Praise be, the jukebox musical Joker: Folie à Deux is out at last in all its blazing glory. Joaquin Phoenix is back to spread more mischief and mayhem as the face-painted Arthur Fleck riddled with a myriad of mental health issues (although apparently schizophrenia is not one of them.) To cast a firmer grip upon the slippery bar of soap that is a film-goer’s attention span, Phoenix’s besotted leading lady, Lady Gaga, has promised us all untold musical delights.
Actually, I tell a lie. What Gaga actually said was, “There’s music, there’s dance, it’s a drama.” She also helpfully informed audiences at the Venice Film Festival, “I wouldn’t necessarily say that it is actually a musical in a lot of ways. It’s very different.”
Thank goodness for that, because ‘different’ is just about the only thing one can stomach for yet another weary addition to the collection of angst-ridden tales about this sad clown. Film fans haunting Reddit forums have all but confirmed that almost nothing other than something “very different” would induce them to give up two hours of their lives for another Joker film.
What fans are saying
“Honestly, a big swing like this is the only reason I’ll watch the sequel,” writes a cautiously excited fan. “I’m a little more interested now that I know they’re doing something different with it.”
As long the thing that is ‘different’ is not the Joker turning out to have been Jared Leto all along, Redditers are almost unanimous in the view that the jukebox element of the sequel is a good thing.
“This dynamic of a mutual delusion, they could do literally anything,” adds another commenter. “Not to mention Lady Gaga’s talent.”
I fear that this is where this particular hopeful Redditer and I part ways. As an expert grudge-holder, a part of me still hasn’t forgiven Gaga for giving the world Bad Romance 16 years ago. Nor have I quite forgiven her for inflicting us all with Shallow from A Star Is Born. Although perhaps that last one is more my fault than hers. As a shallow viewer (ironic, really) whose sole purpose in seeking out entertainment is to walk away feeling happier than when I went in, a screenplay involving depression, alcoholism, a leaky bladder and subsequent suicide was perhaps not the finest choice. No amount of power ballad duets with Cooper was going to wash away the pain of two wasted hours. For the creative team responsible for A Star Is Born, I’m sure the target audience was not a shallow woman pondering why suicide had not been presented as an option to Bradley Cooper’s character an hour earlier to spare us all this trauma.
A pleasant surprise
At this juncture, an astute reader such as yourself will have deduced from this little analysis of A Star Is Born that I am perhaps also not the target audience for Joker: Folie à Deux or its ilk. Or, for that matter, a target audience of Gaga. So when the news appeared that she had threatened us all with a Joker album, I did not leap for joy. For the record, The Hollywood Reporter quoted Gaga as saying, “The film had so much music in it, so much music that I love. I kind of had this deep experience with the character and she just didn’t really leave me creatively, and I decided I wanted to make a whole album inspired by her.”
Curious to see what music Gaga loves so passionately that she would take the time and effort to make a whole new album, I undertook a quick dive into the Joker: Folie à Deux trailer, and got the shock of my life when it turned out to be a pleasant experience. Why, here was a beautiful sprinkling of jazz numbers from the 1950s! Here is a film containing When You’re Smiling, For Once In My Life, and Get Happy, presenting a stark and beautiful contrast to the troubled Joker and his shenanigans. Could it be? Could Gaga’s promised album actually vanquish memories of Bad Romance and Shallow?
Rather astonishingly, yes. My grudge-holding powers are not yet strong enough to resist the pull of potentially great music. With Harlequin, Gaga’s Joker: Folie à Deux album available on both YouTube and Spotify, I was happy to note that my playlist was not at all sullied by this latest addition. Gaga has given us her take on Judy Garland’s Get Happy, her own spin on the feel-good jazz classic That’s Life, and even given the gospel song Oh, When The Saints her own powerhouse twist. Be not alarmed, this is not a bad thing. Gaga has delivered the unbelievable and given us all an album we can listen to on repeat.
Other musicals to explore
As a jukebox musical – or a film where characters burst into an existing song, such as in Mamma Mia! (2008) or Camila Cabello’s Cinderella (2021) – Joker: Folie à Deux is not a musical in the traditional sense. A true musical weaves an original song into the narrative to move the story along. And before you are haunted by visions of Elsa building an ice palace and telling us how she is going to Let It Go in Frozen, producing a musical is not the lone prerogative of films aimed at children. In 1961, Leonard Bernstein bequeathed to us West Side Story, the gritty musical take on Romeo and Juliet that anyone sick of The Sound of Music needs to check out to heal. Fed up of syrupy nannies who inspire children to sing amid the Austrian Alps? West Side Story has the perfect combination of gang violence, murder and a passionate love story to soothe your sugared-out soul. If, by the way, you are now starting to feel queasy by West Side Story’s eery similarity to Bollywood extravagance, that would be because Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai’s Josh (2000) was heavily inspired by this irresistible combination of love and violence. Bollywood or no Bollywood, one thing everyone can agree on is that West Side Story is packed with such raw, jagged musical brilliance that Steven Spielberg took it upon himself to give us an almost identical jaw-dropping version in 2021.
The Joker: Folie à Deux team may not have had the collective wisdom of Bernstein or Spielberg at their behest, but fortunately for us music snobs, they used the next best thing: timeless classics. By treating every cover version with reverence, Gaga has gifted us the best present we could have hoped for. And with any luck, all those hopeful Redditers will now check out the originals and keep the love of 1950s jazz alive.
