Film Review: Beau is Afraid

Director: Ari Aster
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Parker Posey, Amy Ryan
Running time: 179 minutes

Devoid of any self-curated support system, Beau is ensnared by a string of strange events that force him to rely on strangers, all of whom have been comically construed to play out the paranoias of "worst case scenario" interactions. The film's first minute: an intimate auditory attack. We begin inside of a confused visual nightmare; screams, silences, reds, whites, blurred fades in and out of consciousness. It is the birth of Beau. And for three hours this intensity does not subside.

The viewing experience of a film like this almost evades definitive description. Interspersed throughout is a relaxed, softening sound score that accompanies some particularly beautiful countryside cinematography. A supposed sense of calm. But the audience is never quite allowed to grasp onto this calm. It is always dangled in front and never delivered. In fact, the aesthetics of the film, which are undoubtedly beautiful, arrive in such a jarring juxtaposition to the abject anxiety the film produces that it is near impossible to leave the film knowing if you were enamoured with the film's madness or completely distressed by it.

Beau’s social life is punctuated only by his weekly therapy sessions. He opts for a solitary life. Content, a little anxious, but not miserable. Appeased in dissolving into his own quiet daily routines. But as the narrative trajectory slopes downhill and Beau finds himself affronted with the unavoidable upheaval of life; he becomes progressively enraptured by his own paranoiac intervals. 

Unlike a large portion of horror/thriller protagonists, Beau is not a character constantly in the pursuit of mayhem, in fact, he is a particularly anxious adult, whose desire for the simplicity of the quiet life is repeatedly annexed by his external circumstances. In a constant blur between actuality and anxiety, the insanity of Beau’s life can be summarised as Aster’s artistic analysis on one man’s extended absence of self agency.

Beau, never being granted the luxury of independence from his mother, has led a life of social stagnation. Even the frequent cuts to Beaus' childhood hint toward this extended state of self-produced isolation. It appears the entirety of his childhood was moulded by Mona Wassermann, part-time mother, part-time business tycoon. So, as Beau reaches middle age, and grows somewhat independent from the bizarre shackles of his mother, he begins to struggle inside of the acknowledgement that much of his personality is indebted to the strange act that plays out between every emotionally empty teenage boy and their overly controlling, domineering mother.

And Beau’s inability to divorce himself from such a teenage paranoiac performance is invariably shaken up in light of his mother’s sudden death. Acting, understandably, under the mask of irrationally and emotional escalation, Beau runs out into the street, and taking in nothing from his surroundings, ends up being run over, and, of course, repeatedly wounded by Birthday Boy Stab Man - one of the many deranged criminals that run free around Beau’s Neighbourhood.

Waking up, bruised, injured, but alive, a few days later, Beau finds himself under the care of Grace and Roger, an upper class married couple who, essentially, use Beau as a morbid conduit in which they can relive a parent-son dynamic that abruptly vanished from their own lives when their own son, Nathan, is killed in military action. 

Where Beau’s real mother provided nothing but cold distance, Grace provides nothing but care and consideration. Where Mona made Beau uncertain and insecure regarding what he even deserved as a child, Grace juxtaposes this in the way in which she patiently cares for Beau, allowing him the adequate time to heal on his own accord. The two women seem in complete opposition.  But this is an Ari Aster production, so of course Grace’s style of mothering soon turns sour and estranged. 

The mother, particularly inside of the horror format, is a plot device used primarily to explain the male protagonist's failure to fully adapt to society. The mother epitomises the devil. The mother acts in lieu of God. The mother is the object of desire. The mothers in Beau is Afraid juxtapose one another, both are less implicated in the movement of the plot, and it is more so that they are both central to the horror spectacle that is Beau’s character arc and underlying anxieties. 

As we reach the second act, where Beau is desperately trying and failing to piece together who the real him is. Aster cuts to a biblical, cartoonish interlude that showcases Beau’s life. Not real life, but a fantasy, devoid of any of the modern misery he has been forced to grow accustomed to. Beau takes the role of a farmer, father figure. This whole sequence is a performance on the good life. There is no paranoia, no anxiety, he is free. Temporarily. 

For, this, too, eventually becomes eclipsed with his own paranoiac preoccupations. In this mystical interlude Beau stumbles across a tribe of people, all of whom, being plagued by their own tragedies, are driven only by their own vengeful moral compass, attempting to steal everything they can from Beau. We reach the second act with the depressing reality that even Beau’s own fictional daydreams become twisted and annihilated by his anxious personality. He cannot even escape into his own delusions without creeping uneasiness. 

The entirety of the film is punctuated by platitudes of paranoia. Where the audience expects relief, we are met only with increased intensity. The standstills of calm in Beau’s life are all almost immediately inflicted with further tension. Where Aster’s other films - Hereditary and Midsommar - are horrors made for the mind, Beau is Afraid is a horror made for the soul; it is through Beau’s never-ceasing anxious intervals that the absurdity of our own collective anxieties are mirrored back to us. 

With highly impressive performances delivered by Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, and Amy Ryan the audience’s attention never one diverts from the 179 minutes of escalating insanity. Beau is Afraid is without a doubt a spectacle of amazing acting against a well-crafted plot that leaves audiences equal parts horrified and mystified. 

Beau is Afraid is now showing at Broadway cinema