Venezia 81 Picks: The Clever and Humbling Self-Awareness of Joker: Folie à Deux.

With this first piece I inaugurate the series of reviews I will dedicate to some of the films I had the privilege of watching at the 81st Venice International Film Festival. The works I have selected to evaluate are ones that particularly stood out to me amongst the films competing in the official ‘Venezia 81’ category in terms of narrative interest, cinematic composition and thematic depth, making them, for me, more deserving of textual analysis and consequently, spectators’ attention. In no particular order, I will begin by delving into Todd Phillip’s Joker: Folie à Deux, which honestly, I was not expecting to enjoy and ponder over as much as I have. When the news broke out of the sequel being a musical, I pretentiously surmised that it would be a shallow cash grab, riding the coattails of the original’s financial and critical success. However, I left the screening humbled by the film’s ingenuity, potency and self-awareness, and as always, in awe of Lady Gaga. 

Joker: Folie à Deux does not simply serve as a narrative continuation or expansion of its predecessor, as would be expected by a sequel, but instead exploits the widespread misinterpretation of Joker so as to clarify Phillips’ intention with his original piece and rightfully condemn the superficial reading of the 2019 film. Phillips’ acknowledges the overwhelming number of viewers who appointed Arthur Fleck’s Joker persona as the supreme symbol for the misunderstood and ostracised individual, and personifies this over-simplification through the demonstrators wearing clown masks and make up who populate many of the film’s scenes. Lady Gaga’s character, Harleen Quinzel is arguably the most pronounced emblem of this passive and narcissistic spectator, as her devotion to Arthur is solely rooted in her perception of him as a spectacle, and her selfish desire to feel seen rather than strive to comprehend and empathise with the mentally ill. 

Arthur’s improper status as an object of marvel, rather than a struggling and unassisted individual as he was intended to be portrayed as in the first film, is also cleverly referenced through Phillip’s continuous inclusion of the ‘frame within a frame’ visual technique throughout Folie à Deux. Fleck is frequently captured either in his cell with his face enclosed by the bars or windows, through a glass screen, on a grainy recording filmed by his psychologist or on the rendering of his televised trial, constantly presenting him merely as an object to be looked at. This optical reminder of our role as gaping spectators also establishes a distance between Arthur and ourselves, which mirrors our emotional rift with him by virtue of our egocentric preoccupation with seeking parts of ourselves in the Joker rather than concern and compassion for his disadvantaged position. 

Phillip’s clever choice of genre for Folie à Deux further toys with the original Joker’s reduction to a film of spectacle. By choosing to make his sequel a musical, Phillip’s transfers the surreal and fantastical qualities of the genre to the film’s narrative, ironically reinforcing Arthur’s position as a spectacular entity, but also audaciously engrossing the audience in musical numbers to jeopardise and subsequently test our grasp of the film’s thematic and social focus. What ultimately encompasses Phillips’ ambition of providing interiority to and evoking empathy for the many people like Arthur, is the insertion of the song What the World Needs Now is Love originally performed by Jackie DeShannon, but covered in the film. The song vocalises Phillips’ desire for more attentive and caring behaviour to be devoted to the mentally ill, declaring love as an intrinsic need that universally deserves to be fulfilled and sidelining his cinematic complexities and ambitions to once and for all reiterate his first and foremost directorial objective.