Bear with me; condensing someone’s entire psyche down to a 600-word review is complicated work.
Ari Aster’s latest nightmare-inducer Beau Is Afraid is an unholy mixture of Charlie Kaufman, the Coen brothers, The Truman Show and the scribblings from your therapist’s notepad. The film follows the titular Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix) through a series of Odyssean hellscapes as he's waylaid on a trip home to visit his mother. Any further discussion of the plot would not only delve into spoiler territory, but would also be fairly difficult to do succinctly here.
Beau Is Afraid doesn’t have the slow-but-propulsive momentum of Aster’s modern horror classics Hereditary and Midsommar. A lengthy but thematically and emotionally crucial, dream-like mini-film at Beau's midpoint halts the film's inertia. But the absence of those familiar horror-story beats leaves room for a surreal, anxious journey into Beau’s (and Aster’s) psyche.
Phoenix continues his decade-long streak of roles as schlubby, neurotic loners with another fully committed performance. Each of the movie’s supporting actors makes their physical presence felt in one way or another, from a hulking, PTSD-inflicted Denis Ménochet to Parker Posey as a bizarro femme fatale inversion. I never thought genial character actor Stephen McKinley Henderson could play a character so terrifyingly soulless!
But it’s Patti LuPone as the present-day iteration of Beau’s overbearing mother Mona who turns in the film’s show-stopping performance. Her tour de force of searing menace in the final act really hammers home the film’s themes. You could call this a spiritual companion to Hereditary — mommy issues and hidden horrors are abundant.
Beau Is Afraid
The set design is, as usual with Aster’s films, perfect, recalling everything from the works of Michel Gondry and The Wizard of Oz to Gore Verbinski’s The Ring and Jackass Forever. The papier-mâché-like middle sequence feels like something out of a demented Pixar movie. And the film’s finale recalls Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life, of all things.
A semi-viral early reaction to the film called it a “career killer.” I highly doubt that. Aster is too talented, and there are far too many production companies and streaming services desperate for content. But this is certainly the type of movie that will leave most mainstream multiplex audiences perplexed at its existence.
But the movie’s existence is a genuine miracle. It’s also the latest entry in the trend among Hollywood’s newest crop of auteurs taking their shot at a big-budget film and going for absolute broke. Think Damien Chazelle with Babylon or David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake. Even Greta Gerwig seems to be taking this trend into IP land with the upcoming Barbie. With the state of the big-budget auteur outing seemingly dire, perhaps these filmmakers feel like they’ll have just one shot to make their gonzo, soul-bearing, throw-everything-against-the-wall movie. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m grateful for every attempt.
If you prefer tidy narratives that leave no question unanswered, this might not be the film for you. That's doubly true if you grew up feeling like the Boy in the Bubble. But if the thought of an auteur emptying their psyche (and the studio's pockets) on screen excites you, then Beau Is Afraid is more than worth a trip to the theater.
