At least the first “Joker” film, Todd Phillips’ 2019 origin story about the Gotham villain as antihero, had the guts to push its protagonist’s rebellion to damaging extremes. The abused, neglected and damaged Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) – cursed as a son, lover and comedian – takes violent revenge that quickly earns him fans and followers. The film’s spirit of anti-plutocratic rebellion is inspired by the injustice of right-wing vigilantes; it is a fascist fantasy dressed up in egalitarian justice. In Phillips’ new sequel, “Joker: Folie à Deux,” he returns to the frenetic ideology that gave the earlier film its energy, however dubious; the sequel is merely innocuous, grandiose in scale of production, but inferior in dramatic content.

In ‘Folie à Deux’, Arthur is imprisoned in Arkham Asylum for the murders he committed in the earlier film – three subway attackers, a former colleague and a TV presenter, whom he kills live on air – and awaits of its process on capital charges. (He is responsible for a sixth murder of his mother, which he openly admits to but has not been charged with.) Arthur is the celebrity of the place and he has the help of a skilled lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), who has a plans to spare him the death penalty. She plans to portray him as not responsible for his actions, on the grounds that he has a split personality as a result of the abuse he suffered in childhood – Arthur is the mild-mannered comedian, Joker the raging killer who takes over in times of crisis. . But before the case goes to trial, Arthur’s personal life changes: during a group music therapy session, he meets Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), a patient who is an expressive and enthusiastic singer and also a fan of his. Arthur and Lee quickly fall in love and, aided by sympathetic guards, forge a relationship that she resourcefully manages to deepen in the course of its trial, even as Arthur’s self-presentation as mentally ill, according to Maryanne’s strategy, tests the couple’s bond stilt. (Gradually, Lee transforms into the character of Harley Quinn.)

The driving force behind “Folie à Deux” is music. In ‘Joker’ it was established that Arthur was watching classic Hollywood musicals on TV with his mother. “Folie à Deux” shows the imagination shaped by that experience: Arthur’s inner life expresses itself in terms of song and dance, in sequences that range from intimate duets with Lee to mighty production numbers on grandiose sets with large casts and flamboyant action. While “Joker” was largely inspired by Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy,” the templates for “Folie à Deux” are James Thurber’s story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (published in The New Yorker in 1939), in which the mundane life of a suburban businessman inspires wild fantasies about who he is the hero, and ‘Pennies from Heaven’, Dennis Potter’s 1978 TV series starring Bob Hoskins, in which the main character, a sheet music salesman, indulges his fantasies by lip-syncing to classical-era pop records in staged musical productions. There is no lip syncing in Phillips’ film; instead, Phoenix (who is hardly a trained singer) and Gaga (who is among pop’s most distinctive singers) sing.

That singing is one of the much-discussed aspects of the film’s production: Gaga and Phoenix perform live, on set, while the cameras roll. (They don’t sync with their own recordings, as is often done in movie musicals.) Some of the singing takes place on an intimate scale, in tight spaces and close-ups, and Gaga does more than just lower her voice—she deglamorizes it, and in fact does so all the time, removing much of the vocal polish and splendor in favor of a less professional finish. Strangely, the results come across as a directorial affectation, a deliberate cramp in her style. Moreover, the other important aspects of these musical scenes, from the orchestral or big band accompaniment to the glossy splendor of their cinematography, neutralize the spontaneity, intimacy, subjectivity and immediacy that the vocal performances are intended to convey. Whether the musical numbers feign realism (as when Arthur imagines himself walking around the asylum’s common room with his belongings) or reach deep into the fantasy (as in a marriage of convenience with a jazz club performance attached), Phillips remains on the surface and lends them little physicality, little flair to match the songs.

Filming music and dance may be even closer to the graphic abstractions and wild impossibilities of comic art than filming action, no matter how powerful or violent, but the musical images in ‘Folie à Deux’ are far from a comprehensive story. visual conception; they are largely ordinary visual recordings that, despite elaborate sets, offer little sense of style. (The droning instrumental accompaniments, which immerse the singers’ voices in their enveloping textures, don’t help either.) It’s as if Phillips was content with conjuring up the idea of ​​musical fantasy scenes and giving them little identity of their own. His earlier films were also not hallmarks of cinematic lyricism, but the tight anchoring of the ‘Folie à Deux’ fantasies to the plot, their primary role in portraying the protagonist’s moods, makes these sequences all the more prosaic.

The inability of “Folie à Deux” to get more out of its two major protagonists than merely emblematic expressions of emotion says as much about films based on comic books, and about genre films as such, as it does about Phillips’ directorial choices. With their simplistic plot, austere psychology and grim plot-advancing dialogue, comic book adaptations are made for the gritty B-movie or TV productions they received decades ago – yet few directors not named Orson Welles could conjure it up on a low budget extravagant universe of visual arts that makes comic books so attractive. However, the elaborate, probably expensive realizations of the films tend to determine the results: because the films are expensive to make, and because they must primarily serve the fans of the source material, the main artistic decision-making is shifted to commercial reasons, from the set to the boardroom. The expectation of fans parsing details in talmudic fashion over the course of multiple films in a series gives rise to a direction toward over-literality. When a guard shaves Arthur to prepare him for a meeting with Maryanne (since you can’t trust a prisoner with a razor), he makes a cut in the corner of Arthur’s mouth, and the small trickle of blood might as well get an operatic aria . own, it is so shamelessly emphasized. Fear the Worst: I won’t spoil it, but when that trickle appears again, it’s in a scene with a big dramatic moment where the underlined detail becomes grossly cheapened and vulgarized.

‘Folie à Deux’ is also a brutal story, full of deliberate violence and cruel coincidences. The only scene of real horror in the film concerns sexual abuse, a sequence that is horrifying to watch in its allusive generalities and to imagine in its undepicted details. This scene is notable for the fear that Phillips brings to it, and it is also notable in another respect: the apparent detachment from the action that precedes and follows it. Even this remarkable and emotionally charged scene cannot help but seem unleashed from a cinematic machine designed not to convey an experience beyond reason, but to produce something called darkness.

The film does not allow events to unfold organically; it sticks them on the screen with a demonstrative obviousness. There is one moment that will stay with us as an authentic touch to life: when Lee, a patient with minimum security, meets Arthur, whose protocol for maximum security requires him to cuff his hands behind his back even in the music group. With his handcuffs in hand, he extends one finger to her for a handshake. In contrast, scenes with intensely expressed emotions (such as when Arthur, alone in the asylum courtyard, lets loose with loud and anguished sounds that could be laughing or crying) feel calculated, especially in terms of showing actorly effort. Phillips holds his cast in high regard, but neither the script nor the shooting are up to their efforts. In a major courtroom scene, Arthur speaks with a strange series of highly theatrical accents that are as much evident in their eccentricity as they are disconnected not only from the film as a whole and the specifics of the scene, but also from Phoenix himself, who appears almost disembodied. filmed with a perfunctory inattention to physical presence. The film feels not only planned, but decided, and what happens as the camera rolls comes across as an afterthought.