‘Beau Is Afraid’ Review: Joaquin Phoenix Takes His Mom Issues The Wrong Way, Even By Ari Aster Standards

Surprising New York City show, or rather unveiling of Beau is scared A few days ago, Q&A host actress Emma Stone allegedly started asking writer-director Ari Aster, “Is that you? OK, Ari?”

That seems like a reasonable question after watching the filmmaker’s latest epic, a 179-minute Homeric odyssey into the mind of its protagonist, the deeply paranoid and underdeveloped man named Beau Wasserman. The film’s title is perfect as it captures this man with serious mother issues as Aster takes us on a mind trip that can best be explained as a mind trip through all the anxieties of this sad sack living in an unstable world which even the Among Us must agree can be an unpredictable affair, but this is one beauty that finds it particularly difficult to navigate. This is an understatement to say the least.

Aster is the brilliant actor who is probably responsible for true horror masterpieces with his first two feature films, 2018 heir to the throne and that from 2019 midsummer The latter is one I’m still processing, a fantasy of cult madness set at a summer festival in the Swedish countryside that lives in my mind and won’t go away. Although both have elements that can be marked horror, The nightmarish human drama at their core makes it foolish to call them genre exercises of any stripe. Beau is scared However, it was an idea Aster had before starting either of his previous two feature films, but now he felt the time had come – revealing perhaps more about the creator than either of his two acclaimed first efforts. This makes this long, often exhausting and sometimes indulgent new film as curious as anything else. But the further I get from it, the more I think about it.

Fortunately, Aster has Joaquin Phoenix, who wins an Oscar joker, responsible for keeping a character balanced more It’s alarming to spend three hours on it, if you can imagine. From the very first images—a series of births that introduced Beau to the world—we know what lies ahead when baby Beau shows his first trace of real fear: life itself. We learn more during his visit to his therapist, wonderfully played by Stephen McKinley Henderson.

Cut to a nondescript apartment in a seedy part of an unnamed town, we get to see more of Beau and his rather lonely everyday life. He’s about to leave to visit his mother, Mona (Patti LuPone), but things go horribly awry, mainly due to some very strange off-camera interactions he has with a neighbor who is increasingly complains about the absence of loud noises. from his apartment. After a hard night, he overslept and realized he was going to miss his plane. In the excitement, his bag and keys disappear and he panics and calls his mother to tell him he is coming but will be late. Getting worse. A call from a UPS delivery man predicts that something unspeakable has happened at his mother’s house, where he discovers a decapitated body. Now panicked and in desperate need of some water, Beau ventures out and runs into a street full of unsavory guys, including a crazy naked man. Full of fear, he tries to pay for the water, but he lacks 20 cents. On his way back, without a key to his apartment, he is run over by a car and left in a poor condition on the street.

This is the first chapter of what Aster has structured more like a Kafka novel than anything else. In the next chapter, Beau is badly injured and wakes up in a brightly colored girls room in a light and airy suburban house. There he meets Grace (Amy Ryan), who explains that she was the one who hit him with her car, and her surgeon husband, Roger (Nathan Lane), who took him under their wing and put him in their accommodating teenage rooms . Daughter Toni (Kylie Rogers), much to the chagrin of this surly girl. Here he learns that the couple lost their army son in the war and have a strange neighbor named Jeeves (Denis Menochet). More crazy things happen, including Toni overdosing on a can of blue paint (don’t ask), forcing Beau to quickly leave despite his condition so he can attend his mother’s memorial service, which has apparently been postponed due to his absence.

He then turns up in an unknown forest and meets a theater group performing a play that appears to be about Beau, one that he himself participates in, even in animated sequences that Aster has thrown into the mix. The next chapter gets even more bizarre when Beau finally makes it to his family’s house after missing his mother’s shift, only to meet his childhood friend Elaine (Parker Posey). Earlier, Aster flashed back to a cruise vacation where he first met the feisty and aggressive Elaine at 13. Now that they are much older, they soon become involved in a wild sexual encounter that really gets out of hand, and well, Mom shows up too. The odyssey continues on land and sea and reaches a kind of operatic crescendo. you have the idea

Aster puts Beau first, perhaps to reflect what many of us fear most about the world around us, the way we deal with our own lives and our parents, the lack of control we have over everything we do on a larger scale orbit. pace like never before. In Beau, through Phoenix’s uninhibited emotional and physical output, we see a man who dissolves but never fully emerged from his mother’s womb to experience what life is all about.

Aster is greatly assisted by his permanent cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, the ever-challenging production design by Fiona Crombie and editing by Lucian Johnson trying to put this puzzle together. The actors are as playful as they come, led by Phoenix’s fearless twist; LuPone and Zoe Lister-Jones (in flashback) as a domineering mother; Posey great as Elaine; and Vets as Lane, Ryan and a late-inning appearance from the ever-welcome Richard Kind. Armen Nahapetian as a 13-year-old beauty is perfectly cast.

Beau is scared is clearly the story Aster needed to tell, but wasn’t ready to unleash on the world. It will no doubt be a cult favorite, but it will also be as controversial as it gets, the kind of film you can bet is the first scene to spark mass attacks. Those who remain – and it will no doubt be the loyal Aster who yearns for the next film from the man who invented it heir to the throne And midsummer – will find much to chew on and perhaps scratch their heads. This is not a film that is easy to describe, let alone digest, the horrors seen through the eyes of a man who does not want to walk out and who may never have anything but fear.

Producers are Aster and Lars Knudsen. A24 films will be available exclusively at Imax this Friday and on a larger scale in cinemas on April 21.

Title: Beau is scared
Distributor: A24
Release date: April 14, 2023 (selected theaters)
Director-Screenwriter: Ari Aster
Form: Joaquin Phoenix, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Patti LuPone, Parker Posey, Kylie Rogers, Armen Nahapetian, Denis Menochet, Richard Kind, Julia Antonelli, Zoe Lister-Jones, Hayey Squires
Judge: R
Time: 2 hours 59 minutes