The horrifying dollhouse of Hereditary and the UV rays of occult practice in Midsommar were massive hits for A24. The artsy studio that has been elevated to the heights of Paramount’s mountains, Disney’s magical castle, and WB’s logo hovering in the stratosphere has been looked to as a curator for movies outside the box of studio familiarity. This doesn’t gauge the quality of their films, but it’s nice to know that a studio is willing to latch onto something that probably wouldn’t be funded under a different umbrella.
With Hereditary and Midsommar catapulting Ari Aster to staggering heights, A24 continues to be the safety net for him to work in. Unfortunately, Beau is Afraid is a blinding misfire that isn’t totally without merit, but it is so self-indulgent the metaphors and analogues are barren dead ends.
A Greek odyssey is a familiar structure for storytellers to work within. Heroes and Heroines defy stacked decks and are plagued with fatal flaws that uncovers prolific meaning for the protagonist and participant alike. Beau is Afraid adheres to that structure and takes the “odyssey” on a three-hour marathon. Aster uses this time to visualize a mindset stricken with anxiety, uncertainty, and self-depreciation. Joaquin Phoenix articulates this with every bit of Beau’s pathetic, distraught mannerisms that has relentlessly bore down upon him. There’s a charm to this type of performance and Aster recognizes it. He fills the frames of the first hour with dark, comedic gibberish that transforms Beau into a physical punchline.
This type of comedy has been with Aster since his earliest short films, and to see it at its highest budget is rewarding for those that have been with him since the beginning. The surreal Jewish-American comedy is bursting at every seam, and for a moment it feels like Aster is going to pull it off. Trading the deftly serious branches of Hereditary in for sweaty, ball busting comedy is the type of film Aster has been waiting to make. In every interview or podcast he has a keen sense of timing and bone-dry tone that makes him excel as a storyteller. As a comedy, Beau is Afraid is a total riot, but when he starts to cue in the trauma it loses focus and makes it an alliteration that is more annoying than a clever gimmick. It’ll make you reconsider the type of filmmaker Aster is, even if it’s informing you about what his fears as a person are.
Despite the roars and stammers coming from the actors, it never culminates into an emotionally surprising moment. The film’s thesis is so bare and simple it makes the gymnastics of the story at odds with a battered son trying to reconnect with his mother. Aster presents this as a silly adaptation of Oedipus’ tragedy, but that also feels shallow and without emotional significance when it’s all said and done. Which makes the conclusion a jarring endpoint for a film that suddenly wants to interrogate the audience’s role in a story. Because the film’s statements and projections are without the fruits of discovery, you can’t help but feel like you felt everything, but learned nothing at all. The conversations the film incites are brief, stagnant, and boiled down to, “Man, that’s crazy… never seen a movie like that.”
Where this does earn a majority of its merit is that it does give us a chance to tango with the parts of yourself that are activated when the film turns its attention back to you. Like Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, it projects displeasure at the expense of the surrogates we tend to gravitate towards on our empathetic paths, and we have to gauge how we’re contributing to the annihilation of the characters. It shapes guilt in a way that is troubled and refracted by the calloused memories that phase in and out of the film half-remembered. On this front, Beau is Afraid uses guilt as the incinerating force of indictment that delineates Beau as a figure of self-reflection. You can see this in the film’s middle-most part of the movie where Beau is trapped within the bark of a sprawling wood and a theater’s animated stage play. It’s a spectacularly realized sequence that (like most of the scenes) would be even better if it wasn’t just a piece within a larger whole.
Ari Aster’s career may be poorly timed. With other contemporaries evolving, it feels like Aster is revolving, and it is difficult not to compare those who got their big break around the same time he did. It’s like it’s stuck in this place where he is the warden and inmate of his own asylum without the nuance of being an avatar for “auteur theory”. A24 is the common denominator since he started, and each subsequent film has shown signs of regression. A24 may give him the resources to use his tools, but it’s clear that his inspirations (and aspirations) are too self-indulgent, and perhaps a break from that production house will give him the chance to work with more restraint rather than complete freedom. That type of restraint is a key component in what made Hereditary such a petrifying hit. It practically launched A24 into a space all its own, and they seem to be paying Aster back – favorably – at our expense.
Beau is Afraid isn’t bad enough to be a “career-killer” as Midnight Movie Talk’s, Erick Weber, has immaturely exclaimed, but it is a film that’ll make you reconsider everything you thought you knew and may have loved about Ari Aster. The talent, craft, and potential are still there, but the breakthrough into a territory beyond what we’re already familiar with is still waiting in the wings – or not there at all. We’re only three films in, and we shouldn’t panic about seeing this guy’s name on screen as compared to The Russo Bros. or Shawn Levy. The D.N.A of a cinephile who loves talking about movies through his bone-dry comedy is capable and intriguing enough, but he needs to stray from the beaten path. Beau is Afraid is an example of someone who is stuck in mommy’s house, and the style has been frayed in a film that bonks the theme on the head more than enough and toots its own horn for good measure. Indulgent cinema is fine, but eventually a little self-critique and reevaluation will go a long way in advancing an artistic career. If Aster doesn’t do that, his odyssey might be cut short, and he may as well be his own Achilles’ heel.