Book Coach Corner: Joker: Folie à Deux

Photo by A. L. on Unsplash

Background: What Is Book Coach Corner?

Book Coach Corner is a blog series that allows me (your neighborhood-friendly book coach) to look at books, TV shows, and movies and dissect them in terms of story structure. There will be spoilers and some may posts not make sense if you haven’t seen/read the work, so wanted to give that heads up.

Those are the details. This entry explores Joker 2, a film which has received widespread disdain, but I thought was brilliant.

Synopsis

Joker: Folie à Deux is the continuation of Arthur Fleck’s Joker origin story. After being arrested and institutionalized, he finds hope and inspiration when he falls in love with a fellow inmate, Lee Quinzel.

Quick Thoughts

Before seeing it, I read how much both critics and audiences hated this movie. Despite this, I was happy to check it out: I loved the original, think Lady Gaga is awesome, and was down to see how they merged a horror-like superhero movie with a bouncy classic musical.

As the film began, I did think the musical numbers were really annoying, but as they took on nuance, I loved what was going on.

The film became a story about stories, and as a story nerd, I am a little bit obsessed. In this blog I will be doing less of a craft dissection and more an appreciation of the levels of psychology and narrative that the film explores through its use of the musical format.

A Story about Stories

One of the main themes of the film (and the one I’m seizing on) is how Arthur has his own narrative corrupted and controlled by others. The film becomes the tragedy of his inability to take control. The filmmakers explore this via two main frame narratives; then, feature breaks in these narratives when we see Arthur struggling to gain the autonomy of his own story.

Let’s dive a bit deeper.

Main Story 1: The Split Personality

The film opens in the gritty, macabre world of the original Joker. Arthur is imprisoned and marched to the bathroom to dump his urine. We then learn that he is going to meet his lawyer to talk…