Directed By Ari Aster

Starring – Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan

The Plot – Following the sudden death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man (Phoenix) confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic, reflective odyssey back home.

Rated R for strong violent content, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and adult language

Beau Is Afraid | Official Trailer HD | A24 – YouTube

POSITIVES

Convincingly, there is still no one quite like Ari Aster, who here auteuristically conjures a dark and confining element of presentation to match his remarkably off-the charts ambition in script, solidifying an unapologetic approach to visual interpretations that completely innovates the aspects of psychological storytelling. It starts with the deviation of audible capacities in the boldness of his sound designs, with flashbacks marrying reality for a constant persistence of one alongside the other, which not only effortlessly conveys Beau’s wandering mentality to the initial stages of his frailty among paranoia, but also further adds to the immersive element of Aster making this experience as tightly suffocating and arduous as possible, with his protagonist’s life feeling like an around the clock nightmare that unfortunately never resolves itself in longtime Aster collaborator Pawel Pogorzelski’s expressive cinematography. Between animated storyboard sequences with wooden outlines, swiftly sharp pans and close-ups of imagery, and depth in color and shadow play, Pawel seduces an audience with artistic merit and nuance behind every single frame, taking the visuals in seductively lucid directions that have made the dynamic between he and Aster feel irreplaceable by this point. Further adding to this encompassing is the combination of set designs and choreography for extras, which consistently shake and distort realities in ways that we as an audience, like Beau, question the legitimacy of his reality, with condensing claustrophobia that surmises urgency to scenes and sequences that are sometimes entirely void of it. Aster’s also not afraid to get his hands dirty in the writing capacities, enriching stuffy atmospheres and terrifying imagery with a surprising element of morbid humor that sprinkles in these momentary releases during engagement. Aster’s humor has always been twisted, as his debut short film was a comedy about familial molestation, but here the material almost challenges audiences to engage with it through some pretty classless and depraved situations, in turn wisely educating us by turning the awareness on our own vicarious instincts to inspire laughter during moments that we don’t completely understand. Besides this, the film is another example of genetic displacement, but for an entirely fresh and unique perspective than how it was exploited in “Hereditary”. Here, the material lends itself towards overbearing parents, social media diagnosis and tortured pasts, materializing into a completely different monster, figuratively or literally, than what was expecting, while proving Aster’s commitment towards fleshing out our own internal demons as being the most terrifying things that screen can capably articulate. The man to thank for realization within this terrifying encompassing is Phoenix, whose commitment to three hours of anxiety-riddled reality supplants one of his more challenging turns in his prominent career, and not just for the three-hour run time. Phoenix supplants a rich balance of frailty and innocence that outline the child from within him that remains conscientious throughout adulthood, and when combined with Joaquin’s ability to harvest agony better than almost anyone going in Hollywood, makes him the perfect casting for a character so paralyzed by his own strangely unusual upbringings.

NEGATIVES

Most obviously compromising to the integrity of my engagement was the three hour run time, which outlines the over-indulgent side of Aster that has kept him from perfection during his first two films. It would be easy to say that this film could lose an hour and still maintain the merit in meaning of its story, but it means so much more to say that the bigger problem is the prolonged emphasis of scenes that frequently think they’re conveying some deeper meaning than actually delivered. This can easily be said for the entirety of the film, but I understood what it was going for and where it was heading creatively for almost the entirety of the run time, and considering it frequently decides to go long-winded with the air of its execution, slows these scenes and sequences to a snail’s pace in their rendering, making you feel every bit of that ambitious run time that frankly and honestly this film didn’t earn. Beyond this, the titular protagonist of Beau is constructed a bit one-dimensional and idle for my own personal taste, requiring Phoenix to work overtime to even attain interest and investment for this character. Because Beau is constantly on this rinse, wash, repeat format of anxious edginess while basically just serving as a reactionary tool to the various things happening around him, it never allows the character to grow or evolve within the elements that he’s learning to live with, in turn directly undercutting the pay-off in satisfaction that could’ve at least justified the extent of his journey. Speaking of undercutting payoffs, the third act of this movie is one of the most legitimately frustrated that I have been for a film that I’ve been anticipating in quite some time. This is the area where the material gets so contrived and convoluted with shock factor imagery and supposedly big twist reveals that it completely eviscerated the nuances of simplicity within the screenplay, leading to aspects that only brought forth more questions and leaps in logic than a resolution could capably conjure, with an abrupt credits scroll that feels like one of those audible groaning moments where an audience realize the execution certainly didn’t live up to the potential.

OVERALL
While “Beau is Afraid”, Ari Aster is fearless in manufacturing a long-distance nightmare of an odyssey that delivers all of the twisted humor and uncomfortable circumstances while inside the mind of a reeling hypochondriac that we’ve come to expect from the eclectic director. Though the film loses more momentum than necessary the longer it unravels throughout its bloated three hour run time, with a clumsy third act a bit heavy on the shock factor, the tenderly frail turn from Phoenix keeps the journey on track, leading to a poignantly profound experience that you’re not sure to forget, despite which side of the grade you fall on.

My Grade: 7/10 or B-