As a desperate getaway from my borderline burnout finals reviewing, I trekked to the nearest theatre that was playing Ari Aster's newest feature Beau is Afraid starring Joaquin Phoenix. On a Thursday night, with nobody but a friend group of three sitting in the row behind me, I sat in a middle aisle-middle seat by myself and endured the newest narrative from the modern mastermind behind Midsommar (2019) and Hereditary (2018).
The latter holds a steady place as one of my favorite horror films, and anyone with knowledge on this film might raise a few eyebrows on the alarming amount of praise I could give sweet Ari. His movies are the textbook layman's term "messed up." His first two features with rapidly growing independent entertainment company A24 have and were advertised as horror, but not Beau. My own brows raise in confusion of this blasphemous range Ari has the gall to give the masses, how dare he, yknow? The only monikers I could see explicitly given to it was "comedy drama." How much more vague can we put it, right? Closer to its wider release, another repeated adjective started to appear on my social media film outlets: "nightmarish." I thought "I knew it, there we go! Ari can't NOT mess things up a bit!" I still knew this one was going to be different from the others, while still having the Aster edge we (perhaps literally me and the three other people in the theatre) know and...love is a strong word.
Trippy encapsulation of this three-hour anxiety attack. WHOLE LOTTA MOVIE!
Creds to New Yorker.
Beau Wassermann (Phoenix), the pantophobic nepo baby, textbook "poster child" even, of self-made business mogul Mona Wassermann, has lived in fear of..everything his whole life. Anxiety gets anxiety at the sight of this man's distress, I'm telling you now. We open the film with him visiting his therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson), sharing his concerns on visiting his mom the next day, a dichotomy of obligation and fear rooted in unknown causes to the audience, Aster saying "...you'll see." Because everyone with no patience watching a movie wants to feel that way. STRAP IN, FOLKS.
Something that carries through this entirety of the three hour duration is the viewer is almost entirely in Beau's perspective, at points literally through the eyes of the camera. Mostly, we're in his boat (callback to those who've seen it) in the terms of believing just how scary life is around him at all times. The first things I wrote in my dedicated commentary note on my phone were "nightmare" and "overstimulating." The world is the enemy. Whoever started this "nightmarish" rumor really hit the nail right on the head.
Nothing can go right with this guy. On so many levels. Living on a derelict street in a New York-esque environment, a dead guy adorning the crosswalk no more passive than a traffic cone. Manipulated, guilt-tripped, and gaslit to high heaven by pretty much everyone he encounters, the tycoon of this torture being his own mother. Absolutely any decision for Beau is a feat for anyone who has ever been caught off-guard when asked where they want to eat, the peak of any person with anxiety. I now use the entirety of this film as a metaphor to my psyche's response to any question being asked of me, so I hope anyone in my immediate circle who watches this from now on takes that into account before prompting me with any sentiment that might end with a question mark.
Another jab at the audience being in Beau's boat: I felt just as torn apart by what was happening around me, at one point thinking Ari WOULD have the power to make all these characters break the fourth wall and start berating me for every inconvenience I've caused by...existing. Driven by the bias of Beau's perspective or otherwise, it's hard to concretely decipher who's out for his genuine well-being. Luckily, Only Murders in the Building prepared me for Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane's arc. Who woulda thunk they'd be under the same self-destructing roof, right? Although, I never thought I would be in a position to hate Richard Kind, so I'm kinda mad at Ari for that, but I digress.
I kept thinking, also aligning with most commentaries on the film post-exposure to critics, that this film is just a fat reminder to TAKE YOUR MEDS. Don't, and you're asking for this three-hour fever dream to go down. The connections to Big Pharma and fear-mongering riddling the media to keep consumers high is prevalent, so when an entire sweaty sequence occurs when Beau forgets to take his meds with water starts to happen on screen, and I realize I don't have any refreshments with me as I'm watching, my mouth went completely dry. It didn't help that there are countless moments that left it agape as well.
Aster-induced psychosis is used with quite the unorthodox tool kit. For example, silence being the loudest thing in this film speaks volumes considering this film is the tumultuous kryptonite to all things equating stillness. Secondly, there are many shots, Beau in the foreground, flipping out per the youzhe, and we have a viewpoint of everything going on in the background. Nothing is being hidden from you, but yet you still feel you're missing something. You're given Beau to look at, but still know that you should be focusing on something else...BUT WHAT?! Slow zooms are also the easiest film school technique to heighten intrigue as conflict unfolds, but then Ari Aster said "I'm Ari Aster" and made it even MORE ominous.
This is the most impressive analogy about certain phenomena that I conjured during my viewing: there are scenes in this film and within the span of Ari Aster's filmography that remind me of this meme that went viral a couple of years ago. It's a picture, upon first glance, of a room in someone's house. A bedroom, maybe. Above the image, it said "name one thing in this photo." Me, an avid "hidden object" fiend in my Highlights magazines as a kid LIVED for this. Upon deeper focus though, there is nothing identifiable in the photo, an uncanny and frightening and infuriating feeling quickly surfacing to anyone who views it. Hence, its virality.
Hence, my distrust with Ari Aster's wide shots from now until eternity.
Thirdly, it's a whole lotta movie. Duh, it holds your attention for three hours, but I'm talking about the MOVIE. Beau getting knocked out cold is used as a separation of acts, a pitiful yet very effective tool in Ari's arsenal. His journey to get to his mother entails environments of suburbia, forestlands, and even mixed media animation. Frame narratives, or stories within stories, reflect folkloric and Homer-esque storytelling with potential to attract (or deflect) various audiences, considering there have been claims from "magnum opus" to "career killer" from them.
I hope A24 makes another screenplay book for this one. I'm a heavy advocate for some subtitles, and not that this film was incoherent in the slightest, there were just many times I wanted to rewind 10 seconds and truly take in what someone said. There's only SO MUCH to take in.
My Notes app, a source of trustworthy commentary, states amongst many WAIT WHAT and WTF's: "this film is a spectacle." This can be taken in any way you want, aka the beauty of media's subjectivity. Going into this, don't worry about what genre it is or what's being hidden from you, or why some forest orphans are playing Zip Zap Zop and why the HELL IS A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton playing right now? Truly a sublime jumble of themes are brought together by the most exhausting role for Joaquin Phoenix that I've ever seen portrayed on screen.
I left Cinemark in a fugue state. Most of the fear rooted in this film isn't held back by fiction, until it is, and by then you're so enveloped in existential limbo, it's hysterically laughable. Today, I am proud to be an Ari Aster acolyte, and blessed to be fed with another creatively shot and freakishly depicted story from the guy. As you can see, I have had many thoughts and continue to do so, but I got a Summer O' Series to get to. Ask me out to coffee for more, and believe you me, there is so much more.
Cheers,
Mo.
Creds to Reddit. Killed it.
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