Beau Is Afraid

I remember seeing a headline a few weeks ago in which it was claimed that Ari Aster dropped some LSD before a premiere. I don't know if that's true or not, or whether he takes psychedelics at all, but the man walks around with an imagination that is perpetually, creatively tripping. Like a colorful virus, he infects audiences with "Beau is Afraid" - a mind-bending journey of a film which I wish many people would see, but could only realistically recommend to a short list of open-minded friends.

This behemoth is a lot to digest in one sitting. It's not carried by its characters so much as it is by hypnagogic artillery fire of imaginative sets and set-pieces, most of which have rhyme and reason for existing but some, probably none. The actual plot consists of a paranoid man's surreal, Kafkaesque odyssey to appease his domineering mother. Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) lives in a world where his every decision is governed by assertive women, and every woman leads back to his mother. He's emasculated, directionless, and, as he points out himself, personality-less. The environments around him are nonsense to us. Strangers form theater troupes in the woods, seedy cities are filled with caricatures of real people; anyone's sentence can become a jarring non sequitur at any moment, and no event is guaranteed to be permanent. These depictions are of course exaggerated - but it's hard to separate what is and is not Beau's reality. It's like a strange dream, and the best comparisons I can make are to David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" or Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut."

But I've only described what this movie is like, and not WHY it is like. Plenty is up for interpretation. At the bottom line, however, is a creative director exploring themes of perceived guilt in awesome, if not totally bonkers ways. Anybody with a narcissistic parent will relate to parts of the film, as well as anyone who is unsure of themselves, or frets over every action (and inaction) they take. I think of Tyrion Lannister's line in "Game of Thrones," defending himself in front of a father who hates him: "I've been on trial my WHOLE LIFE." Beau is literally put on trial for his whole life. There are people who feel this way about an extreme mother. I've got to believe Ari's speaking some personal truths here.

People who saw it before me had mixed reactions - giddy, disturbed, exhausted, confused. I can empathize with all of these. Though Beau held my attention for the entire 3-hour runtime, his performance is draining. And it should be no surprise that the man behind "Midsommar," "Hereditary" and "The Strange Thing about the Johnsons" locks this in with a good deal of shock value. His brand includes bringing out emotion through whatever means necessary, and it will turn some people off. My best advice is to give yourself completely to the experience. Don't try to follow the discombobulated world of Beau too closely, or you'll fall off a cliff every time. Sit back, enjoy yourself, and laugh where you can; there's maybe never been a more twisted humorist at work here.

7.5/10 for reminding me of the time my dad showed me "Mulholland Drive" and I spent a week trying to decipher it.

I truly don't know where to start with this one. I've become a fan of director Ari Aster. Hereditary and Midsommar are both great movies in my opinion, even though they're not for everyone. He has shown that his style is very much out there and he just does whatever he wants. I admire that in a filmmaker, so I was eagerly awaiting his next outing, Beau is Afraid. Well, it's now playing in theatres and I think it's Aster's best and worst work to date. There's no denying this film is brilliantly well-made, but the actual presentation (story wise) downright baffled me, in good and bad ways. Here's why I really enjoyed watching it, even though it will never be a film I recommend.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Beau, a man with an insane amount of anxiety. On the anniversary of his father's death, he has a plane ticket back home to visit his mother. Things prevent him from making his flight, which in turn leads to him slowly finding his way home anyways. That's the premise in a nutshell, but many other storylines are present as well. From confronting his demons through stage plays, crazy visuals, flashbacks, and some very creative practical effect work, Beau is Afraid is definitely one of the most unique films I've seen in a while. I loved watching this film, but didn't love it as a film overall.

The best way I can explain how much I actually liked it is to say that I think it's a 5-star film on a filmmaking level, but about a 2-star film when it comes down to how effective the story is. I was eating up everything this film was giving me. My jaw was on the floor from how they pulled off certain sequences. I just wish the story became more clear by the end. I was very engaged, but even when the film felt like it was delivering answers, they also felt far too vague. The film plays as if it's giving you all the answers, but I was well aware it wasn't. I never felt frustrated while watching it, because I was loving the journey, but afterwards, I really had to think about whether or not the experience was enough for me. It was, but I have to admit it's not a great movie as a whole.

Beau is Afriad isn't afraid to go all out in every scene. The studio that made this film (A24) also funded it as one of their most expensive films to date. The budget is used to its fullest potential here and the effort leaps off the screen. It's weird, visually stunning, and Phoenix's lead performance is stellar. Other than those aspects though, I was underwhelmed by the story. Still, if you're a film buff who likes to watch all movies, I recommend it, but to any casual viewer, I would say stay far, far away, it's probably not for you. It's a fantastic film to look at and follow along with, but it's simply not great otherwise in my opinion.

I loved what I have watched from Ari Aster...until this one movie. It is not that I dislike it. In fact, I think it has some brilliant moments that stole a laugh from me. The acting is superb. The cinematography is beautiful to my taste and suits well with the story. But...yesss, but it is way too histrionic at times and too long as a whole. As a plain viewer and nothing else, some scenes are way too long (like the very last one), where the point is made within the first minute or two and there is no need to keep it 20 minutes long. And that gets me out of the story. It might be the pace, the editing or even that I am not getting something I should.

I don't like or dislike the movie. I do know that if it was about one hour shorter, I would have been more compelled. And that is what I believe this art of cinema was invented for.

'Beau Is Afraid (2023)' is a surrealist Oedipal odyssey, an anxiety dream from hell, a never-ending nightmare told in four chapters. When I say it's a nightmare, I don't mean that it's revealed to be a bad dream; I mean that the movie itself functions as a nightmare from start to finish. Whether the plot is meant to be taken as face value with the understanding that the feature is operating entirely on dream logic or if the piece is meant to be presenting a mixture of fantasy and reality as filtered through its anxiety-ridden protagonist's worldview is unclear, but there's never a moment that breaks the absurd normality so it doesn't really matter. Whose nightmare is it? Since Beau is a character within the dream, albeit a perspective character, and we never see him outside it, how can we be sure that it's his? Then again, the only thing that makes a bad dream a bad dream is the fact that we can wake up from it, and no such relief is provided here. Perhaps this isn't so much a nightmare as a nightmarish experience?

To be honest, I don't think Ari Aster has thought about it that deeply. His latest is a mean and unforgiving film with no intentions of not frustrating its audience, a brazenly bizarre exercise in constantly abusing its hero. Although it touches on themes of anxiety, guilt, shame, codependency and severe mommy issues, it doesn't really have all that much to say about any of them. That's why the feature eventually runs out of steam. It becomes clear what it's doing very early on, and then it just keeps doing it for nearly three hours. That's a long time not to really care about something. The reason you can't engage with it on a deeper level is that you're constantly aware of the fact that it isn't real, or at least is presented in an unreal way that has you waiting for the reveal - meta or otherwise - that it isn't, and Beau is kind of a blank slate of a hero, an audience surrogate meant to filter the absurdities of the plot directly into the part of their brain that registers discomfort. The picture is nowhere near as unsettling as it could have been, and - despite the fact that it constantly throws genuinely unexpected and potentially upsetting things at you - it remains in a singular register for its duration. Said register is ridiculous, but it's unwavering; although the narrative's intensity ebbs and flows, it's constantly doing the strangest thing it could and therefore becomes oddly monotonous.

Of course, the feature does capture its nightmare logic and unreal reality rather well. In fact, every element of the experience exudes sheer surrealism, a tangible strangeness seeping from its every frame. It is, in fits and starts, inexplicably claustrophobic, the encroaching tight space not being physical but metaphorical. You're trapped in this awful reality, just as Beau is, and things just keep getting worse and worse. It batters you over the head with its utterly awful absurdity for three hours, three hours, and rarely gives you even an inch of breathing room. While that does create some horrific and disconcerting sequences, it also contributes to the monotony I mentioned earlier. After all, when everything's awful, nothing is. Well, that isn't exactly true, but you see what I mean. You sort of become numb to the film, unfazed by its truly weird nature, and it isn't able to properly shock you after its first movement. That first movement is the most successful, primarily because it naturally establishes the tone and world before you've had chance to adjust to it. The rest of the affair is continuously well-made, with committed performances and a cohesively confusing aesthetic, but it gets less and less effective as it goes on. Still, there's plenty of humour to be found here and the flick is packed so full of sight gags and dark jokes that it's practically bursting at the seams. It is, in many ways, a feast for the senses, as funny as it is freaky. The fact that this made so little money (it reportedly lost A24 $35 million dollars) is definitely a bad thing, because it means that studios are less likely to give this kind of cash to directors in the future. Even if I have my reservations with the result of Aster's more-or-less blank cheque, I love the fact that he was able to make such a big swing.

Ultimately, this is a movie of diminishing returns that's so focused on being as strange as possible in every single scene that it ends up becoming monotonous. It isn't really about anything (when it wraps up, you're left wondering what the point is) and it's very long, too. Still, it's never exactly boring and it's often rather entertaining (especially in its opening movement). Plus, even its least successful segments have moments which work well. It's impressively committed to the bit and it's a relatively wholistic recreation of a sweat-inducing, anxiety-ridden, guilt-infused nightmare. It's not as good as it could have been, but it's not bad. Just don't expect it to make any sense.

The movie lost money because it was too long, the first half of the movie was great , the second half lost me. The scene in the forest and all the imaginary cartoon effects should have been eliminated greatly reducing the cost of the movie, The ending was silly, keeping it realistic would have enhanced the movie compared to what transpired. I would rather have Beau go up to the attic and have the movie end leaving me to guess what was up there, anything would have been better than the nonsense the director came up with.

The first half shows what the social decay in America is beginning to look like, that portrayal makes a real horror show..