Every director, at some point in their career, will direct a movie completely free of any sort of outside input, whether that be the studio, an additional editor, writer, or anyone else. It’s happened to plenty of filmmakers over the years, and the opportunity can arise for any number of reasons: their previous films have made a lot of money, their vision already fits with what the studio wants to do, they can do it for a low budget, etc. But no matter what, while a filmmaker getting to make their uncompromised vision in this age of cinema is certainly a reason to celebrate, the end product might not be one.
Starring Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker,” “Walk the Line”) as the titular Beau Wasserman, Ari Aster’s (“Hereditary,” “Midsommar”) “Beau is Afraid” follows this anxious and neurotic man on a journey to try and visit his mother, Mona Wasserman, played by Patti LuPone (“Company,” “Life Goes On”), with an ensemble rounded out by Nathan Lane (“The Birdcage,” “The Lion King (1994)”), Amy Ryan (“Only Murders in the Building,” “Gone Baby Gone”), Kylie Rogers (“The Whispers,” “Miracles from Heaven”), Parker Posey (“Lost in Space (2018),” “Dazed and Confused”), Stephen McKinley Henderson (“Lady Bird,” “Dune (2021)”), and Richard Kind (“Inside Out,” “A Serious Man”). How one would even begin to describe this movie beyond that is a different story, because this is one of those films where both very little and a lot happens all at once.
Aster is no stranger to metaphors, and there’s something to be said for a film that traffics almost exclusively in them. There is, after all, no better way to find your way inside a character’s head than to see the world how they do, rather than how it may actually be. But at a minute under three hours, “Beau” takes some willpower to get through as each of its three acts feel as though they could be entire films. That’s both due to the incredibly dense layers of metaphor but also because the film’s pacing is horrible. It crawls along, and while there are times where it absolutely works, it quite simply becomes virtually unbearable by the film’s end.
It's use of metaphor also proves to be a double-edged sword. For every insightful use of symbolism or fantasy, there’s another that seems as though a fourth grader could have come up with it. It’s both some of the best and some of the dumbest allegorical storytelling in a long time, and that’s driven home by the ending. The film’s last ten minutes are easily its most frustrating, as it seems as though Aster is trying to have his cake and eat it too, while also baking a whole new cake.
At the risk of lightly spoiling some of the film’s events, the film’s biggest issue simply comes down to its delivery of the fantastical versus the real. There is no established baseline for the film’s reality, which makes some of its more fantastical elements harder to comprehend. The city Beau lives in during the film’s first third is a post-apocalyptic hellscape, but its hard to tell if he’s simply imagining this, if this is a product of his neurosis and anxiety, or if this is actually the world as it exists. Because that baseline is never established, later sequences that seem to delve into more explicit fantasy become more difficult to parse as its not clear what is Beau’s mind and what is actually the world as it exists. And maybe that’s the point, that the world is so overwhelming that it becomes impossible for Beau, and by extension the audience, to distinguish between reality and fantasy. But if that’s the case, then it also draws into question his reactions to this world?
It's a muddled mess of metaphors that becomes more difficult to deal with because of how excellent the cast is. Phoenix is superb, really drawing us into the neurosis of this troubled mama’s boy in a way that becomes extremely easy to pity and sympathize with. The rest of the cast, while they are great, feel more as though they’re playing overblown caricatures. Maybe that’s the point, that everyone is meant to feel larger than life and heightened due to Beau. But again, because there’s never a baseline, we don’t know if this is actually him or just the world at large.
It’s disappointing because, for thirty minutes, there’s a stretch of film in the middle that showcases some truly wonderful use of animation, production design, and fantasy. This is the best part of the film by far, as it manages to juxtapose Beau’s real life with his fantasies simply and effectively and gets far more across than the rest of the film has in the hour and a half that preceded it.
Regardless of what’s real and what’s not, the thing that makes “Beau is Afraid” so frustrating is the fact that, even if you understand what’s going on, by the time credits roll, it feels like you’ve just been dragged through the mud with Beau with no point in sight. Yes, there is certainly a reason these events happened, that’s not up for debate, but to sit in this stew of neurosis for three hours and simply be handed a basic example of “mommy issues, amiright?” feels borderline disrespectful.
To explain why almost turns the discussion into an ouroboros: the metaphors don’t have a point to them, which makes the experience feel worthless. But the experience doesn’t inherently have to have “worth” to be good, it can just be a movie. But the film builds these metaphors up to such a degree that it feels like there must be a meaning, otherwise why would they build it all up to such a degree? And if they don’t have a meaning or a point, then the whole experience feels worthless, and the circle begins again.
What is undeniable though is the technical merits of the film. The production design is simply astonishing in each various chunk, and its clear that no cent was spared in this, A24’s most expensive production yet. It’s a feat of creativity and technical wonder. It’s also an incredibly funny film too, with some of the bleakest bits of deadpan laughter and comedy delivery in quite a while. Phoenix really can do deadpan better than most give him credit for, and the entire film is a fantastic showcase for that.
“Beau is Afraid” is a confounding film, mostly because the issues with its fantastical nature and metaphors don’t really come into effect until the last forty-five minutes or so. Prior to that, it has a thrilling feeling of mystery to it all, that we the audience are going on this technically impressive and well-acted journey will Beau and we’ll get to piece it all together together! Its only once things start getting pieced together that you realize how shallow it all is, poisoning the preceding events by association. It’s not hard to admire a film of such clear singular vision that’s so impressive on a technical level. Just don’t expect much more below the surface. 3/5
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