VENICE, ITALY — Five years ago, the Joaquin Phoenix movie “Joker” first opened at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival. Director and co-writer Todd Phillips’ rough, mean riff on the “Batman” villain originally created by Bob Kane won Phoenix the best actor Golden Lion award at the festival that year. Phoenix then won just about every other award he could, including an Oscar, and “Joker” hit the box office jackpot ($1 billion globally) as well as some sort of malignant sweet spot in the popular culture.
The world, and especially America at the pre-pandemic dusk of the Trump administration, was good and ready for a half-kidding, half-serious treatment of the Joker origin story of one Arthur Fleck, an abused, psychologically fractured party clown and aspiring comedian. Fleck reached his deification through violence, most visibly his point-blank killing of a late-night talk show legend.
Many loved it, some were eh, and a few others actively hated it. I was a hater. “Joker” seemed weaselly in ways bordering on an abdication of artistic responsibility, playing directly into the notion of discarded outsiders and volatile dreamers exacting revenge on the establishment. Nothing new there. But it also felt cheap and grubby, giving Phoenix plenty of room to act up a repetitive storm, but with a directorial sensibility that embraced of some of the more toxic impulses of the moment.
The sequel is a different, messy, contradictory and surprisingly rewarding experience. I’ll write a full review of “Joker: Folie à Deux” — a movie that many devotees of the first movie will likely hate — when it opens in the U.S. on Oct. 2. For now, I’ll keep it to three points.
1. Yes, it’s sort of a musical: Like the film version of “Chicago,” among other music-driven stories, “Folie à Deux” allows Phoenix and Lady Gaga to imagine and inhabit their own dreams of performance greatness, as their characters come together (Lady Gaga’s really good, not just vocally) to plan a life far away from the Arkham prison walls. Phoenix sings everything from Jacques Brel to Rodgers and Hart. Musical standards ranging from “Get Happy” to “That’s Entertainment” join original songs by Lady Gaga. There’s a lot of it; too much, probably. But it works better than skeptics might be willing to admit.
2. Todd Phillips has made his first good movie: Not his first big hit, god knows. He made the “Hangover” movies (didn’t like ‘em), stuff like “War Dogs” (which was about something, at least, but lamely so) and “Old School” (OK, I’ll give him “Old School”). But he and co-writer Scott Silver, coming off the first “Joker,” did some hard thinking about what they wanted to suggest or at least hint at this time — something more intriguing and, yes, adult or grown-up or nuanced, about what Fleck’s superstardom has wrought.
3. “Folie à Deux” feels, in fact, like a slightly horrified self-correction of directorial intent: More on that in the forthcoming review.
‘Joker’ review: Joaquin Phoenix creates an interior world of pain. His movie is a pain, period.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
