At the end of Christopher Nolan’s 2008 film, The Dark Knight, the Joker tells Batman that people can be easily corruptible and their hopes crushed if they see the hypocrisy behind the so-called righteous symbol of hope. In his final words, he states that it is quite easy to corrupt someone, even if that person has an imperishable attitude toward chaos as to create chaos, “All it takes is just a little push.” In The Dark Knight, the Joker does not corrupt any random individual; he provokes Gotham’s White Knight, Harvey Dent, to become the evil Two-Face, thereby furthering his nihilistic ideology of anarchy. In the end, it is not the Joker himself but his ideology of madness that lingers on. Thus, the Joker is not just a character with the iconic clown makeup; rather, he becomes a metaphor for the evil present in everyone’s subconscious, which can easily surface if given that “little push.”
In his new film, Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillips delves deeper into this metaphorical subject of the “Joker persona” and explores how it engulfs someone in madness like a contagious disease. Phillips sees the “clown prince of crime” as a mask that conceals one’s inherent goodness. It serves as an alter ego in each individual that represents evil.
In this version, it is Arthur Fleck, whose physically weak, cowardly, low-IQ, and soft-spoken persona shatters when he assumes the mask of the Joker. Once he paints his face with the clown makeup, he is no longer a weak, cowardly nobody in this world; he becomes an agent of chaos. As mentioned earlier, the Joker acts as a metaphor for the evil present within each of us, ready to emerge at any moment if it receives that little push. Arthur's surroundings provide this push (as we see in the first image), attempting to penetrate everyone and unleash the evil from the dark depths of the human mind.
For the Joker, the persona, the world is his stage, and life is a TV show where he can fully project himself and his ideology. This is why, at the end of Joker (2019), Arthur kills talk show host Murray Franklin on live television. It is a sensational act; from that moment on, the Joker is no longer confined to Arthur alone; everyone now becomes part of a folie à deux.
To illustrate this, Todd Phillips intelligently sets up the second installment as a musical. This conscious choice perfectly blends reality and fantasy, representing the duality between Arthur and the Joker. Just like in musicals, the cinematic space transforms into a fantastical realm where actors sing and dance to express their emotions; here, the Joker uses that space to pull Arthur into a delusional world of madness while also projecting his persona to a larger audience.
This dialectical exploration of Arthur’s psychology is so rich that it becomes both loathsome and pitiable. Arthur is not a bad person; he simply wants to exist in a cruel world, and perhaps his acts of violence seen in the first film are a cry for help. Yet at the same time, the violence serves as a trigger, pushing him to the edge. Joker: Folie à Deux showcases this collapse of humanity in a dystopian world where everything is rotten, and the alternate fantasy (mostly depicted as Arthur’s dreams and visions) is filled with inhumanity. Cinematographer Lawrence Sher beautifully paints these two different worlds with visually rich images. The real world is grim and dark, captured in muted colors, while the fantasy world is filled with vibrant, unnatural hues that mask the grim reality but can easily be smudged with a drop of dirt coming from nowhere. Production designer Mark Friedberg complements this notion with his artificial set designs for the fantasy world. The cityscape is constructed from cardboard boxes and fake skies, showcasing the fragile nature of this fantasy. Only in this fragile world does Arthur seem happy, where he can sing and dance and be capable of being loved. Yet, it is a world where he is utterly mad and devoid of humanity.
Joker: Folie à Deux is a film about this loss of humanity. As the movie progresses, we witness Arthur's descent into inhumanity, and in this process, he becomes so miserable that you feel sorry for him. However, as you empathize, he transforms into the Joker and suddenly becomes a loathsome maniac. Joaquin Phoenix beautifully portrays this duality of Arthur with his nuanced performance, fully understanding the character’s tortured psyche and playing it in a way that neither sensationalizes nor justifies his actions. It is what it is—a representation of the dark side of the human condition.
In a sense, Todd Phillips paints the Joker as a dark messianic figure for the people of this grim world—a messiah who can save them and lead them to a new world. But, like any other messianic figure, the Joker is manipulative, and his promise of a new world to the people, and most importantly to Arthur, is nothing but a fantasy. The other main character in the film, Harley Quinn, believes in this fantasy world. For her, it is the only way to live—in a world full of chaos. She is the true apostle of the Joker, a manipulative and misanthropic character. Thus, she employs every means to strip away the remaining humanity from this world. To do so, she seduces Arthur and gives him the necessary push to abandon his remaining humanity and fully identify as the Joker.
This is why the introduction of Harley Quinn in this already degraded world acts as a catalyst for both external chaos and the chaos inside Arthur’s mind. No matter how hard Arthur tries to resist succumbing to madness, Harley pulls him to the dark side each time. The depths of Harley Quinn's character are no deeper than Arthur Fleck's. Yet Lady Gaga plays Quinn with such sincerity that she becomes an iconic modern-day femme fatale. She is dangerously charming, whose sadistic urges act as a burning match on a puddle of gasoline already present to explode. I don’t know if the creators have plans to continue this franchise, but Lady Gaga deserves her own Harley Quinn film to explore this role more deeply.
Joker: Folie à Deux is, overall, a storytelling tour de force, featuring richly crafted images and powerful performances by the leads. By the time the film ends, you are so engrossed in this misanthropic world that it tempts your dormant evil persona to rise. However, the filmmakers are sincere in their representation of evil; they never celebrate it. As Kurosawa stated in his film Ran (1985), “In a mad world, only the mad are sane.” Todd Phillips believes that no matter how dark the world becomes, we must hold onto the idea of resistance against evil. Only then can we find sanity. Just like Arthur, who resists becoming the Joker in the end (spoiler alert), we need to believe in humanity and respond to our surroundings with empathy, even as the Joker rises from the dark depths of the human condition.