Since hearing director Ari Aster describe his film Beau is Afraid as a “Jewish Lord of the Rings but he’s just going to his mom’s house,” my curiosity has been high. Aster knocked it out of the park with 2018’s Hereditary, one of my favorite films of that year. While a little more uneven, his follow-up film Midsommar still struck a nerve. But Beau is Afraid represents Aster’s first directorial departure from the horror genre. Or does it?
Aster’s wry comparison of his film to a Jewish Lord of the Rings isn’t far off on a few fronts – firstly, and most superficially, they’re both 3-hour endeavors. But there is also an Odyssean flavor to Beau is Afraid. The titular Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) spends the majority of aforementioned 3-hour runtime trying to get somewhere (his mom’s house) and dealing with a variety of setbacks and encounters en route that threaten to pull him off course. The best parts of this journey reminded me of The Green Knight, a modern and surreal retelling of a traditional fantasy tale.
Except instead of trying to slay a monster or outwit a trickster, Beau is trying to get past the everyday anxiety generated by modern living. As Beau agonizes over the possible side effects of his medication, panicks about missing a flight, battles a bug infestation, and generally navigates the unsafe feeling of living in an impoverished neighborhood, it feels like the odds are stacked against our protagonist. Beau is Afraid is at its best when it turns these everyday anxieties into larger-than-life tribulations. In a way, these parts of the film feel like a subversion of the horror genre. Horror often uses other-worldy encounters to channel something everyday and relatable. Rather than using something terrifying as a metaphor for underlying and commonly-experienced traumas (a la The Babadook as postpartum depression), it feels like the opposite is happening. The horror of Beau is Afraid is found in examining small, everyday encounters we all experience and giving us the most dire and traumatic outcome of those interactions.
And yes, I’d argue large swaths of Beau is Afraid play as something between horror and humor. As the banal is played for horror, the more outright horrifying parts of the film are played for comedy. As spectators watch a man ready to jump off a building to his death, they cajole him on, excited to see him hit pavement. The grief of a dead son is played as an endless source of entertainment, as is the suicidal ideation of a teenager and the PTSD of a soldier. This culminates in the most obvious trauma-as-entertainment moment of the film, the final act, which sees a movie-theater-like audience watch a man mentally spar with his adversary.
All of that to say, there’s a lot going on in Beau is Afraid that I enjoyed. The best parts of it, in addition to The Green Knight, have clear nods to influences like Charlie Kaufman and Albert Brooks. Phoenix gives 100% in the enveloping, undeniable way that he always does, and the film’s tightrope walk between comedy and horror feels like Aster honing in on his unique voice in his most effective way yet.
Still, though, Beau is Afraid is easily my least favorite of Aster’s films, mainly due to the film’s bloat and final act. Three hours of Kaufman-esque surreal drama requires a mental fortitude I lack. What’s more, though, is that as my patience wore thin, the film’s pull away from the expansion of small and everyday tribulations and into the broad and metaphorical dragged it down. For all of the work the film does in its first half to make us feel the reality of living as Beau, that work is undone as the film moves forward. Rather than developing Beau is a character that we watch evolve and survive – the hallmark of any successful journey – he becomes a vessel for larger themes, like guilt and family. As a result the film is in parts deeply unlikable and obscure, straying too far into the surreal in a way that borders on pretension.
I’ve made plenty of flattering comparisons to films and artists I love, but at its worst, and particularly towards the end, Beau is Afraid reminded me of another A24 film: Men, possibly one of my least favorite films in years. The results are a mixed bag, hard to recommend in full to anyone, but still a worthy experience for fans of Aster’s previous work.