Joker: Folie à deux_Todd Phillips discovers musicarello, the coming-of-age musical genre popular in Italian cinema in the 1950s. His film is all about music. He really goes all-in, with a musical film (no dance) that makes musical moments the essential elements and turning points of the plot. No hesitation, one piece after the other, whether it’s Hildur Guðnadóttir’s original score — always alienating and pulsating with something odd and sickly — covers of the greatest Americana songs, performed in the film’s ‘reality’ sub-plot, or, lastly, those pieces that exalt the Joker’s psychotic visions (mostly Lady Gaga’s own). Three musical forms, three narratives intertwining and giving body to the movie. An obvious symptom of the West’s depression.
Two years after killing Murray Franklin on live television and riding the wave of a city in full-blown civil war, Arthur Fleck is confined to the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, still consumed by his delusions. There, he meets the love of his life, Harleen Frances Qui...
