“We’re here so we can air those types of thoughts.”
That’s a therapist speaking to Beau Wassermann (Joaquin Phoenix) early on in Beau Is Afraid, encouraging him to explore his darkest ruminations, even if they make him uncomfortable. With this wild, winding, intimately indulgent movie, writer-director Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) follows his own scripted advice. Beau Is Afraid resembles one of those dioramas that Toni Collette’s artist made of her own house in Hereditary, by which she shrunk her family’s complicated dynamics down to manageable size. Here, Aster blows them up, spreading them across a giant screen for three hours. (For a corollary from another filmmaker, think Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman’s theater director mounts an elaborate stage production of his miserable life.)
We first meet Beau from his first-person point of view, as he emerges from his mother’s womb—a throbbing heartbeat and muffled shouts of concern giving way to urgent commands and eventually Beau’s tiny wail. Jumping ahead to that therapist’s office, with Beau in middle age, we understand that he has lived much of his life in a similar state of terror. And perhaps for good reason. On his walk home, Beau passes through an urban jungle of vaguely familiar unease, teetering on a chaos that is ironically arranged by Aster with complete control, as if it was an impeccably choreographed dance number. Against a cacophony of shouts, screams, and competing forms of street music, Beau passes an outdoor market where a teen tests the feel of an AK-47; he steps over a dead body that appears to have been there for days; he races to beat an aggressive, heavily tattooed beggar to his apartment building’s front door; he then locks himself inside for a sad, microwaved dinner. (One example of the dark humor lacing all of this: the meal’s packaging makes the heinous promise of “the best of Hawaii and Ireland.”)
From there, things get weird. I won’t detail how the plot develops—having your jaw progressively drop is part of the movie’s “fun”—yet it soon becomes clear that each distinct section of Beau Is Afraid functions as a magnification of one of his fears. (A question worth arguing about after the movie is over: At one point, if any, does the film completely leave reality behind in exchange for the spiraling state of Beau’s mind?) The opening section, after all, represents less any actual urban landscape than it does the one sold to us by fear-mongering politicians and news outlets. Throughout the film, Beau’s other fears—of health complications, sexual relations, macho men, conniving teenagers, and above all disappointing his mother—become similarly, comically exaggerated, in bizarre sequences that play like Monty Python sketches, only with more corpses.
Speaking of Beau’s mother, if you thought Hereditary—which was haunted by a deceased matriarch—had mother issues, wait until you see Beau Is Afraid. Played by Zoe Lister-Jones in the scenes of Beau as a child (where he’s played by Armen Nahapetian) and by Patti LuPone in those where he’s middle-aged, Mona Wasserman is a similarly spectral figure, a soft-spoken manipulator with supernaturally passive-aggressive powers. Mona eventually emerges, in ways I won’t detail, as ground zero for Beau’s fears, a development that provides answers for the narrative but might strike some viewers as too easy of an explanation.
As for Phoenix, he gives an impressively passive turn in the title role. Aster’s camera emphasizes Phoenix’s shockingly swollen body—looking up at him from below, filling the frame with his broad back—emphasizing both his physical and psychological immobility. There are long scenes of Beau staring dumbly ahead, his eyes slowly widening in horror, until he arrives at a state that can only be called stricken. Fleeing from one particularly traumatizing encounter, Beau hobbles away, his neck strained and his mouth agape but silent. It’s a rigor mortis performance.
The movie, for its part, is fairly lively. Especially arresting, from a visual standpoint, is an extended sequence in which Beau encounters members of an interactive theater troupe in a forest. (Don’t ask.) Their stage production is a wonder of its own—rotating trees to represent the change in seasons—yet it segues into an astonishing, animated section in which Beau imagines himself within the story of the play. (Animators Cristobal León and Joaquín Cociña create a lovely, storybook aesthetic that offers some rare peace of mind.) As with Synechdoche’s playwright and Hereditary’s modeler, these scenes depict someone trying to exorcize their demons via an artistic experience. Likewise, with Beau Is Afraid, Ari Aster aims to air these “types of thoughts.” Mileage may vary on how much you enjoy watching them be aired.
