Beau is Afraid Review

Beau is Afraid is a film that is written for virtually no one. That being said, I believe that it is my favorite film of the year so far. It is a film that will most likely lose production studio A24 millions of dollars, but it will bring about an Oscar for Patti LuPone. This film feels like a joke drawn out over 3 hours of jaw-dropping, emotionally exhausting corkscrews. At the center is Joaquin Phoenix playing a boy who did not grow up, but merely aged into his adult body. His facial features feel soft and weak, and his eyes are filled with innocence. All of these lead to his journey and fate being that much more tragic.

Director/Writer Ari Aster is not unaccustomed to trauma-filled dramas interwoven with horror that are always brought home by the dark comedic undertones. This film, filled with mommy issues, is about being ill-fated from birth, while also being his funniest film to date. I would be hard-pressed to say that this has the horror of Hereditary, but it certainly does not skip out on the more disturbing imagery found in Ari Aster Films.

Beau is a typical protagonist in an Ari Aster film. He is struggling to make ends meet in an abominable city beautifully detailed by production designer Fiona Crombie. People threatening to jump off buildings, violence in the street, and dead bodies laying about are all common place in this well-choreographed city. Cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski uses incredible tracking shots to show a city destroying itself under the midday sun. The city is full of the towering worries and anxieties that plague Beau throughout the film. Aster brings you farther and farther in with each crazy and humorous development, such as a neighbor sliding notes under the door telling him to turn off his loud music, which Beau reads in confusion in his silent apartment. This sets the tone for the film and establishes the idea that there will be no smooth sailing, and it will be filled with disorienting inconsistencies.

The tension is peaked during the phone calls with Beau’s mother Mona Wasserman, her initials plastered on everything in Beau’s home. The well-written dialogue and stellar delivery by Patti LuPone creates a sense of dread. The dialogue uses shame, guilt, and humiliation to make Beau feel even smaller. Beau is consumed by the need to please his mother and is not free because of that. Phoenix shines during these phone call closeups, both here and with the delivery man.

Beau is Afraid is broken into chapters of various length and tonality, as we see his sense of security heighten and disappear throughout. After running out of his apartment screaming, Beau is hit by a car and then cared for by a family who can just barely cover their own pain with smiles. The parents (Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan), who are grieving about their son Nathan who died in combat, use Beau as a replacement son while their daughter Toni (Kylie Rogers) becomes at odds with Beau for taking up her space. All 3 family members add to the unsettling smiling horror of this sequence. Rogers especially feels like a hiccup in the traditional nuclear family, flying into each scene with a sense of chaos that disorients Beau’s Odyssey.

Midway through the film, we are thrown into Beau’s imagination. This movie within a movie is directed partially by Cristobal Leon and Joaquin Cocina who provide stunning stop motion that perfect captures Beau’s mind. This fantasy is filled with poetic and uncanny moments and adds to the film’s incredibly irregular rhythms. It is finished with a metaphor of art becoming so lifelike that you don’t even realize how much of yourself is in it, which becomes so important to this film. This sequence feels so out of place, but also feels like it’s par for the course.

We are then brought back and thrust into memories of Beau’s childhood. These scenes are amazing, both for the beautiful artificial sets and how much young Beau (Armen Nahapetian) looks like Phoenix. Some developments in this take away from the overall tragedy, and lack in genuine tenderness. Those shortcomings are made up by Zoe-Lister Zones playing young Mona. She pulls back the curtain on why Beau is the way he is and delivers each traumatic development amazingly. The third act is a wild accumulation of past, present, and future that hits home with the emotions and trauma brought to the surface.

All of this comes from my first viewing of the film. Anyone that has seen Hereditary or Midsommar will know that Ari Aster likes to play with how much his audience can take away during the first viewing, compared to the 2nd or 3rd. I am curious to see how the emotions unfold differently as I become more familiar with the film. Ambition is the point of this film, and it further proves that Ari Aster will never be happy with a lazy film.