| Beau Is Afraid (2023) | |
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Rating: 6.7/10 (59,112 votes) Director: Ari Aster Writer: Ari Aster Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan Runtime: 179 min Rated: R Genre: Comedy, Drama, Horror Released: 21 Apr 2023 |
| Plot: Following the sudden death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic, Kafkaesque odyssey back home. | |
Ari Aster read The Odyssey whilst listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and this was the result.
Overindulgent? Maybe, but I was captivated throughout and more than happy to be delivered such indulgence.
If Hereditary was his most accessible film, and Midsommer a step towards indulgence, Beau Is Afraid is the film where Aster simply seems to get carried away with ideas, and is easy to see why it is dividing audiences so much. This is a film you either find over-indulgent, meandering nonsense dragged out over a very long three hours, or a work of engaging, somewhat surreal beauty that feels like the kind of indulgence you could happily have been fed more of. I am certainly in the second camp on this, whilst at the same time find this is a very difficult film to recommend.
Beau suffers from paranoia, a lifetime of issues clearly having left him in a low mental state, and the crime riddled block he lives in clearly isn’t helping him. His psychiatrist prescribes him a new drug to help calm his anxieties, but it is unclear if this helps him as the world around him continues to get escalatingly terrifying. With a planned trip to see his mother falling apart due to circumstances, Beau blames himself, and when he later finds out his mother has died, his guilt and paranoia play on him as he starts a journey to go home for the funeral arrangements.
Part Homer’s Odyssey, with a dollop of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, this journey of the mind and soul is presented like a surrealist’s nightmare at times, and a dark foreboding drama at others. Central to the whole thing is Joaquin Phoenix as Beau, who journeys from one location to the next, with each stop allowing a look into the broken psyche of the character, allowing us to build an idea of where he comes from and why he is so paranoid all the time. Phoenix is engaging, pitiful, and mesmerising in the lead role, serving the sometimes darkly humorous tale well with a physical performance that shines throughout.
By the final act, after multiple scenes have set up what we believe to be Beau’s reality, it is all given a fresh perspective and leads to some ambiguity as to what was real and what was simply just Beau’s warped interpretation of the world around him, with the new drugs he was prescribed maybe being the catalyst for a vivid waking nightmare that maybe, just maybe, wasn’t exactly how we saw it.
This is an ambiguous, confusing, and perhaps a tad indulgent tale from Aster, and I loved it. The events have sat with me since, and I’ve reasoned a perspective take on the story which will likely differ from other perspectives – and that’s the key thing. This is a film that you can make of what you want, and have it fit into how you see the world around you, much like how Beau clearly sees the world differently to others.
