BEAU IS AFRAID - Mark Reviews Movies

Beau Is Afraid, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 21, 2023

The first moments of Beau Is Afraid shows the birth of our eponymous, existentially terrified protagonist from his perspective. It's a problematic birth, with the newborn unable to breathe and needing some emergency care. As for us, it's vital to get on the wavelength immediately established by Ari Aster's epic psychodrama: Life for this character is a waking nightmare. It always has been and, in theory, always will be.

If this sounds like a wholly demoralizing experience, the film certainly is, but that doesn't make it any less engrossing or, in the boldness of its style and the assuredness of its tonal shifts, entertaining. To call this a personal film for Aster is assuming either too much or too little, so we'll put such assumptions aside. There's truth beyond whatever demons and feelings the filmmaker might be working through by way of the material, anyway.

After the trauma of his entering the world, we meet Beau Wassermann (Joaquin Phoenix, looking and embodying the appearance and manner of quite the schlub to great effect). He's meeting with his therapist (played by Stephen McKinley Henderson) yet again, and on the man's mind is a plan to fly out from the city to visit his mother the next day.

Beau is conflicted about the upcoming trip, to say the least, because it has been a while and, as the therapist metaphorically puts it, a visit to his mother is akin to returning to drink from a well that previously made him ill. After asking some pretty loaded questions to cut to the heart of Beau's thoughts, the prodding doctor writes a single word on his notepad to sum up, well, the entirety of his patient's inner life: guilty.

Another word quickly comes to mind, too: anxious. The world of this film exists somewhere between a dystopian nightmare and a panicky hallucination. Aster uses most of the first act, while Beau is still preparing for and trying to solve some problems involving his trip, establishing the chaos of the main character's neighborhood, where the calmest sight might be one of a teenager checking out an assault rifle being sold at some strange farmers' market.

Around Beau's apartment building is regular mass gathering of violent criminals, and any trip out of his apartment requires a mad dash to the relative safety of the indoors. The man has two modes, fright or flight, and he essentially moves from one to the other for the rest of story, except when the memories of the misery his life has been and a dream sequence that supposes what a life lived for some higher ideal could be. Aster's sense of humor, by the way, has that extended, romantic vision of a journey revolving around love—one that incorporates elements of stagecraft and animation, because the only apparent restrictions put on this project belong to the filmmaker—end with the most deflating punch line that's likely possible.

In case it isn't clear yet, the story is a pretty confounding one, which is more an observation than a complaint, because complaining about the absence of logic in a narrative that's basically a reflection of the workings of a troubled character's mind would be foolish. The important parts to it—the story or the mind, because you can take your pick and be correct either way—include Beau's conflicted feelings toward his mother, his determination to earn the mother's absent approval, and his certainty that his every action and real feelings and very existence are sources of disappointment to his mother.

"What should I do?" Beau asks his mother over the phone after his apartment key and luggage are stolen from the hallway as he's about to leave his flight. Like any mother with an overbearing nature and a good guilt-trip game, she tells him, "Whatever you think is right." That's not an answer, of course, and the rest of story, which has Beau on a quest to find a way to his mother's house, is essentially the guy trying to figure out the answer to that on his own.

His mother definitely won't be giving one. After this most recent disappointment, a delivery driver finds her body—and only a body, the stranger insists, for gruesome reasons.

As for the rest of the story, it's essentially a series of episodes, mainly to do with Beau's health being restored—after being hit by a truck and an encounter with a nude, serial stabber—by Grace (Amy Ryan) and Roger (Nathan Lane), who treat him more like a son than his mother ever did—if some flashbacks to Beau's youth with his mother (played by Zoe Lister-Jones) offer any insight, which they most certainly do. That helpful couple, by the way, has a daughter named Toni (Kylie Roger) whom they insult or ignore, while idolizing a son who died in military service. Then, there's the memory of a teenage Beau (Armen Nahapetian) and his infatuation with a girl named Elaine (Julia Antonelli), which is undermined and cut short by each teen's respective mothers.

Thematically, much of this is straight to the point, which it must be, really, because Aster's narrative ambitions, which allow for plenty of variety over the course of about three hours, and stylistic flourishes are so daring, over-the-top, and drenched in symbolism (A couple of third-act ones for sexual repression aren't subtle, to put it mildly, but then again, little of this is). One could easily make the argument that Beau Is Afraid is self-indulgent and far too much. It is, but the film is also risky, imaginative, and insightful in its indulgences.

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