Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie á Deux (Image: WB)

Pop CultureOctober 9, 2024

Review: The new Joker movie isn’t great, but is it really as bad as people are saying?

Stewart Sowman-Lund

The Bulletin editor

Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie á Deux (Image: WB)

Does the maligned Folie à Deux at least deserve a little credit for daring to try something different?

What’s this then?

Back in 2019, Joker took the world by storm. It made US$1bn at the global box office on a budget of about $60m. It was nominated for 11 Oscars and won two. It picked up the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. But it also wasn’t all that well received by critics (it has a lukewarm 69% on Rotten Tomatoes) and generated controversy for its graphic violence and concerns of real world copycats (for example, Vanity Fair described it as being sympathetic to “white men who commit heinous crimes”).

Five years later, we’re back with Joker: Folie à Deux. Featuring Lady Gaga in tow as an all-dancing, all-singing Harley Quinn, the sequel appears to have destroyed any of the goodwill from fans that saw the predecessor become a global sensation. So what happened?

The good

A lot has already been said about Joker: Folie a Deux. It’s been called an “unpleasant slog“, unrelentingly grim and just plain “dull“. While it’s true that critics didn’t love the first one either, Joker earned a huge amount of respect from those in the film industry and the general public. Sitting at a crushing 30% from general audiences and 33% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as bombing its opening weekend in the US, Folie à Deux seems to have failed at winning anyone over.

I can’t say I entirely disagree with the critical consensus, though I probably had more fun watching Folie à Deux than those I’ve cited above. Part of that is because, as a Lady Gaga diehard, I am contractually obliged to defend her performance as Harley “Lee” Quinn (it actually is really good, I swear). She’s quietly and convincingly menacing, further distinguishing herself from the career-defining turn as a fledgling pop star in A Star is Born back in 2018. It also goes without saying that Joaquin Phoenix is again terrifyingly impressive as Arthur Fleck/Joker, somehow even more physically transformed than last time. Together, the pair are well-matched and the scenes they do share together are the best.

But beyond the performances, I respected director/writer Todd Phillips’ decisions to take some truly wild swings. Not only is Folie à Deux a musical (more on that below), but it also subverted all expectations of what a sequel to Joker would and could be. It responds to the claims that the first film was incel bait by basically telling those who glorified Joker to fuck right off. And is that a bad thing? Commercially, maybe, but I admire the choice to try and address the disturbing elements of the first film with seemingly little regard for those who would be first in line to see round two.

The not-so-good

Taking wild swings is one thing – being able to land them is another. And that’s where Folie à Deux comes unhinged. While it attempts to reposition Joker as a victim of society and not some sort of heroic outcast, it does little to explain why. A lot of the two-hour and 18-minute runtime is dedicated to a quite boring court hearing that basically relitigates every horrible thing Joker did in the first film and attempts to explain it away. Then, the final scenes of the film render all of it pointless for spoilery reasons I won’t fully go into here.

In short, it tries rather heavy-handedly to say that Joker might not really be Joker, and tells the audience off for ever glorifying him. Again, I see the vision – and I’m not mad at it – but the journey to that conclusion is pretty rocky and quite slow. For a Joker film, there’s surprisingly little Joker here – it earns its R16 rating mainly through its unrelenting grimness rather than its action.

Then, there’s the Gaga of it all. Where Joker leaned heavily on its Martin Scorsese influences, Folie à Deux is grounded in the golden age of Hollywood musicals. Gaga’s performance is excellent, but her role is surprisingly limited. One of the film’s many (and more effective) musical numbers reimagines Joker and Harley’s twisted love affair as a Sonny and Cher-style variety hour called “The Joker and Harley show” – but the film is anything but. And, considering Folie à Deux is a musical and Gaga is one of the greatest vocalists of this generation, it’s bizarre how few opportunities she is given to actually, well, sing (she’s had to release a full side project concept album to remind us). Aside from a couple of short sequences, most of Gaga’s performance is limited to whisper-singing show-tunes in set pieces that are dingy and grey, like much of the rest of the film.

And letting the Lady Gaga sing while sitting down should be a crime. Now that’s something I’d watch argued in a court of law.

The verdict

I can’t help but admire the bold choices made in Joker: Folie à Deux. I’ve rarely seen a film so willing to confound its intended audience. But taking big swings is a risky move, and the film is ultimately bogged down by tedious courtroom scenes and a baffling lack of Lady Gaga.

Keep going!

John Campbell new true crime series The Woman at The Bottom of the Stairs is streaming on TVNZ+

Pop CultureOctober 9, 2024

Review: John Campbell, true crime and a taste of TVNZ’s new era

Lyric Waiwiri-Smith

Politics reporter

John Campbell new true crime series The Woman at The Bottom of the Stairs is streaming on TVNZ+

TVNZ’s latest investigative series delves into true crime, and gives us an idea of where the future of the network’s news is heading.

It took two years and multiple emails from John Campbell for Mandy Molloy to feel that her daughter Rachel’s sudden death in 2022 was finally being treated seriously by police. At the end of his new series The Woman At the Bottom of The Stairs, Campbell tells Molloy the story they’ve uncovered together is that of a mother’s love. More cynically, it’s a story about the ways in which police failed a vulnerable woman.

In six 15-minute episodes, Campbell tells the story – sometimes linear, sometimes not – of the circumstances that led to Rachel’s death in May 2022. Rachel was a month away from giving evidence for her own sexual assault case – she was allegedly drugged and raped following a burglary in 2020 – when she was found dead at the bottom of the front stairs of her Mt Eden flat. Through interviews with Molloy and OIA releases, Campbell doesn’t get to the bottom of how or why Rachel died, instead uncovering how long you can ask a question before someone finally listens to you.

Rachel was counted as one of numerous New Zealanders who die every year in circumstances that are considered sudden or accidental. In the mind of her mother, Rachel’s death was anything but – though trying to convince the police of the same thing seemed impossible, or for the “too hard” basket.

In piece-to-camera segments shot from Campbell’s desk in the TVNZ office, with his Hurricanes jersey draped over his chair and Thank You cards stuck to his computer screen, he unwraps Rachel’s story. If you’re expecting the kind of big budget true crime productions Netflix offers, you’ll find something a lot more stripped back and focused on the news gathering processes in Campbell’s series.

The show has few voices – Campbell, Molloy, the TVNZ staffers pulled in to voice emails sent by police (no NZ Police officer fronted the show, and their lack of physical presence leaves a hanging shadow throughout the episodes) and Dr Jocelyn Peach, a Victim Support worker assigned to Rachel’s case. The third episode examines Peach’s involvement with the family, and how the handling of Rachel’s case eventually pushed her to leave Victim Support.

Mandy Molloy, mother of Rachel, has fought for years to find understanding in her eldest child’s death.

The episodes are also presented in the style of an extended news bulletin, rather than a true crime docuseries in the vein of Making a Murderer or The Staircase. This removes that weirdly exploitative feeling most Netflix productions come with, but it also feels slightly awkward at times, with some odd editing flourishes (like having Campbell’s redacted OIA documents surround his face rather than having their own frame) and segments that feel like they may have been filmed the day before release (with the ramping up of events in the final episode, this may actually have been the case).

But the series also offers a glimpse into the future of TVNZ, and a way for 1News to establish its own style of video news and “content”. With Sunday scrapped and the 1News website headed for the same fate, as is reportedly being proposed, The Woman at The Bottom of The Stairs gives TVNZ another shot at owning longform video investigations that other outlets may not have the resources for.

The “content” released so far is powered by senior journalists like Campbell, Indira Stewart and Gill Higgins, who have had years of experience in front of and behind the camera, and know their way around challenging stories.

With this perspective, Campbell also breaks down how difficult it can be to secure OIA documents, being seen as a “media risk” and fobbed off by those you’re relying on for answers, which gives the audience a better understanding of the obstacles journalists face and why some questions are left hanging. Hopefully the juniors who may be at risk of losing their jobs at TVNZ have a pathway to make more of this kind of meaningful longform news as well.

It’s taken over a year for Molloy and Campbell to tell Rachel’s story, drawn out by back and forth with NZ Police and the fact that Campbell probably has another handful of stories on the go at any given time. Once you get used to seeing a true crime-esque series presented more as a news bulletin than a high production Netflix offering, the grim reality of the story at hand sets in: a woman who had lived through terrible trauma and struggled to have her voice heard was still ignored in death.

A coronial inquest can take as long as three years to be released. It may find that Rachel did die from a tragic accident, or it may reveal something darker. For now, Molloy can at least sleep a little more peacefully knowing someone has actually listened – but maybe if the people with the most power in these instances had listened earlier, she’d already know what happened to her daughter.