I'll confess: I watched it from the comfort of my bedroom, cautiously peeking through the storm of reviews that rained down on it. The first Joker meant a lot to me—a grim, tragic ballet on the edge of chaos—so I hesitated when the second was met with sneers and scoffs. How could the sequel hold the same jagged mirror up to society, or worse, what if it didn't live up entirely? I wasn't ready to find out in a theater. Streaming felt safer, less like an event and more like a quiet experiment.
The animated opening sequence feels like a nervous tick, as if the film is apologizing for existing and being insecure in the face of expectations. But once it passes that moment, it steps into its stride. The visuals return to the dark grittiness I loved from the first. Yet something is missing—the sense of sprawling, oppressive Gotham that once trapped Arthur Fleck. The city's shadows are gone, replaced by suffocating interiors: the prison, the hospital, the courtroom.
And that's the point. Arthur no longer roams the city like a ghost searching for meaning. He's trapped, fully this time, in a cage as much mental as it is physical. Its airlessness makes you squirm, but not in the same thrilling way as before. It's a different kind of discomfort.
Then there's the elephant in the room: the musical. I'll admit, the idea put me off. The sheer audacity of it felt like a desperate lunge for attention, and I couldn't imagine how it could work. Yet, somehow, it does. In Joker, Arthur saw his life as a comedy. In Folie à Deux, he sees it as a musical—a delusion so complete it swallows reality whole. Lady Gaga's Harley—or maybe just "Lee," a ghostly muse conjured from Arthur's mind—brings a haunting vibrancy to this fantasy. She's a kaleidoscope of madness, reflecting his longing for escape. Whether she's real or not almost doesn't matter. What matters is the way she becomes his salvation and his torment. It's beautifully mad, but only if you surrender to its rhythm.
The film is brutally honest in a way that few are. It forces us to confront an ugly truth: Arthur Fleck is not a hero nor an anti-hero. He's not even a protagonist in the traditional sense. He's a homicidal madman, and the film demands we reckon with that. And his hellish prison life is what people like that get and maybe deserve. The scene where Gary Puddles confronts Arthur in court—his PTSD, his sense of powerlessness—is a gut punch. It recontextualizes the chaos of the first film. It asks us to see Arthur not as a misunderstood rebel but as a man whose actions left scars on the innocent.
That may be why the film was met with such hostility. It doesn't just challenge Hollywood; it challenges us. It's not a product designed to satisfy cravings or affirm beliefs. It's the vision of an artist, raw and uncompromising. In an age where consumers are told their opinions shape art, Folie à Deux reminds us that art isn't about the buyer. It's about the creator.
This wasn't the movie I expected. It may not even be the movie I wanted. But it's the movie Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix decided to make, and for that, I respect it. It's a misunderstood masterpiece, unafraid to alienate and unafraid to demand more from its audience creatively and intellectually.
9.6/10 "Folie à Deux reminds us that art isn't about the buyer. It's about the creator."
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