Beau is Afraid Review: A Movie Afraid Of Editing
Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic
Beau Is Afraid is the newest film from Ari Aster, the director of two of the best horror movies in recent memory, Hereditary, and Midsommar. Beau is a unique kind of horror movie. Beau is a lot of things, some of them good, some of them not so good.
Beau is played by Joaquin Phoenix as a middle-aged, gray, balding, and overweight man saddled with a lot of maternal baggage. Beau lives in the kind of dystopian city that Fox News viewers think all modern American cities are. Beau is afraid to go outside because a dozen crimes are being perpetrated daily outside his apartment building.
Beau has several moments where he runs frantically from or to his apartment door to avoid being assaulted. Beau’s neighborhood crime is likely a heightened reality to express visually the anxiety he feels internally.
Beau shares his anxiety about visiting his mother with his psychiatrist (Stephen McKinley Henderson). Beau visits his mother every year on the anniversary of the death of Beau’s father, which also happens to be the date that Beau was conceived. Beau has a series of unfortunate events that cause him to be late for his flight, and then he is further delayed by being hit by a vehicle while running frantically. Beau wakes up in a strange home recuperating from his injuries, overcoming increasingly absurd obstacles on his odyssey.
Beau’s injuries are tended by Grace (Amy Ryan), who hit him with her car, and Roger (Nathan Lane), her husband. Beau has an antagonistic relationship with their daughter Toni (Kylie Rogers) and Jeeves (Denis Ménochet), a mentally disturbed man who served with their deceased son. Beau also encounters a pregnant woman (Haley Squires) who is part of a traveling theater collective that takes him in. Beau also still pines for a teenage crush that got away, Elaine (Parker Posey), that is also tangentially connected to his mother.
Beau is a committed performance by Joaquin Phoenix, portraying the character through middle age and, in the middle sojourn where he falls into the play, as an old man. Beau, as a character, is riddled with fear, indecision, and anxiety, continually asking others what they think he should do and nearly incapable of making decisions for himself until pushed to the point of necessity (even then, these decisions usually lead to bad outcomes for Beau). Beau is not an alpha male, and to call him a beta male would likely insult beta males everywhere.
Beau has enough anxieties and neuroses to make Woody Allen and Charlie Kaufman blush. Beau’s shortcomings stem from his relationship with his mother and his inability to stand up and say no to her. Beau is riddled with guilt that she dumps on him.
Beau has enough mommy issues to make you wonder if this film is a therapy session for writer-director Ari Aster (no, we’re not seriously speculating about the director’s personal life). Beau’s mother, Mona, is portrayed during flashbacks to Beau’s childhood by Zoe Lister-Jones and by Patti LuPone as an older version of the character.
Beau’s odyssey has many twists and turns, the biggest being a meandering detour where Beau imagines himself as the hero of the play he sees performed. Beau’s immersion into this narrative is one of the several points that feel self-indulgent by director Ari Aster.
Aster follows a familiar arc that we have seen from other directors who received early acclaim and then throw everything into a passion project or have their first film that does not quite reach their previous heights. Beau Is Afraid reminded me of PTA’s Magnolia, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, or, more recently, Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. Beau is Afraid is definitely in need of an editor. Beau feels the entire length of its 179-minute runtime, and I started getting antsy less than an hour into it.
Beau has some moments of laughter, irony, and inspired moments. Beau is trying to sleep the night before his flight, and his neighbors keep sliding increasingly angry notes under his door about turning down his music, even though Beau is not playing any music.
Beau’s worst fears come true at one point, and the unwashed masses on the street enter his apartment and trash it; he finds his computer screen smashed on the floor with a shoe sticking out of it. Beau is next seen using the screen to book a new flight, with the shoe sticking out. Beau also has unnerving moments, including a pseudo-Lynchian reveal about the father that was absent Beau’s whole life.
Beau Is Afraid is loaded with metaphors, illustrations, and manifestations of guilt, anxiety, and other things that make it hard to track. Beau is Afraid could be called Kafkaesque, Kaufmanesque, or even Lynchian in how it feels like a nightmare. Beau might be the kind of offspring one might expect if a movie like Eraserhead and Synecdoche, New York procreated. Beau is weighed down by too much material to have something coherent to say. Beau is a muddled mess.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars