‘Beau is Afraid’: Ari Aster’s 3-Hour Existential Self-Therapy Session [Review]

After his two well-received horror films, touted as cult classics in some circles, “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” Ari Aster could have done just about anything he wanted for this third feature.

And he’s kind of done that with “Beau is Afraid.”

The film is a purposeful mindf*ck of a rabbit hole, not necessarily pointless in that this Oedipal odyssey is clearly a personal statement from him, about all the ruminating mommy issues that are lingering inside his psyche. The main question, however, is should we even care about them?

‘Beau’ clocks in at 3 hours and you do feel the runtime, especially in the very messy second half. It’s no doubt a true original, with barely any semblance of plot, but it’s also indulgently derivative — a sort of hybrid of Aronofsky’s “mother!” and Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, NY”

Joaquin Phoenix plays Beau, and it’s really an incredible performance on his part, with a lot of slapstick and horror in its delivery. Anxiety is the name of the game here: Beau is a depressed middle-aged man who goes to weekly sessions with his therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson). Meds keep getting prescribed to him, but they don’t seen to be helping this poor guy.

The film’s first hour is utterly fascinating, creating an urban world of decay, violence and mayhem. Everywhere Beau goes he’s met with danger, especially in his grimy NYC neighbourhood which has people murdering each other in broad daylight. It’s a clear alternative reality, injecting the viewer inside Beau’s anxiety-ridden head. We start to question how seriously we should be taking not just the setting, but the entire film as well.

Beau’s fear of his mother (Patti Lupone) is at the center of Aster’s vision. He’s preparing to visit her, but misses his flight due to bizarre coincidences that lock him out of his apartment. That’s when his journey begins. He gets hits by a truck and ends up staying at the home of Roger (Nathan Lane) and Grace (Amy Ryan) who now see him as the son they never had.

Things worsen for ‘Beau,’ Aster adds flashbacks of his childhood, a trippy animated sequence, a meta theater company lurking in the woods, shootings, stabbings, awkward sex … it’s all too much. The promise of the first 90 or so minutes is destroyed by Aster’s compulsive creative inhibitions.

It’s not necessarily a case of style over substance, although it feels like it, but rather a big fat epic therapy session gone awry for the director. Aster is exorcising his personal demons in ‘Beau,’ but we couldn’t care less about them.

Aster is an incredibly precise filmmaker who happens to have made a film filled with narcissism. He’ll be okay in the long run — his talent is too hard to deny. The way he frames some shots here, the time-lapsing, the glaring swings of his camera, the mindblowing first hour, give you confidence in a lasting career for the 36 year old writer-director.

However, he can’t find any sort of coherent tone in ‘Beau,’ the film can’t decided whether it’s serious or silly. Its aim is to subvert expectations, an allergy to predictability, but in the process it loses its way. It’s way more fun for Aster to push our limits rather than tell his story in commendable fashion.

Ambitious and audacious, yes, ‘Beau’ certainly is that. There are some really affecting moments of sheer brazen energy and Aster sneaks in a few wonderful visual gags but the film does not add up. It’s rather shallow in its insistence that it’s more profound than it actually is.