The New Yorker Radio Hour
From Critics at Large: After “Wicked,” What Do We Want from the Musical?
17 Dec 2024
What is the significance of 'Wicked' in today's musical landscape?
Usually. Usually, not always. Yeah. puts it into song. I mean, many different kinds of music do the same thing. But I think that with the musical, it's often people who don't like musicals will often criticize its artificiality. And I like a musical that puts the artificiality front and center.
And what you're getting at, I think, with the lighting choices, with the kind of over-the-topness of this, is some things in life are artificial. so heightened, are so unrealistic, are so, and yet they're part of the real, that why not put them to music and have singing be part of it?
Nomi, you have volunteered as tribute, in a way, to see a film that I think the three of us were slightly reluctant to see, which is Joker Folie a Deux. Joker Folie a Deux, starring Stephanie Germanotta, Lady Gaga, and Joaquin Phoenix.
This movie was the follow-up to Joker, the Todd Phillips absolute blockbuster film, and this film did not succeed, and it's a musical. Please report back from your journey to Joker.
It's inexplicably a musical. In fact, it was not marketed as a musical. I feel like the studio probably – I mean, this is all guesswork. I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but probably sort of knew that it had a stinker on their hands and were sort of trying to hide it, you know, to sort of like push it as like a more –
logical continuation of the first Joker, which I have to say, you can say a lot of things about the first Joker. I actually kind of enjoyed it. It had a sort of like... I mean, I had a kind of problem with it, kind of like a fascistic quality it had, but if nothing else, it was energetic as fuck, you know? It was like... And stylish. And stylish, and it was a movie that felt kind of...
And this, the sequel, despite and perhaps even because of the addition of the songs, which are mostly covers, it's mostly like Rogers and Hart, you know, like Bewitched or like Get Happy, you know, songs like that felt very unenergetic. When I'm smiling The whole world smiles with you
I think Manuela Dargis maybe called it a slog, and I felt that when I watched it. There was something very joyless about it. It's basically story-wise, plot-wise, Joaquin Phoenix's character, Arthur Fleck, the Joker, is in an institution and is waiting for his trial and then goes on trial for the crimes he committed and the murders he committed in the first movie. And so it's a courtroom drama,
And also he and Lady Gaga, who is also kind of – they developed this romance. They have this sort of like Mickey and Mallory from like Natural Born Killers, kind of like outlaw romance, Bonnie and Clyde-like in the institution. They –
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