In a career full of unexpected twists, director Ari Aster might’ve outdone himself. Whereas you could look at Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019) and see the timeless iconography blooming, there is something less marketable with his third and most expensive feature Beau Is Afraid (2023). It’s a three-hour tribute to the biggest, most uncomfortable anxieties that delve into the dark corners where Aster’s most abstract thoughts lay. It’s not even clear if the story takes place in the real world or some hallucinatory reassembling by its protagonist. In a moment where this could be Aster’s ascension into horror’s top echelon, he provides a film that does a lot of things, often at once, including a dare to actually watch it. Anything short of a Cinemascore F and box office bomb status will be a miracle. To those predicting that this is Aster’s moment, it is… but not how you’d expect. It’s the moment where he truly determines what kind of artist he wants to be.
During press for Midsommar, he suggested that he wanted to make a comedy. Given that he had billed the cult horror phenomenon as a “break-up movie,” there’s reason to believe he’s naturally facetious, wanting to pull the rug from under our feet just as we’ve stabilized. He’s very interested in making us question what we see, and does so often with the cinematic finesse that has earned Martin Scorsese as a fan. He’s cerebral, punishing, but also strangely endearing for how he makes the shocking also a tad absurd. There’s a playfulness to his style, though one would be forgiven for not noticing him cackling behind the camera as he hides a joke in the deepest recesses of trauma. Given that he’s naturally antagonistic to his audience, one would have to wonder what an Ari Aster Comedy™ looks like.
The answer is likely to start a class action lawsuit against him for damages. If you hate the film, it will be for the lengthy dives into humanity’s worst behavior presented with an impressionistic brushstroke as it tacks on surrealism via Homer’s “Odyssey” and Sigmund Freud. The background gags are often so profane and juvenile that it makes no sense why they’re there. The ending is possibly so confrontational and cryptic that you’ll be like those taking Beau to trial, waiting to watch his demise less for the conclusion but more so that you can go home. Why should we care about this man so overwhelmed to visit his mother? What a ridiculous premise. This epic goes in so many tangential directions that they cannot possibly all lead to one coherent vision. Where is the Aster whose meticulous gaze made Hereditary a complete puzzle? What is this misshapen mess?
Or, you’ll be like me and want to sue for damages less because it was a waste of time but because somewhere in the chaos is a deeper truth. Aster has created a masterpiece driven almost entirely by impulse and emotion, where suddenly it’s less about reason and more about how Beau is trying to overcome his own mental struggles. The edge of the seat will be one you lean on, second guessing if it’s a cliff into the abyss. There’s a wonder if the moment you’re witnessing will be resolved with any relief. It more often than not won’t. It’s just a punchline to the next scene, where a battered protagonist moves forward to his inevitable conclusion. Even as he faces a wall that a saner person would feel paralyzed by, Beau must find ways to move on. There are times where it’s not even clear why, but Beau must. Beau must for his mother’s sake and the hopeful sense that this will absolve him of soul-crushing struggles.
Few actors have felt as primed to play tortured souls with as much complexity as Joaquin Phoenix. Over the past decade, he has developed roles that explore the madness of the everyday man. Even with the dreamlike realms of The Master (2012) and You Were Never Really Here (2017) to compare to, nothing has really matched the levels that Phoenix has gone to with Beau. Those films by comparison are familiar. Beau Is Afraid is a fever dream of a performance where he is often reacting to the world collapsing around him. During an early scene, he attempts to sleep as someone throws a letter under his door to “Turn down the noise” that belongs to an unseen neighbor. This happens several times and by morning Beau goes in search of this concerned party only to lose his keys sitting in the doorknob. This is a crescendo Aster plays around with a lot, and the Rube Goldberg mechanics only get worse as things go along.
No realistic character would keep a straight face throughout all of this. It’s what makes Beau so brilliant, at times the byproduct of something more symbolic and infantile. He’s a mumbler, someone at times incapable of social interactions, and it’s easy to see why. Aster masterfully makes the environments full of traps, enhancing the dread of stepping outside and trying to even start the journey. Even as Beau looks out his apartment window, there’s the reality that he’s not ready, nor will he likely ever be, to start this story. The people outside stumble around like zombies, fighting others less out of defense and more because they can. There’s a cruelty to the world, where Beau’s closest acquaintance that resembles friendship is his therapist, which makes everything that follows more daunting even as it looks more and more like reality.
Phoenix’s physicality brings so much to the film and his ability to weasel through the madness is a brilliant spectator’s sport. He is so committed to the film that his whole body is given a beating. Any effort to stand up and brush the dirt off is mocked as he’s thrown into moments that feel tangential as if a Laugh-In style joke. How does he end up being nursed back to health in some teenage girl’s room? How does he end up the center of a traveling theater performance that takes Aster into some of his most imaginative scenes yet? There’s way more than that, but the film is so full of questions that cut the idea of progress to the point that expecting any reprieve is in itself a joke. If you’re someone who suffers from any variation of anxiety, there’s a good chance that Beau Is Afraid is a very funny and relatable comedy. There’s a strangeness in trying to experience normality that reflects a familiar journey that many face. Even then, the complementary punchlines are as much the byproduct of recognition as it is the dread of realizing that you’re seeing your worst fears projected back at you and, unlike a very early scene, isn’t being done entirely for therapeutic benefit. If you expect any satisfying answer by the end, prepare to witness Aster’s most sinister joke to date.
Another thing that makes Beau Is Afraid quite unique is how it works both as an external and internal experience. For those simply following Phoenix through these landscapes, it’s likely that it’s nothing more than a nightmare akin to Inland Empire (2006) or Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), where everything flows into each other and never conveniently ends when it should. It’s a hallucination that rewards close attention even at the expense of outing your own paranoias. There’s no way to determine what you’ve just witnessed on first guess. It’s a film that desires to keep you up at night and make you wonder what these images mean, tying them to deeper emotions and forcing audiences to confront their own feelings towards family and death, whether the fears are being overblown. In some ways, this is a theatrical exploration that is captivating in its grandiosity. One has to wonder why anyone would make this save to release certain urges.
It’s the type of film that rewards the paranoid thinkers who dwell on Reddit threads and YouTube conspiracy videos, where the people who claim to have the “Ending Explained” aren’t being totally truthful. The good news is that in the week since I’ve seen it, certain scenes have molded into some sense of reason, though far from the satisfying marks of Hereditary or Midsommar. There’s no actual answer to the symbolism of Beau Is Afraid. There are likely dozens of interpretations for the many obtuse background gags, and it’s satisfying to have a film that confidently handles this. Is there any greater truth to planting juvenile jokes about Shiva party planners inside a funeral scene? Maybe it’s all just a reflection of how even at a person’s emotional worst, the world feels more absurd. But who’s sane enough to laugh at it? If anything, most of the jokes here are in poor taste if taken literally. If not, they’re the moving version of Salvador Dali-meets-Looney Tunes where you wait for Beau to get up with an unconvincing smile and say “That’s all folks!” Maybe he never gets there, but Aster feels like an invisible force who does.
The fact that Beau Is Afraid is likely to go down as a financial disaster and Aster’s least successful commercially and critically may not seem like something to be thrilled by, but it’s honestly the biggest sigh of relief that the film industry has needed in 2023. In a time where films geared toward adults are more about the value of sympathizing with shoe salesmen, it’s nice to see something looking forward and presenting the potential for what the medium could be. There’s permission here to be as ribald and unlikeable as it wants to be. Sure, it comes at the expense of the potential rejection of queasy epics, but that’s what makes Beau Is Afraid all the more impressive. It might be an anomaly in Aster’s career, but it’s one that reminds me of the potential for cinema to be something much more ambitious and challenging than what’s been given post-pandemic. In a time where everyone is playing it safe, having a film end with the most morbid sex scene played for slapstick is like manna from heaven.
Maybe not every film should aspire to be Beau Is Afraid, but cinema and general theatergoers should aspire to encourage independent cinema to take more narrative risks. In a time where Marvel and D.C. movies have been criticized for stagnation, it’s nice to see Aster reminding general audiences what makes the medium so rejuvenating. Not since Titane (2021) have I sat in a cinema and witnessed something that I equally embraced and rejected but felt entirely emotionally invested in. There’s a gross discomfort, but also a profound truth in its snide nature. It’s the type of film that makes you think about the form as well as how images impact your own life. Alas, no joke is funnier than the fact that A24 gave Aster the $35 million enough to pull this off and make it look better than something like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023). Really makes you think.
I don’t want to dismiss the value of crowd-pleasers. They’re an art form unto themselves. It’s just that in a post-pandemic world, access to seeing really challenging films has been difficult. With most independent chains shut down, most options have been reduced to the inaccessible corners of streamers. They’re just not the same on the small screen, where you can look away from Beau Is Afraid long enough to regain sanity. There’s something to being trapped in a dark room and witnessing Phoenix live through these fears that are far more cathartic than being allowed to pause willy-nilly. It’s even more brilliant to be in a room that gets it, to recognize that you’re not alone. There are others out there who recognize where the humor lies in Beau Is Afraid. Given that the theater I saw this at has halved their daily showings a mere week later, I doubt those who want the darkest, most tortured, most psychologically agonizing comedy of the year will have much longer to appreciate its scope. Sure, it means that we’ll soon get to sit at home and break apart its symbolism more conveniently, but I still want to live in ambiguity, where things might turn around and this will become Aster’s biggest hit. Deep down I know it won’t, but I so desperately want to hold onto that for as long as I can, if just for the lols.
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