Can We Talk About The Problem With Harley Quinn In Joker: Folie a Deux?

It's easy to point at the problems with Joker: Folie a Deux and laugh but there is one that doesn't really get addressed and is kind of a problem that plagues both Joker movies. There are many moments across both entries where characters do not act like normal humans, especially when one considers that the entire conceit of both these films is that they exist in a world similar to reality. This problem is made perfectly clear by how Harley Quinn (Lee) is handled, especially early on as the character is introduced.

We meet Arthur being held in custody in Arkham Asylum's maximum security wing as he awaits trial for the murders he committed in the first movie. He has a meeting with his attorney and to get to this meeting he has to walk through the minimum security wing with one security guard. This is where he sees the musical therapy classroom (and by extension, Lee) because, again, the path to the visitation area for the criminally insane inmates goes through the minimum security wing.

So later in the movie the guard that has a nebulous relationship with Arthur somehow pulls some strings to get Arthur into said musical therapy class in the minimum security wing. This isn't entirely altruistic because the guard has an interest in the woman who runs the group. I'd be curious about what kind of clout this guard has with the people running what is allegedly a mental health institution to get someone who is presently on trial for five murders into the minimum security wing with one guard who seems to be close to retirement with him but whatever. Lee tells Arthur here that she is being held in Arkham involuntarily because she was inspired by Arthur to burn down the apartment building she and her parents live in and killed her father. This act of Arson would be considered an A-I felony in New York (where Gotham City explicitly is in this movie), not to mention the murder charge, but that gets her placed in the minimum security section. More on that later.

Apparently, this musical theory class also has a late-night film club aspect where Arthur is brought to watch The Band Wagon. Lee gets bored and wants to leave with Arthur who declines so she decides to start a fire. This fire causes a mass evacuation of Arkham and the near escape of Arthur to the point where he is thrown into solitary confinement. At the same time, Lee (the one who started the fire) is freed and released out onto the streets of Gotham. Arthur finds out about this when Lee comes to him and tells him this because it appears the guards do not understand the nuance of solitary confinement. They are left alone so Arthur and Lee have the opportunity to awkwardly conceive a baby that is mentioned once and then never mentioned again.

The trial begins and Lee starts showing up so Arthur's attorney rightfully tells him the truth about Lee. She's not really an arsonist who was being held in Arkham Asylum involuntarily, she's a psychology graduate student who saw Joker on TV and fell in love with him. She heard he was being held in Arkham Asylum and decided to check herself in so she could meet him. She never burned down the building she lived in, she never killed her father, all of that was made up. Also, in a particularly Wiseau-ian piece of dialogue, she tells Arthur she is pregnant.

From here on, Lee falls out of the movie and becomes an object. She is window-dressing for Arthur's trial and an object for Arthur to desire but never actually receive. In a way, the method through which she is handled perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with both Joker movies because it requires so many leaps in logic that if someone stops and thinks about it for even the smallest amount of time, it falls apart completely.

Both Joker and Joker: Folie a Deux are almost entirely from Arthur's perspective. Since the viewer doesn't spend enough time with any other character for enough time or through any significant event so there is a strong case to be made that everything shown is happening in Arthur's head. Since Arthur is clearly a deranged man and, at best, an unreliable narrator, it is easy to chalk up logical inconsistencies as things that Arthur imagines is happening. Why is a person working at a mental health institution pulling a file, placing it where Arthur can grab, and then telling him he can't have it? Why is Arthur able to get to a place where he has access to Thomas Wayne? Why would a judge allow a defendant on trial for murder who is representing himself to dress in the outfit he committed the murder in while cross-examining the witness who watched him commit the murder? Why would someone who committed arson be allowed to leave Arkham Asylum? These are not decisions normal, sane people make but up and down both movies people do dumb things like that.

The problem is that Folie a Deux goes out of its way to make these dumb decisions explicitly happen in reality. The first time these plotholes could be explained away by giving Todd Phillips the benefit of the doubt based on how he ended the movie. It's nebulous. Did any of it happen for real? Was it all in Arthur's head? Who knows, it's part of the charm. Perhaps we gave Phillips too much credit and assumed he had a better sense of what the movie would be going in than he actually did. Either way, we deserve better from DC films.