little cartoon thing, kind of saying that they are the same.
- the camera work is very nice.
- the color palette looks sooo good!!
- like the sound design on the blade.
- always loved the font choice for Joker, the title card is so vibrant.
- "we are broken" - this is important I am sure, the fact that the choir is singing this as they meet Arthur.
- he has had such a deep connection with music, since the first film, interesting to see how it evolved.
- he is known as joker now?
- like the that's life scene, very cool.
- like that get happy scene / musical number, very cool, pulls you in.
- she felt lonely, knowing what we know later on, this makes sense to some degree.
- for once in my life has these like distorted tuba's is soooo good man, ugh felt that in my soul.
- cool shot of seeing the laughter and crying, watching him switch between laughter and crying.
- love the lighting during the kissing scene and love how it continues down chaos all the way to climbing the fence, wow that was really cool.
- build a mountain -- in this sense they mean turn a hill to a mountain as stated later, is Lee talking about building there personalities into Joker/Harley?, is she talking about making a life together that she can get the revenge that she wants to get on the people that wronged her?
- the interview scene starts like a YT apology video lol.
- love how him entering the court room was framed like he was going on the Murray Franklin show again.
- Lee see's the real him, she see's The Joker, the performance, to some degree she is preforming in her life and I think that is what she see's in him.
- love the colors in this film, the colors of the stage in the scene with Joker and Harley's show is soo vibrant and great.
- incoherent mumbling.
- like how smooth the bombastic musical with these big brass instruments transition into the dark scores with the violin.
- i.e. - like how it transitions into the bathroom scene, that is the moment that made Arthur and IMO every time he sings a musical he goes back to that feeling in the bathroom in a way.
- the laugh track in the court room scenes
- Zazie Beetz character coming back made sense and what she is saying is pretty haunting, the fact that she holds herself responsible for "Jokers" actions
- the blues in this film are amazing.
- like the music during the phone call scene.
- loved that the Joker and Harley scene came back at the end here, do I think that Harley should have been the one to kill Joker later in the end to some degree yeah but I think this metaphorical kill is much more needed, I also don't think that she was there are on those steps, I think that was all in Arthur's head.
- it's kind of tragic that she tells him that they are through because the joker was fake because what she is telling him here is that she never saw or cared about the real him, that she only saw him as the Joker and only wanted him for the Joker.
- the film isn't trying to say that Arthur and The Joker are two separate people or that he has multiple personalities inside of him, we are being presented with this thought, they are trying to say that they are two separate people but that isn't the case. the opening cartoon is called Me and My Shadow, which is a Sinatra song in which he talks to his stage persona and throughout it comes to terms with the two of them being closer than he once thought, that they are one in the same. this is the thematic link for the whole film and when he brings the stool up to the jury like he is going to preform stand up in front of them it is the two of them intersecting a moment where we think the Joker is going to do really poor stand up is now replaced with a mentally ill man pleading through his stage persona for some help.
