By Ian Giles and Courtney VanAuken
We (Courtney and Ian) saw a matinee of “The Joker: Folie à Deux.” It’s got low Letterboxd reviews but Ian is adamant it’s worth the watch. This is a transcription of our conversation after seeing the film:
[Long two-minute pause as we process the shock of everything that just happened.]
Courtney: Okay, the first question I’m gonna ask you. Was that a musical?
Ian: Yes, 100 percent. Todd Phillips was lying, it is totally a musical.
Courtney: It’s not a musical. I think it was more of a review than a musical.
Ian: Elaborate on that.
Courtney: Okay, so no original songs.
Ian: Jukebox musical?
Courtney: No, it’s not like “Mamma Mia!”, you know? It was a movie and it just happened to have a lot of singing in it. It was very theatrical. It was VERY theatrical. Like, it was gorgeous, the movie itself was beautiful.
Ian: But if a character is singing, with non-diegetic music swelling to their singing, and there’s choreography which doesn’t follow the logic of the real world, all of which manifests itself in the characters progressing their stories through song, is that not a musical?
Courtney: Here’s what I’d say. The Joker was Arthur Fleck. He was in a musical. No one else was, that’s that’s a way to see it because it wasn’t a musical, it was a courtroom drama. It was a trial movie. And here’s the thing, I hate trial movies. I hate courtroom dramas, but the absurdity of it all was enough to keep me slightly locked in.
Ian: I was so happy with how gutsy they went with it. This is potentially one of the greatest sequels of all time, because it completely switches genre. Whether you think it’s a musical or not, It’s very different.
Courtney: So different. Thoughts on the ending?
Ian: I don’t think that the ending was necessitated by everything that happened in the rest of the story. I do think that the use of secondary motion in the very final scene where this new character becomes the Joker is actually really cool. Aside from the ending, I was really excited about the initial cartoon at the very beginning of the movie. That was fantastic. What are your thoughts on that?
Courtney: I was like, “Oh, of course Ian’s gonna love that.” I think that a stronger opening image from Todd Phillips, when the cartoon ends and you hear the whistling, would have been a much stronger opening moment.
Ian: So you would just start with whistling, not the cartoon?
Courtney: Yeah. It felt more Joker, because I think the cartoon was too aware of itself a little bit, I think it did a lot for setting up this sort of idea of these personas.
Ian: So the cartoon, in my opinion, sets up two themes. One is that this is not “Joker” (2019). This is an entirely different beast. The second thing that it sets up is this idea of the Jungian Shadow Self. Carl Jung’s idea of the Shadow Self is not directly referenced by the film but follows directly from the opening cartoon of the Joker and his shadow and then later in the movie as the split selves of the Joker and Arthur Fleck.
Courtney: I want to take a moment to acknowledge the experience of watching the Joker as a matinee. It’s so interesting because originally I was gonna go last night but then I couldn’t because it was sold out. Today there were only five people in the audience, one of whom was a dude wearing a brat hat. Another was a dude who just said, “One ticket for Joker.” I think that guy IS the Joker.
Ian: He is one of the guys who was like, outside the trial or picked Arthur Fleck up.
Courtney: Yeah, yeah, and here’s the thing. As we were leaving the theater, I noticed everybody was so isolated in themselves.
Ian: We were the only people who went as a group. 40 percent of the audience were members of The Tartan. Do you feel kinship with Lady Gaga’s character as Harley Quinn?
Courtney: That’s a great question. Before the movie started, I was talking a lot about my experience watching the first Joker movie, how I was like, “Wow. He’s just like me because the Joker at his core is a teenage girl. However, I didn’t feel kinship with Joker. Because I mean, at this point after the first Joker movie, let’s remember, this guy is a bit of a freak, you know, and while it’s great for Joker that he was able to find someone to match his freak, sometimes freaks need to suffer. There were so many characters that I thought were going to be more, or I feel like they were just being set up.
Ian: Harvey Dent is a notable one because that is Two-Face. He ends up having his face get two-faced by the end of the movie, but other than that, we don’t see any development for him in this movie. How many cigarettes do you think Joaquin Phoenix smoked during that movie?
Courtney: 10 million. Enough to like, reopen that hole in the ozone there. A lot of those guys in the audience, I didn’t get the idea that they had a dog or friends to go home to. Not to be mean but there’s a certain audience the Joker attracts, and I’m glad to not be a part of it.
Ian: I think the idea of seeing a Friday matinee of the Joker in an empty theater by yourself might well and truly be the saddest thing in existence. I’m not against seeing movies by yourself, or even seeing an empty theater matinee by yourself, I just think that the Joker is kind of a sad one to do.
Courtney: Do you have any other thoughts on the Joker?
Ian: It’s interesting how they made a movie about drama students at diners, in public, and really anywhere.
Courtney: I love the moment when Joker went up to Harley and he’s like, “Stop singing. Please, please stop singing,” because I feel like that encapsulates what it’s like to be a drama student.
Ian: Exactly.
Courtney: Well, thanks for watching “The Joker: Folie à Deux.”
Ian: Yeah. Thanks for watching “The Joker: Folie à Deux.”
[At this point Wilkins and Beeler split, and Courtney and Ian never saw each other again.]