Beau is Afraid: Ari Astor's bold, visionary epic on the interiority of anxiety writ large on an IMAX screen is the cinema event of the year so far
Joaquin Phoenix's psychologically intense performance portraying a minimized hero's journey to reunite with his mother, creates a towering Citizen Kane for the forgotten everyman
Beau is Afraid, USA, 2023, 179 mins | Drama, Comedy, Art-house, Psycho-thriller, Epic | Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, Patti LuPone, Parker Posey | Writer & Director by Ari Aster | Produced & Distributed by A24
Please watch my 📺 YouTube review, also linked at the bottom
I can only imagine that the prospect of going into a film with a weird title like Beau is Afraid must be a daunting decision to make for an average moviegoer unfamiliar with young auteur Ari Aster’s work. One glance at the run time, two hours and fifty-nine minutes, and further panic may set in. After all, this is not the panacea of Pandora that audiences luxuriated in over the holidays. Nor is Joaquin Phoenix reprising his Oscar-winning turn as the Joker. And yet, he commands the screen from an exceedingly more vulnerable interior and a substantially less masked exterior.
Aster’s previous two feature successes, 2018’s Hereditary and 2019’s Midsommar, are both in the horror genre, further niche-ing his audience. The poster presents the four ages of Phoenix as Beau—not the most spooky thing most of us are likely to see. What’s more, his break-out films are both anchored by women, Toni Collette and Florence Pugh, respectively. By nabbing acting titan Joaquin Phoenix for the lead, he’s flipped his brand of female-centred horror. These two factors may unsettle those looking for a more on-brand film.
Yet even for movie-goers, such as myself, who ascribe to the auteur theory (that directors are the authors of a film), the seeming nebulous story of this film doesn’t overtly communicate that Aster is levelling up beyond genre fare to reach for something greater. In fact, with the initial divisive buzz, the opposite could easily be perceived as true, that he’s ditched his strong hand for cinematic indulgence. All these factors are sure to test audiences’ commitment to the young auteur.
During a Q&A with the director in attendance at Toronto’s premiere in IMAX at Scotiabank Theatre on Wednesday last week, Aster revealed to Richard Crouse that the concept for the film has been in gestation for ten years. As is often the case with young writer/directors, they need to prioritize box office success and audience-pleasing efforts before being given a longer rope to experiment. In other words, you can’t make Jackie Brown before you’ve made Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Like Tarantino, Aster has also cemented his credentials with only two films, proving another rare exception for a director only just arriving into their thirties.
Beau is Afraid is as epic as it is whimsical and irreverent, with dark humour lurking around every corner instead of jump scares. Yet throughout, it is consistently artful and visually stunning. It’s Citizen Kane for the forgotten everyman instead of the capitalist mogul. Aster has taken the interiority of anxiety and enlarged it onto an IMAX screen embodied by a towering performance from Joaquin Phoenix. Aster achieves what many directors attempt but often fall short, landing instead on self-indulgence and pretentiousness (Iñárritu’s unwatchable Bardo or Baumbach’s belaboured White Noise are recent examples that come to mind). Employing his genre tools and incredible sensibilities as a filmmaker, Aster crafts both a stunning art film and a populist entertainment.
The experience of watching Beau is Afraid begins with an immersive, thrilling, and harrowing opening chapter that grips the viewer with its bombed-out Beirut meets a corner of Times Square circa the 1980s. In this war zone mixed with a zombie apocalypse, grabbing an item from the corner store involves a dash through the front lines of an urban wasteland barely able to hold a semblance of law and order.
In this opening, we learn that a middle-aged Beau visits a therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson), lives alone in a derelict apartment, is anxious, requires prescriptions, and is supported by his mother, whom he is attempting to fly to for a visit. Unfortunately, due to a mishap and unforeseen circumstances, he misses his fight. Attempting to find a resolution, he becomes the victim of violent assault leading to a vehicular accident outside his apartment. This leads to one of the wildest and outright hysterical cinematic transition scenes ever put to film.
The second stage of the film lands him in the suburban oasis of a well-to-do couple played by Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan. The two are guilt-ridden for their part in the accident and take to adopting him, allowing him to convalesce in their teenage daughter Toni’s (Kylie Rogers) bedroom. Here he eventually awakes to a new form of terror: the isolation of suburbia.
Beau will soon be terrorized by the pill-chewing/snacking Toni who makes the Tide pod challenge seem like preschool. Meanwhile, a PTSD-ridden ex-soldier, living on the property in a trailer appending the house, re-enacts the violence he’s suffered using the backyard as a battlefield. Toni escalates his paranoia, making Beau his new target. During this second stage, Beau becomes imprisoned in this suburban faux oasis, increasing his anxieties unable to reconnect with his mother.
From here, the film will present three more chapters. The third begins in the woods, where Beau encounters a theatrical troupe performing with colourful flats for sets on a stunning wooden fronted stage. Here he will confront both his past and future. With again some wildly dark and funny twits. This daring sequence indulges a dream-like reality. A time-shifting fantasy conjured by events in the stage play cause Beau to reflect on his childhood while also giving him the experience of being a wise old man. It’s one of the most imaginative elements of the film that is inherently magical.
In the fourth stage, Beau achieves his hero’s journey of finally reaching his mother, as was the goal in stage one. In this stage, Beau will confront his lifelong issues created by his devouring mother, played by the exceptionally powerful Patti LuPone. As well he will reunite with his childhood crush, now grown up into the fantastically cast Parker Posey. Finally, in the fifth stage, all will be weighed in a meta environment of a Roman-inspired coliseum that extends the vastness of the IMAX screen, incorporating us as audience and jury in the film’s finalé.
All of this wild imagination is crowned by a deeply interior, psychologically demanding performance from Joaquin Phoenix, who carries this film like no other actor could. His performance is so immersive it’s hard not to feel he has been tortured as an actor in realizing this part. It may be easier to recognize the transformative feat of playing a glorious anti-hero in the form of The Joker, however, playing something closer to oneself such as Beau, is exceptionally more demanding and harrowing for the actor. The demand is to lay his soul bare, writ large for all to see. Phoenix demonstrates yet again his fearlessness and bravery as a singular artist capable of eschewing vanity to capture the human condition for audiences to reflect upon.
There are those who would reduce the conversation around this movie to its budget, which at $35MM is all on the screen, and a bargain at that compared against other auteurs’ over-indulgences trebling or even quadrupling this figure. These same corners were not so outspoken over Damien Chazelle’s recent nine-figure backed spend on his spectacular Bacchanal bomb Babylon, which was a love letter to the silent era of Hollywood. Though in parts enjoyable, it lacks a depth of artistic vision, contains feeble performances, overly skews toward the grotesque, and lacks even a modicum of the searing introspection into the heart of the human condition that Aster so indefatigably mines here.
In an ideal world, this towering cinematic achievement will long be discussed. Yet only time will attest to that. For the moment, it’s an example of a studio prizing artistic caché over the drumbeat of profits, a strategy used to reward its brightest lights, but here it actually delivers the goods—a prestige film for a prestige brand. Unlike other directors, Aster does not forego audience’s expectations to be entertained.
A24 has shrewdly produced an elusive hybrid, an art-house film that can play to the masses. Another genre director elevating his craft comes to mind. Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite is a recent achievement that accomplishes this. Though Beau is Afraid doesn’t seem to be on track to capture a similar level of the zeitgeist that film so successfully did, it is no less of an accomplishment. It’s my hope its creative pedigree has the strength to reach a general audience over time.
This film is a phenomenal achievement of grand proportions. Ari Aster pushes his craft to new heights by subverting expectations. And I’m fully here for it. Its reflection on trauma, anxiety, and the devouring mother is uniquely brave from a filmmaker stretching beyond the comfort of genre. For me, the fact that it’s divisive and triggering for some only speaks to its boldness, originality, and uncompromising vision.
I think it’s safe to say this film was never designed to be a crowd-pleaser (true masterpieces rarely are: The Shining, Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver), and yet it found a way onto premium screens in IMAX. That alone is an incredible feat. Films such as this are born out of a deep need to say something personal that resonates with the times. The fact that it has created a divisive reaction from movie-goers only further signals that it charts a course toward cementing its status as a seminal film to be discussed for a long time to come.
Those willing to go on this uncompromised cinematic journey with Aster’s new epic film will encounter a unique masterpiece of cinema. So often, a true masterpiece goes unheralded in its time as it takes audiences a while to recognize it. For those intrepid enough to overcome the runtime and forego genre expectations, what you will experience is one of the boldest, most unique cinematic experiences, certainly this year or years prior, and perhaps also for some to come.
Finally, it would be remiss not to nod toward this film’s actual genre, the surreality of Charlie Kaufman, in particular the world-building of 2008’s Synecdoche, New York. As well, the middle-aged Beau carries a striking resemblance to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s theatre director Caden Cotard, with his attempts to mine, reconstruct, and relive his life as he lives it. Notably, there is a sense of the baton passing between the two co-stars of Paul Thomas Anderson’s modern classic, 2012’s The Master.
However, the comparability to Kaufman is not a totality. What Aster brings to his version of the surreal is a wild and dark sense of humour, along with a refreshing sense of irreverence and his exceptional level of craft. The result is a film breathtaking in its beauty, staggering in its ambitious construction, and never for a moment pedestrian in execution. Beau is Afraid is a phenomenally satisfying grown-up cinematic achievement, wildly inventive and immensely entertaining.
Rating
5/5
Please watch my straight-out-of-the-theatre review video here:
Get a flavour of this visionary film with its trailer here:
Dear Reader, Thank you for being here. Your support makes this possible. Please share my writing with a friend, co-worker, or family member to keep the conversation around film growing.
Will you seek out Beau is Afraid in theatres?
What sort of impression does an Oscar winner such as Joaquin Phoenix dedicating himself to daring new work such as this make on you?
Does it upset you or are thrilled when filmmakers, actors, and/or artists subvert expectations and do something wildly daring?
How important is a film’s budget in your decision to see a movie in a theatre?
Do you take advantage of premium screenings such as IMAX?
Let me know in the comments.
Wasn’t going to see this film. Time and premise??? BUT your insightful, thorough, review has changed my mind. Thank you Malcolm.
fascinating to read this, I've read so many mixed reviews about how it's this 3 hour long, nightmare-scape, arthouse mess. I haven't seen it, but I'd love to after reading this