Movie: Joker: Folie à Deux

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

That's Entertainment!

Plot Overview

Party clown and stand-up comedian Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), aka The Joker, is being held at Arkham State Hospital awaiting trial, charged on at least one count of first degree murder and one or more of second. With the rest of the inmates, he sluices his chamber­pot down the communal sink in the morning, listens to a guard's lame joke about a Catholic dog, and gets groomed by the prison barber for a meeting with his lady lawyer Mary­anne Stewart (Catherine Keener.) He arrives soaking wet as it's raining out and inmates are for­bid­den umbrellas. For his good behavior, he is moved from WARD B to low security WARD E where he hooks up with his groupie Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) joining her in show tune therapy, a conjugal visit, and ultimately a show trial where he's the defendant and Lee a front row spectator. The prosecutor Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) calls one reluctant witness—he likes Arthur—Gary Puddles (Leigh Gill) then rests and the defense rests, too, having a hope­less case. Some­body drops a bomb­shell during the closing arguments.

Ideology

As sometimes happens an arche­type anchors the story, in this case the institution's name Arkham reflecting Noah's ark after flood abated and the water drained and Noah's youngest Ham got into some mischief. For those not settled in the sands of time, I offer this remedial history lesson, with apologies to those who don't need it. The biblical story is widely known of Adam & Eve's temptation and fall in the Garden of Eden, how the woman ate the forbidden fruit and gave it to her husband to eat (Gen. 3:6), God responding by increasing the severity of the woman's child­birth pains (Gen. 3:16) and making man's toil onerous (Gen. 3:17-19.) What is less well known—except in places like the Bible Belt—is a redo of sorts to ameliorate man's difficult labor. Noah's father Lamech had (Gen. 5:29) "called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed." Or as novelist Jess Shelton puts it: "There's a place in the Book tells on Lamech. He got him a boy called Noah and he says: This boy'll bring us comfort from our work and from the toil of our hands in the ground the Lord cursed" (126). They still had to follow the earlier template to get a reprieve. Instead of the forbidden tree to be respected by the first couple, there was old man Noah whose work break was to be respected by (Gen. 6:10) "Noah's three begotten sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth." They may be formed into two pairs: the eldest Japheth & Shem, and the youngest Ham paired with his own son Canaan making the numbers even. By way of analogy from a May Astor novel, we see "Walter Carewe & his enchanting Beatrice, who … bore him their three children: Virginia, Charles, born a year apart, … Elsie, two years younger. … Virginia and Charlie had been a unit within their family unit. Dad and Mum were a unit. Elsie was another unit, like a small soft bud attached to the Mum and Dad unit" (16–19). Noah fortified him­self with wine before invoking blessings on his paired sons, as later would Isaac with savory venison before blessing Esau.

In the Genesis account of the Flood, is a mystery woman, the mother of Ham. (Gen. 9:18-19) "And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread." Let's look again at Noah's story (Jasher 5:14-17):

(Jasher 5:14-17) "And the Lord said unto Noah, Take unto thee a wife, and beget children, for I have seen thee righteous before me in this generation. And thou shalt raise up seed, and thy children with thee, in the midst of the earth; and Noah went and took a wife, and he chose Naamah the daughter of Enoch, and she was five hundred and eighty years old. And Noah was four hundred and ninety-eight years old, when he took Naamah for a wife. And Naamah conceived and bare a son, and he called his name Japheth, saying, God has enlarged me in the earth; and she conceived again and bare a son, and he called his name Shem, saying, God has made me a remnant, to raise up seed in the midst of the earth."

Shem and Japheth were full brothers, Ham was born at a later date (the youngest, see Gen. 9:24) perhaps from a different mother. Noah's wife was older than he was. Perhaps at 580+ years she was no longer able to bear children after the first two. She didn't have any more after the flood, even though it was a time to repopulate the earth. Maybe she stopped bearing before the flood. Ham could then have been step­brother of the other two.

Researcher Mark DeWayne Combs posits that, "Although Jasher specific­ally references the births of Japheth and Shem, there is no such reference to the birth of Ham. … that Ham may have been much younger than his brothers and that he may have had a different mother" (389). Combs also observes, "Fathering a child, particularly a son, through a hand­maiden or servant girl would not have been an uncommon or forbidden practice in that time period" (165). William Thackery's Victorian memoir relates, "I was an only child, though I was entranced to learn later in life that I also had a black half-sister, my father following local custom in India and having a native wife" (6). Historian Kenneth M. Stampp remarks that "Apologists for slavery traced the history of servitude back to the dawn of civilization and showed that it had always existed in some form until their own day" (14).

Another speculative instance of a secondary wife would be psalmist David the youngest's mother as intimated in (Psalm 51:5) "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." That would explain his oldest brothers' mistreatment of him, being separated out from family meals, and given a lowly shepherd's task. Rather than being born "in sin," the ideal is to be born (1cor. 7:39) "in the Lord" or in other words that a woman (1Cor. 7:34) "be holy both in body and in spirit." Getting back to David, he goes on to say, (Psalm 51:6) "Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts." In "Joker" the couple have a real copulation but only an imaginary wedding, albeit an elaborate one. Ring any bells? In a Ken Follett novel he writes,

"They went around the world after the wedding. The child was born in Switzer­land; they gave out a false birth date; by the time they came home, having been away for almost two years, it was hard to tell that the baby was actually four months older than they said." (384)

In that case the parents came up with a made-up birth date. A stand-up comic could make hay with that.

Come the deluge and the ark's passengers could well be a model for, (James 5:13) "Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms." There was undoubtedly a lot of distress on their voyage occasioning a lot of prayer, and their eventual land­fall would have been accompanied by much celebration. As ordained minister Tom Dooley points out, "Such a long period of ark living must have been quite tire­some. No doubt Noah's family was thankful for their safety and provisions; however, one could imagine them becoming restless, ready to get their feet on dry land again" (59.)

When (Jasher 6:40-41) "they all went out from the ark, they went and returned every one to his way and to his place, and Noah and his sons dwelt in the land." They'd been cooped up together long enough, so now they spread out some­what according to some prees­tab­­lished pecking order. God (Jasher 6:42) "said unto them, Be fruitful and fill all the earth; become strong." To become strong meant, among other things, taking their needed meds when sick, along the lines of, (James 5:14-15) "Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord." Children are always getting sick. Here it seemed to be Canaan's turn whose elders would have been his father Ham and grand­father Noah. Oil in Bible times was a medication, as the good Samaritan (Luke 10:34) "bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine," as was, (1Tim. 5:23) "Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities." Grapes grow in the summer, but once they're fermented, the wine can be stored through­out the year. Noah got into the store while setting an example for a work break, establishing period(s) of escape from hard work per Lamech's saying, now near univer­sally observed, as author Ray Loriga notes: "Men, here and any­where else in the world, tend to seek solace in beer at the end of a work­day—" (179). Or in a Benjamin Black novel: ‘He nodded in the direction of a marble-fronted public house on the other side of the street. "That place looks cool enough, and we could do with some­thing to sustain us." ¶‘They crossed the road, dodging the traffic, and dived through the double swing doors into sanctuary, dim and tranquil. Quirke never ceased to marvel at the palatial grandeur of Dublin pubs’ (53). As authoress Marie Chay once described something similar:

"To become happy," my father and grandfather had often told each other, "to make one forget, yes. That's what wine is for, but never to get one drunk. That is only for derelicts, not for men." ¶… My grandmother often said, "Merry, yes. Highly merry, well, once in a while. Drunk, never. That's … not for us." (157–8)

Yet there is the matter of bonding, as in a Hartzell Spence novel:

"Aw, come on," they said. "You don't really know a fellow until you get tight with him."

My observation told me this was true. The inseparable friendships in our house were drinking companion­ships. The great men were drinkers. A man was not quite a comrade, no matter what his attainments, until he had been on a binge. Once he had come in well oiled late at night and the fraternity had greeted his bleary eyes the next noon at lunch with the raucous song of brother­hood, he was one of them. The difference was subtle but it was there.

Only recently one of the bashful boys, who had been treated casually by the fraternity had come in drunk. The next noon every face at the dining table beamed, and every throat burst out with song:

        Here's to Herbie, tried and true,
        He's a Phi Psi through and through. (333)

Noah's drunken incident humanized him as a bona fide man of history with an extraordinary achievement, not merely a pious religious figure. It was also the occasion to sort out his sons' destinies for many generations to come.

In vino veritas. Looking forward from that point it might rate a line from a Greg Bear novel: "Dicken reached into the shopping bag and produced a bottle of merlot. ‘Zoo security could bust us,’ he said, ‘but this is the least of our sins. Some of what needs to be said may only be said if we're properly drunk.’" (235)

By chance or design this exceptional indulgence interfered—it had to incon­venience some­one—with Ham's youngest son Canaan's need, and Ham could well have been the low-status brother from another mother.

Instead of the wily serpent we had Noah's wife as an on-the-spot agent, who since she isn't mentioned, did well incurring no rebuke. She would have made her­self scarce giving Noah some space to relax when he started drinking, (1Tim. 2:9-10) "that women adorn them­selves … with shame­fast­ness and sobriety." Being a virtuous woman (Prov. 31:27) "She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness." She would not have let grass grow under her feet but would have gone straight to visit Ham to make adjustments regarding their diminished store of medicinal alcohol, like the home­spun heroine in an Andrew Taylor novel:

Mrs Arabella was a woman of decision. Having made up her mind to do some­thing, she did not post­pone it and did not permit half-measures. The inoculation of the house­hold was arranged the following day and put into practice on the day after. (175)

Ham showed up shortly at Noah's tent to check out the cause. He fell to temptation by mocking his dad to his two brothers, but they would have none of it. This is parallel to Eve earlier failing first then offering the forbidden fruit to Adam who accepted it, but here the older brothers did not go along with Ham, so we'd expect them to receive a blessing rather than a curse such as it was. The distribution of labor had to be readjusted to account for the new workers' holiday(s), and Ham for his insolence left him­self and his family line open to taking up the slack.

The licensor's alternate image text explains Noah, "When he drank some of the wine, he got drunk and uncovered him­self inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers who were outside. Shem and Japheth took a garment and placed it on their shoulders. Then they walked in back­wards and covered up their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so they did not see their father's nakedness (Genesis 9:21-23)." They covered the old man to prevent him from catching a chill in the mountains as it was no longer summer. Ham's show of disrespect to their patriarch is like the treatment of a revered matriarch in a Seymour novel:

I don't think she'll be pleased to know that her picture is now a source of amusement through­out Naples. When she knows, and she soon will—it's inevitable—that her daughter … is in part responsible for her being photo­graphed with bare thighs and most of her arse on display, I believe she'll feel resentful towards you. (131)

Ham had put himself in jeopardy according to, (Prov. 30:17) "The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it." Especially pertinent in this case is Noah's control over the animals including the raven (Gen. 8:7) and he is not unique, at least not in literature. Novelist Ted Bell writes of a chief inspector who "had been beaten to within an inch of his life and nearly pecked to death by countless killer ravens. All the while locked inside the cage of a Victorian aviary" (357.) There is even biblical precedent for it when some youths mocked a man of God for not having a covering of hair on his head and they got mauled by beasts. (2Kings 2:23-24) "And … as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them."

The man of God is a spiritual father and the carrion birds would get the leavings from the apex predator, along the lines of Thackeray's poem, Timbuctoo:

In Africa (a quarter of the world)
Men's skins are black, their hair is crisp and curled
And somewhere there unknown to public view
A mighty city lies called Timbuctoo
There stalks the tiger, there the lion roars
Who sometimes eats the luckless blackamoors
All that he leaves of them the monster throws
To jackal, vultures, dogs, cats, kites and crows (27)

There's a parity of eye loss and servitude given in (Exodus 21:26) "And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake." Ham and his line—represented by Canaan in his lineage—could be given servitude rather than mutilation. This would be in keeping with the sentiment of Job in, (Job 31:7-8) "If my step hath turned out of the way, and mine heart walked after mine eyes, and if any blot hath cleaved to mine hands; Then let me sow, and let another eat; yea, let my offspring be rooted out." In that picture above we see Ham after disregarding his mom's caution, checking up on his dad, getting carried away by an eyeful of the dishabille inebriate, and gesturing with his hands to his brothers. If he were to "sow, and another eat" and his "off­spring be rooted out," that would mean becoming a slave and his off­spring being carried away in slavery. Perhaps Mrs. Noah persuaded (2Peter 2:5) "Noah a preacher of righteousness" to go easy on his son, as did a preacher's wife in a Jack Williamson novel:

"Down on your knees!" The preacher unbuckled his belt. "And beg the Lord's forgiveness—"

"Joseph!" His mother caught the preacher's arm. "For Jesus' sake, not today!" …

He never knelt. Before daylight next morning he took the preacher's wallet and the keys to the red Chevy pickup and drove west to try his luck in Las Vegas. Near Flagstaff, he ran off a curve and totalled the pickup. When the police brought him home, the preacher told them to take him on to the lockup where he belonged, but his mother begged till they agreed to drop the charges and send him to a military school. (22)

The Bible's account leans towards the military service option. (Gen. 9:24-27) "And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant." When Noah woke up, he blessed as a pair the lines of his two respectful sons and cursed Ham's line—pairing Ham with his youngest son Canaan as was Noah's wont to go by twos—giving them servitude to his other two sons'. (Jasher 73:35) "For the Lord our God gave Ham the son of Noah, and his children and all his seed, as slaves to the children of Shem and to the children of Japheth, and unto their seed after them for slaves, forever." The two pairings reflect (Eccl. 4:9-12) "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall with­stand him; and a three­fold cord is not quickly broken." Japheth and Shem received a "good reward for their labor," a blessing for covering up their dad with shame­fast­ness; easier to do walking back­wards with­out looking if there are two of them. The punishment of Ham would have been disastrous for him had he not been paired with his son Canaan making a continued line of servitude rather than falling to the raptors. The youths mentioned above who mocked the man of God received the full impact of the malediction not having yet off­spring to help bear the brunt of it.

Ham's youngest son Canaan is the particularly noted recipient of the punishment. Later when the Israelis invaded the promised land, the Canaanites were due for destruction, but the Gibeonite branch (the Hivites of Joshua 11:19 & Gen. 10:15-17) did a deal with Joshua who was the Jewish leader. They'd heard what happened to other Canaanite tribes, so they sent ambassadors dressed as if they'd come from a long journey (Joshua 9:3-6) and persuaded Joshua to make a league with this "distant" tribe. When it was discovered they'd tricked Joshua into sparing them, (Joshua 9:24-27) he made them bond­men, which was more to their liking. If this trick is indicative of the character of the original Canaan, he might well have been malingering to get out of his chores, which would also help explain Noah's hesitation to coddle him with wine. At any rate Noah deserved to relax with some of the wine store after his hard work.

More germane to modern times is perhaps the lineage of Cush, Ham's oldest son (Gen. 10:6,) Cush meaning black in Hebrew, having settled in Africa, some of his to become in later years African slaves. Researcher Bodie Hodge confirms that, "As a general trend, Ham is the father of many peoples in Africa" (122). Dr. Ide adds, "Ham sired four sons: Cush (translates as ‘black’) … and Canaan the youngest" (62).

(Gen. 9:5) "And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man." To keep violence in check after the flood, God instituted capital punishment. In primitive societies with­out sophisticated implements, wild beasts were used, e.g. lions den, snake pit, ant hill. A man's brother was expected to carry out retribution, before they had a developed legal system.

Here the Joker wasn't so much guilty of parental disrespect as he was of murder. He dismissed his defense attorney who was on his side in court, and he forced a breakup with his inamorata who was willing to help him on the out­side. That "three­fold cord [which] is not quickly broken" was no longer there to support him, and he was subject to retribution ("You get what you f_cking deserve!") as were the Negroes in Ham's line.

Production Values

"" (2024) was directed by Todd Phillips. It was written by Scott Silver, Todd Phillips and Bob Kane. It stars Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Catherine Keener, Brendan Gleeson, Steve Coogan, and Harry Lawtey. I have no complaints with the acting.

MPA rated it R for some strong violence, language through­out, some sexuality, and brief full nudity. There was a lot of cigarette smoking in it. Folie à Deux is a term for mischief achieved by a pair where one alone couldn't do it. It was filmed in Soho Hospital, Belle­ville, New Jersey, USA with Arkham Asylum exteriors. Runtime is 2 hours 18 minutes.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

It's a trip and crime does not pay.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Edge of your seat action intense. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.

Works Cited

Unless otherwise stated, scripture is quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769, 1873. Print. Software.

Drunken Noah scene depicted in a Civil War vintage wood­cut, made after a drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carols­feld (German painter, 1794–1872) from his archive, published in 1877, and more recently by iStock.com/Getty Images. Used under license.

The Book of Jasher. Translated from the Hebrew into English (1840). Photo litho­graphic reprint of exact edition published by J.H. Parry & Co., Salt Lake City: 1887. Muskogee, OK: Artisan Pub., 1988. Print, Web.

Astor, Mary. Incredible Charlie Carewe. Copyright © 1960 Mary Astor. Garden City, NY: Double­day & Co., Inc., 1960. Print.

Bear, Greg. Darwin's Radio. Copy­right © 1999 by Greg Bear. New York: Ballantine Books, 2000. Print.

Bell, Ted. Patriot. Copyright © 2015 by Theodore A. Bell. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Print.

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Combs, Mark DeWayne. End the Beginning. USA: Splinter in the Mind's Eye Pub., 2014. Print.

Dooley, Tom. The True Story of Noah's Ark. Copyright © 2003 by Tom Dooley. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2016. Print.

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Hodge, Bodie. Tower of Babel: The Cultural History of Our Ancestors. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2013. Print.

Ide, Arthur Frederick. Noah & the Ark: The Influence of Sex, Homo­phobia and Hetero­sexism in the Flood Story and its Writing. Las Colinas: Monument Press, 1992. Print.

Lions den picture is copyright © Sweet Publishing. Licensed by FreeBibleimages. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Loriga, Ray. Surrender. Copyright © 2017 by Ray Loriga. English copyright © 2020 by Carolina De Robertis. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pub. Co., 2020. Print.

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Spence, Hartzell. Get Thee Behind Me. Copyright, 1942, by Hartzell Spence. New York: Gosset & Dunlap Publishers. Print.

Stampp, Kenneth M., Professor of American History at the University of California (Berkeley).
   The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. Vintage Books, 1955. Print.

Taylor, Andrew. The Scent of Death. Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2013. London: HarperCollinsPublishers. Print.

Thackeray, William Makepeace. Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman. Copyright © 1978 by editor Margaret Forster. London: Martin Seckler & Warburg Limited, 1978. Print.

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