Beau Is Afraid is a weird movie.
Not the “Tim Burton” kind of visually weird, but the ones that are truly weird. The kind of weird that sounds normal on paper, but makes you question your sense of sanity when you view it on the screen.
It’s a level of weirdness you will either appreciate for its sheer audacity to commit to its particular brand of lunacy or you will hate because you think the movie went up its ass thinking its farts smell nice or, if you are like me, the kind of weird you have trouble judging in a binary form because your brain is still trying to make sense of the madness it just witnessed.
The kind of weird you know isn’t bad, but you have no goddamned clue who you’d want to recommend it to.
“Beau is Afraid” is that kind of movie. It’s a very, very weird movie. As I finished the movie, only one question popped in my head.
“Who do I recommend Beau Is Afraid to?“
Beau Wasserman(Joaquin Phoenix), a man with crippling anxiety, has to undertake a crazy journey to attend his mother’s funeral.
That’s the plot.
I could spoil the movie’s screenplay, but even that wouldn’t do justice to the execution of the madness that Aster has unleashed with this movie. It dives into the themes of existentialism, maternal love, self-loathing, and anxiety. But that’s not helping much.
I have not seen Ari Aster’s movies. I’ve heard good things about Midsommar, but haven’t felt the need to watch it. The reason I watched this movie is because most reviewers were absolutely baffled as to what to make of this movie.
To top it all off, it’s a three-hour movie. To its credit, Beau Is Afraid mostly gets through that runtime without boring us. Some parts were a bit of a slog, but the film powers through with its sheer embrace of lunacy.
Who do I recommend Beau Is Afraid to? Fans of Joaquin Phoenix?
Joaquin Phoenix does a good job of portraying an anxiety-riddled man trying to make sense of the chaos happening around him. Unlike Joker though, his acting isn’t the movie’s selling point. While this is Beau’s story, he feels like an audience stand-in reacting to the chaotic scenarios he winds up in half the time. You’ll probably catch some finer nuances in Phoenix’s performance, but it’s not immediately apparent the first time.
The supporting cast does a great job of strengthening the creeping sense of dread that permeates throughout the movie. You’ve got Beau’s psychologist. You’ve got a kind couple played by Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan who seem to be hiding a dark secret. Then you’ve got a hippie traveling theatre troupe. There’s Beau’s long-lost childhood crush played by Parker Posey. Then there is Beau’s mother, played to creeping perfection by Patti LuPone and Zoe Lister-Jones.
Unlike Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale”, this isn’t a showcase for the acting skills of the cast. If you think you can get by with just the acting of the cast, this is not the movie for that.
Who do I recommend Beau Is Afraid to?
The technicals? They’re fine. Some of them do a great job, especially in a sequence where Beau hallucinates about being in a drama. But this isn’t Blade Runner 2049.
The music? It has a good mix of old school tracks and Bobby Krlic’s background score does an excellent job of ratcheting the lunacy the movie is going for. But again, not worth watching a movie for.
Who do I recommend Beau Is Afraid to? Fans of Neon Genesis Evangelion? No, Evangelion was pretty straight forward with its answers and even that anime didn’t have this level of mind fuckery.
As I was wracking my brain for answers, I can say one unambiguously good thing about Beau Is Afraid.
I’m glad it exists.
Most modern blockbusters these days seem happy to be running on autopilot. A quip here, a needle drop there, some nostalgia/franchise easter eggs and you’ve got a modern movie. The equivalent of white noise. I’m not saying that every movie needs to be an epic undertaking, but for the love of God, take some swings.
That’s what Beau Is Afraid did. It took some wild swings.
Whether those swings hit or miss is subjective to the individual viewer, but it took swings nonetheless. Most movies find a comfortable flatline to lull the audience into a catatonic state. Beau Is Afraid, for all its weird machinations, had me in various stages of anxiety, horror, comedy, confusion, and clarity.
Yes, the movie is a box office dud. I’m surprised it made $11 million at all. But then again, some of cinema’s best movies have been commercial flops. I wouldn’t put Beau Is Afraid on that list, but I can appreciate a director trying to do something different.
Ultimately, I came to the conclusion.
Beau Is Afraid is a hard sell of a movie. It’s a movie that will speak to you with a fiery passion or leave you extremely cold.
My only recommendation is that if you want to watch different or weird, then take a shot. I will not say that you will love it or hate it, but most probably, you will come out of the movie with an emotion other than “Yeah, it was fine. The usual stuff”.