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A Daring, Deranged Odyssey of Anxiety, Paranoia, and Absurdism


To watch Beau is Afraid is to submit oneself to one of the most scattershot, often abrasive movies released on a major scale in years. It is not only unapologetically bizarre, but seems to actively aim to get under the skin of its audience as it challenges their tolerance for the surreal, their empathy for an exceedingly unfortunate protagonist, and their patience through a three-hour runtime paced in a way that almost seems determined to reach exactly that threshold (it clocks in at just one minute short). It is a dense movie as well, full of precisely tuned symbolism, subtext, and metaphor relayed through elaborate set-pieces or meta-textual devices -a lot of it tied into heavy doses of Freudianism. In short, it is a movie that demands a lot, and for that I completely understand why it is so alienating to so many; why it has already been labeled by some a “career-killer” for writer-director Ari Aster, who made it off an apparent blank check for the back-to-back successes of Hereditary and Midsommar. I do not share in that sentiment but I understand it.
Beau is Afraid is the story of a paranoid middle-aged man on an odyssey to visit his mother, from his rundown apartment in a crime-ridden city to her elegantly modernist mansion maybe a couple states away -it’s unclear. Along the way each of his phobias come to life, even the subconscious and deeply psychological ones. Stream-of-conscious fantasy, memory, and abstract conceptions get wrapped up in this too. Essentially, Aster has structured the movie as an unhinged episodic nightmare of anxiety, deep-seated guilt, and severe mother issues: everything is literal and also metaphorical -and it all revolves around Beau, played by Joaquin Phoenix, frequently scapegoated, abused, admonished, and always afraid.
It is a difficult film to watch, and not even for the general opaqueness of plot or theme, but because of how brutal it can be towards Beau. And I certainly felt the heaviness in the first hour or so where Beau, already in a desperate, distraught situation over his trip and the news of something horrible happening to his mother, is just piled on by everything going wrong for him in the most cruel, excessive ways. Aster is no stranger of course to making his audience uncomfortable -both of his previous movies like this one even seem to take a twisted delight in it. But there’s no apparent direction this time around -at least not for a while, no strikingly distinct reason. It’s just a universe and several potential social/psychological analogues tormenting him. Even the teenage daughter of a contrasting nice couple is vicious and psychopathic towards him.
However the further along the movie gets and the stranger it gets, the easier it becomes to take in the absurdity over the agony. And the film’s reality grows more openly fluid, the surreal overpowering any sense of the real, deflating what comes off as excess meanness. Specifically there’s a long and exquisite halfway-animated parable sequence that turned things around for me, allowing me to see Beau as less a character than a concept; or rather a manifestation of several complexes related to guilt and anxiety. That sequence is actually something of a reprieve, in spite of the terrifying face masks that colour it; a sensation-driven dream within a dream. That’s how ultimately the film feels, like a particularly wild dream that has a foot in a recognizable context, but everything around it is exaggerated. And like dreams it expresses it’s meaning in overt ways. While there are certainly aspects of this film that are more mysterious, little clues and artistic choices that speak to something deeper, Beau is Afraid is not a terribly difficult film to interpret. In fact, it can be (and has been) accused of being too blunt in the ways it illustrates Beau’s fear of sex or his OCD fear of filth and how both of these and other insecurities are tied into his apprehensive relationship with his abusive mother.
The thing is, I don’t disagree with those observations. This movie is both obtuse and easy to read; it is Aster using film as therapy (though I would not necessarily presume to believe it his own) in intense, literal ways -and that is both fascinating and exciting to me. It works because it brings to life these complexes in highly creative, shocking ways. The movie isn’t very cohesive, but then it is a classical Odyssey, with episodes not meant to wholly link up. Aster has referred to the film repeatedly as a kind of nightmare too, and nowhere is logic less welcome than in the world of the mind. And even without that structure as excuse, the movie isn’t lacking a central drive, much as it may seem like it for a while. In the bizarre as hell way that it gets there, the endpoint makes sense; it’s incredibly dark and tragi-comically depressing, but it feels right as the demented endpoint of Beau’s journey.
It’s not all dimness and gloom either. While I don’t think it’s accurate to call this Aster’s first non-horror film -indeed in moments it is more frightening and disturbing than either of his previous works (it is called “Beau is AFRAID” for a reason); this movie definitely is as much an exercise in Aster’s warped sense of humour as anything -a fairly successful exercise if can be gleaned by the reaction of my audience, and myself admittedly too, if for no other reason than its originality. It’s a healthy blend, often grim or morbid in style, emphatically surreal in the vein of Monty Python or even more recent absurdist comedians, and still further characterized by a touch of camp -especially apparent in the choice of cast.
One of the things I unambiguously love about the movie is that Aster, having secured Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix for the lead, filled out the cast around him with a murderer’s row of excellent character actors, many from the world of New York theatre, including Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan Stephen McKinley Henderson, Richard Kind, and Patti LuPone. Also, Zoe Lister-Jones, Hayley Squires, and indie queen Parker Posey in supporting roles -all playing their parts excellently. There’s something innately satisfying in seeing figures like Lane and Kind, known for generally mainstream, family-friendly fare, as part of this wickedly dark and anti-conventional project in which their talents are utilized exactly as they would be in something more typical. There’s a particular charm that arises from this -Lane is charismatic and bubbly and funny as he subdues the violent, psychologically damaged war vet who lives on his property. Henderson gets to play some suspicious, even sinister undertones while maintaining that casual warm candour seen in Fences or Lady Bird, while sitcom actress Lister-Jones lets loose with some truly unnerving performance choices. Best of all though is LuPone, who plays the crucial part of Beau’s mother as broadly and aggressively as possible; and is transfixing the entire way through. She’s one of the most acclaimed stars in American theatre and makes the argument here she ought to feature in more films.
Ultimately though, Beau is Afraid rests on Phoenix’s shoulders, and it is a performance perfectly attuned to the material -exaggerated, neurotic, confounded, yet empathetic, pitiable, and human. Phoenix plays it full in the knowledge that Beau is a manifestation of anxieties more than a real person, and yet makes sure he is just real enough to garner audience sympathy. This through multiple breakdowns, psychological disasters, and discombobulating circumstances that take him through the suburbs to a forest commune of actors to a coliseum in a sea cave.
Beau is Afraid is an indulgent movie, and while there’s nothing wrong with that itself, there are a few of Aster’s choices implemented for chaos more than thought. His early depictions of a dilapidated crime-ruled city, defined mostly by its street people, verges too much on classism and dehumanizing stereotypes, even for that which is not meant to be taken at face value. Certain metaphors or connective threads are faint enough to suggest a dissonance with the rest of the script -much as I applaud it, the parable sequence is the most striking example of this. And it is hard to shake some of those most unpleasant beats -this is a movie that goes out of its way to alienate, even on some level mock it’s audience; and it’s understandable where that would leave a bad taste.
Still there aren’t enough movies willing or able to do the crazy things Aster does here, and while I think Beau is Afraid may endure more as an experiment (Midsommar remains his best), it’s exciting to see a movie with such broad exposure reconfigure the format and draw out thought so expressively in images. Maybe it doesn’t make much sense to you, but at least it shares that effect with the most powerful, provocative, and vivid of nightmares.

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