It’s not enough that the shrink prescribes anti-anxiety medication for Beau, instructing him to take it with water we also get those instructions repeated in voice-over, and a closeup of the bottle of pills, plus the sight of Beau Googling the meds on his computer. Aster likes to decorate every inch of his nightmare, down to the foulness of the graffiti, and nothing is lightly touched upon or left to chance. If all this nervous wreckage seems too much, that’s the point. One thing leads to another, and soon it is Beau who is left bare-assed, in public, clutching not a knife but a small statuette of a Madonna and child. What music? Still to come: a horde of hobos and merrymakers, shuffling like zombies into his building, and an intruder on the ceiling, clinging like a spider as Beau takes a bath. Beau is woken by notes being slipped under his door, warning him to turn down his music. ![]() He is chased by a tattooed figure with inky eyes another man is reported to be roaming around naked and stabbing folks at random. The streets of the unnamed city are a hellscape of shouting, brawling, and scavenging, serenaded by the yelp of sirens-a permanent state of crisis, we sense, not merely the projection of Beau’s dread. There are plenty of laughs here, but they are variations on a scream.īeau lives alone, in an apartment, and to reach it is to run the gantlet of fear. Aster, however, is averse to comic blandishment. The blatancy of this exchange veers close to a spoof, and, indeed, the film has all the ingredients of a delicious black comedy. “Do you ever wish that she was dead?” the shrink inquires. He says that he will visit his mother on the morrow. Beau, balding and pasty, is now in the slough of middle age, though he looks older still. Immediately after Beau’s birth, for example, we are spirited to the consulting room of his shrink (Stephen McKinley Henderson)-a logical leap of which Mel Brooks would be proud. Beau’s father, we are told, expired at the instant of Beau’s conception-the most efficient of the Oedipal activities on which the movie thrives. If there is a plot, it’s more like a plot of earth than a narrative back and forth Aster goes through the years, plowing through the tribulations of a guy named Beau, who is played as a boy by Armen Nahapetian and as an adult, of varying vintages, by Joaquin Phoenix. The movie is laid out in ontological order, as it were, from being to nonbeing. “Beau Is Afraid” is the opposite of Lewtonian its adventures in neurotic obsession appear both unguarded and unconfined. From those tough restrictions came a bunch of enduring frighteners, including “Cat People” (1942) and “The Seventh Victim” (1943). and received specific orders: no film was to cost more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or to last more than seventy-five minutes. Rejoice! Much has changed since 1942, when Val Lewton started work as a producer at R.K.O. It is one whole minute shorter than that. Rumor had it that “Beau Is Afraid” would be three hours long. As we learned from his previous movies, “ Hereditary” (2018) and “ Midsommar” (2019), the untraumatized life is not worth filming. We also hear the remonstrations of the baby’s mother, who, far from being overwhelmed with joy, sounds furious-no surprise, since “Beau Is Afraid” is written and directed by Ari Aster. A slap, a wail, and a new child is launched upon this great stage of fools. The location is a human birth canal, and the camera is taking us on a trip toward the light. ![]() What are we listening to? Are we in a U-boat, perhaps, with depth charges exploding nearby and the hull beginning to crack? Nothing so exciting. ![]() ![]() With a muffled howl and a dull boom, “Beau Is Afraid” gets under way.
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