Just as bleak and formally daring as its predecessor

The hugely anticipated 'Joker: Folie à Deux' rejects comic book conventions and stars a stirring Joaquin Phoenix and a cruel and highly feline Lady Gaga, says Geoffrey Macnab

- Geoffrey Macnab

In 2019, Todd Phillips’s revisionist DC comic book movie Joker ignited a firestorm of controversy, broke the billion-dollar-mark at the global box office, and ended up winning its star Joaquin Phoenix a Best Actor Oscar. Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, an aspiring stand-up turned psychotic killer, was an everyman antihero for our times – a stumbling loner who murders a celebrity chat show host live on air, develops an army of twisted devotees and sparks mass riots. The film was accused of glorifying violence and potentially endangering the public – Phoenix notoriously stormed out of a British newspaper interview when asked whether Joker could inspire mass shootings.

Those hysterical predictions didn’t actually come to pass, though. Today Joker is best remembered as one of the most subversive and original films of the last decade, while its hugely anticipated sequel Joker: Folie à Deux – premiering in competition at the Venice Film Festival – is just as bleak and formally daring as its predecessor.