Joker: Folie à Deux, one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2024 reached theaters last wednesday (October 3th). The sequel, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga was announced back in 2022 and, since then, its genre has caused great turmoil.
Nowaday, the cinematography industry has been living in a peculiar moment regarding how it promotes its movies. Investments in movie productions have increased year after year, making the studios ever so careful when coming up with marketing campaigns. This explains why trailers deliver all the film’s jokes, plots and general elements: studios are afraid of not pushing enough people to go see the movie theaters.
However, when it comes to musicals, that’s not how the band plays. It isn’t rare to see studios hiding the fact they are producing a musical, since they know the public isn’t as fond of the genre. From the latest releases, it’s known that musicals just don’t perform that well in box offices. Big examples of this are the new Mean Girls remake and Wonka.
The advertisement for Joker: Folie à Deux, from the start, showed us how present the songs were throughout the narrative. The releases of Harlequin, Lady Gaga’s latest album, and Joker: Folie à Deux (Music From The Motion Picture), were two ways used to tell the public that music was going to be a central element of the movie.
Supposedly, this negatively affected the project’s performance in the box offices. Expectations were sky high surrounding Joaquin Phoenix’s return and Lady Gaga’s introduction into the troubled world of Gotham City. Clearly, the public’s rejection towards musicals made them unsure about buying a ticket to see the movie.
During the press conference in the Venice Film Festival, Gaga stated that she didn’t consider the movie a musical: “Music lets characters express what they’re feeling when words just aren’t enough”. she explained.
The film’s director, Todd Phillips, went into his logic behind his decision to add songs into the movie: “There’s a love in Arthur in the first film, like when he is dancing in the bathroom. Arthur had the music inside him. That was a logical start for the sequel”, Phillips said.
Is it a musical or not?
The story that follows Artur Fleck’s trial strongly holds on to an intense musicality as a sort of guideline to the whole plot. One could say that the narrative is presented in well-elaborated scenes that pay tribute to some of Broadway’s greatest musical numbers. These moments tend to take place inside Joker’s mind and are useful tools to illustrate his feelings according to the events that surround him.
Regarding the genre, during the 2024 CinemaCon, he went on to say: “We never really talked about it like that, but I like to say it’s a film where music is an essential element. To me, that doesn’t veer too far from the first film. Arthur Fleck’s weird and aloof and all these things, but he has music in him. He has a grace to him. That informed a lot of the dancing in the first film… it didn’t feel like that big of a step here. It’s different, but I think it’ll make sense when you see it.”
In his book Stars, movie critic Richard Dyer, describes the musical genre: “In musicals there is a concept of musical escapism as a distinct psychological phenomenon characterized by immersive daydreams induced by music”
And that is exactly what takes place in Joker: Folie à Deux. Musicals usually follow a rule of thumb: characters talk until their emotions are so strong they have to sing about them and, when their emotions grow during the song, they move on to dancing.
The movie’s promotion left a question lingering in the air that has now been answered. It isn’t a traditional musical, since it follows the protagonist’s mental and emotional instability. But, all the elements of a musical are there in plain sight.
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The article above was edited by Fernanda Miki Tsukase.
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