Beau is Afraid (2023)

[Eric Prime]

Are you afraid?

[MovieGuyKyle17]

This film isn't perfect and it's definitely not even close to being a "career ender" but it's a film that overall I enjoyed picking apart and looking for the details. It's funny that a lot of people hate the middle of this film and I feel that's the best part it. It's a glorious looking sequence that I fell in love with. There's strong performances from everyone. I loved Nathan Lane in this. I would of liked to seen more of Richard Kind cause I just enjoy him. None the less this film is definitely not for general audiences and i'm glad A24 didn't push this like Mother!. This film could of cut some of this down, the themes are repeated, and its pretty damn pretentious. I'm glad I got to see this though.  

[Webslinger]

So... this movie sure was something. I'll give my standard, spoiler-free(-ish) review for posterity, and then some spoilery thoughts afterward.

 

Nothing can prepare you for how strange and unhinged Beau Is Afraid is. While writer-director Ari Aster’s preceding features, Hereditary and Midsommar, were anything but standard genre fare, they at least possess relatively straightforward narratives and consistent, coherent logic; with Beau Is Afraid, however, Aster swings even bigger than before with an unrepentantly bizarre odyssey that operates on the chopped logic of dreams and bears such a tenuous connection to reality that it practically dares viewers to exclaim “what the…?” every few minutes throughout its three-hour running time. It’s destined to be a wildly divisive film that some viewers simply won’t be able to connect with at all. For me, though, I can say that while I won’t pretend to have understood all of it nor to have been on board with everything Aster serves up, I was also firmly in its grasp for the entire three hours. The manic energy and dramatic, dreamlike (or, more often than not, nightmare-like) swings in mood and logic ensure that there is always something to command attention, and Aster’s confidence in introducing so many absurd elements is impressive. It may not all add up, but it is always interesting in one way or another. The film hits its most artistically fulfilling height in the third of its four(-ish) segments, which recontextualizes much of Beau’s experiences as an avant garde outdoor stage play, but the segments surrounding it are so boldly bonkers that they are hard to look away from. At the center of it all, Joaquin Phoenix gives a good, committed performance as the title character; he’s a big ball of tics and neuroses, and Phoenix is clearly having fun pushing himself to meet the absurdity of everything happening around him. Beau Is Afraid is undeniably a strange film that swings so big and so broad that it misses and feels obtuse or pretentious on numerous occasions, but it also connects more than enough to keep a willing viewer fascinated and ready to follow it through its increasingly strange developments.

 

B

 

And now, the spoilery comments:
- Seriously, there's no other way to describe this film other than "dreamlike" - or, perhaps more accurately, "nightmare-like." It feels like a bizarre dream that swings wildly from major focus to major focus with minimum respect to reality and maximum attention to the chaos of the subconscious. It's so like a choppy dream that I more-than-half-expected the final scene to be a perfectly ordinary Beau waking up in an intense sweat and remarking upon what a crazy dream he had.

 

- I'll probably revisit this film on streaming if only to do freeze frames on the sheer muchness of the production design, particularly in the first segment.

 

- At first, I laughed at the ironic juxtaposition of playing something as frothy as "Always Be My Baby" during the sex scene where Beau legitimately fears dying, but the fact that it: a.) climaxes in the death of Parker Posey's character, and b.) is later revealed to be something Beau's mother (wow, Patti LuPone is a get for this - or any - film) watches just makes it even more perversely hilarious. Beau's mother's rage over the whole incident retroactively makes the song choice even wilder and funnier, for it retroactively serves as a reminder that Mona will always see Beau as her "baby" and take offense to any and all expressions of his adulthood and autonomy.

 

- Messy as this film is, I can't imagine it being any shorter. Any time I'm in the "good, not great" range with a film this long, I expect length to be a critique, but there's simultaneously so little plot and so much meaning in all the weird stuff that happens that I can't really imagine Aster cutting anything.

 

- The penis monster is, without a doubt, one of the five weirdest things I've ever seen in a movie. Again, I don't know how anyone walks out of this film taking it at face value rather than interpreting it as the cinematic representation of some whacked-out dream.

[MOVIEGUY]

On 5/5/2023 at 9:25 PM, Webslinger said:

The film hits its most artistically fulfilling height in the third of its four(-ish) segments, which recontextualizes much of Beau’s experiences as an avant garde outdoor stage play, but the segments surrounding it are so boldly bonkers that they are hard to look away from.

 

 

Yeah I really liked this sequence but it seems like a lot of people's least favorite part of the film. It goes on for a really long time but I found it captivating (also I thought it might be the climax of the movie but there's a lot that comes after). Great review btw. I'm still not sure how much I liked the movie but it stuck with me. The actual experience of watching it was a bit patience-testing to be honest. I kind of have a low boredom threshold, and I feel like the slow pace Aster uses worked better for Midsommar and Hereditary than it did here.

 

One thing I'll say it did really well was capture that dream/nightmare feeling of going from one strange situation to another and not being sure how you got there and why you're there. Also having a goal you're trying to accomplish and the entire world is preventing you from achieving it.

Edited May 7, 2023 by MOVIEGUY

[JustLurking]

14 hours ago, MOVIEGUY said:

 

Yeah I really liked this sequence but it seems like a lot of people's least favorite part of the film. It goes on for a really long time but I found it captivating (also I thought it might be the climax of the movie but there's a lot that comes after). Great review btw. I'm still not sure how much I liked the movie but it stuck with me. The actual experience of watching it was a bit patience-testing to be honest. I kind of have a low boredom threshold, and I feel like the slow pace Aster uses worked better for Midsommar and Hereditary than it did here.

 

One thing I'll say it did really well was capture that dream/nightmare feeling of going from one strange situation to another and not being sure how you got there and why you're there. Also having a goal you're trying to accomplish and the entire world is preventing you from achieving it.

I think the film would've worked better if it was 30 minutes shorter but even thinking about it I have no idea what I would've trimmed. But I agree I was feeling a bit burned out at one point before coming back into it.