Beau Is Afraid is Ari Aster’s latest film and it’s probably his most surreal film as well. I ended up seeing it twice, once at an IMAX fan event and the next day at a screening with Ari Aster present for an intro and a q&a, and that was probably the best choice I could have made. I left the first screening with a cold feeling and I really didn’t fully get what the film was about. It ended so abruptly and I don’t think I caught some of the pieces of the puzzle. The second watch helped further my appreciation along with my understanding of the film. I’m going to give my thoughts on the film and then try to explain what I think this film is actually about.
Without getting into any spoilers of any sorts, I would say that Beau is probably my least favourite Ari Aster film, but that could definitely change overtime because i’ve had years to really ruminate with Hereditary and Midsommar which has led them to become genre favourites for me, especially Midsommar that is probably now one of my all time favourite films. It’s his most out there film and I think the boldness of it helps and hurts the film in many ways. I like how wacky the film can get, but by the end I feel the film isn’t as tight as his last two films. There are multiple things that even on second watch I probably couldn’t explain what I thought they meant because they’re so out there. This is one of those films that if I asked five people what they thought it meant, I would probably get five different answers. It’s so open ended that it almost takes shape based on personal perspectives as opposed to one conclusive answer. The performance by Joaquin Phoenix is a great one as everything is being thrown at him for three hours, but I don’t think it made as much of an impact on me as the performances of Toni Collette or Florence Pugh. The world building is great as well, but I still prefer the feels from the cult in Midsommar as it feels like i’m apart of it as I watch the film. I’m not a surrealist hater as many of my favourite films are surreal, but I feel that some of those do the style much better and some of the films have themes and ideas that are more hard hitting than Beau. I liked the score and the cinematography as they added an anxious feel to the film. Patti Lupone was probably the stand out performance as she completely chewed everything that she was given. The film is very funny, but it’s lacking a bit of the real horror that his films commonly exude. I really liked the film, but i’ll admit that multiple films in the style, including his previous two films do it a bit better. It’s still a really great film that everyone who is up for the challenge should check out.
This is the part of the article that might get a bit stream of consciousness as I try to examine the film and what it could mean. This is one of those films that could mean different things to different people. My main take away is that this film is about a mother and son at the precipice of a crisis. We are essentially seeing the death of the relationship between a mother and her child. We’re seeing this whole situation come to a head through the eyes of an extremely anxious guy. These stressful moments are filled with Kaufman/Franz Kafkaesque imagery that in some cases get extremely wacky. To put it simply, it’s a story of a man trying to fix his relationship with his mom before it’s too late but things keep getting in the way of his journey of self that he perceives as a Kafkaesque Nightmare.
The movie is broken up in four quadrants, those being the beginning with Beau in his grimy city, Beau at the home of the conservative family, Beau in the forest and Beau back at his Mom’s house. The first scene sees Beau in a meeting with his psychiatrist. Beau is shy and he's not really fully answering the psychiatrist's questions. The psychiatrist prescribes him new pills for his anxiety that are "bound to work". The movie begins with Beau getting ready to see his mom, but things get in the way of him getting to the airport including a missing key leading him to have to confront his mom about the situation. His mom is clearly acting passive aggressive over it because it seems like a consistent pattern with her and Beau. After that we see a whole sequence with Beau as he tries to get water to take with his medicine and how that ends up with hobos taking over his apartment. This is the first time that we see how wacky he perceives the world around him because of his hyper anxiety. He sees the world is out to get him and it’s showcased through many ways in this sequence. Once that’s over, he gets word that his mom has died brutally. This throws him in a tailspin that leads to him being chased naked through the streets of his city by a hobo who falls into his bathtub. This quadrant ends with Beau being hit by the truck that the mother of the family he stays with drives. The point of this section of the film is to set up how Beau’s life is affected by his hyper anxiety day to day. If also sets up nicely how strained the relationship between him and his mom is at that moment.
The second quadrant sees Beau at the house of a family, which includes two wild performances by Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan as the parents. We see that the couple are highly trained and helpful as they are taking care of Beau’s wounds. He finds out during this segment that his mom is in fact dead and he has the urge to get back to see his mom for her funeral. The problem is that Beau is wounded, so the couple won’t let him leave before he is fully healed. This whole segment sees him trying to leave as he’s slowing learning that things are starting to get weird. We are also introduced to their daughter who wants nothing more than to get “fucked up” with Beau. The family almost is treating him like a replacement to their son who died in a war. The war friend of the son is also living with them and he has major mental problems. Throughout this segment, Beau figures out that the girl that he liked as a kid and somewhat promised his virginity to worked for his mom and we also get some back story of Beau’s life after the daughter and her friend make him smoke weed with them. Through this trippy flashback, we learn that Beau met this friend on a cruise and fell in love with her but for some reason, he can’t engage with her in any sexual way because of “health reasons” as his dad supposedly died that way. His friend was seemingly ripped from his life and he lived his life since then without a companion. The segment ends with the couple’s daughter drinking paint in a rage and dying leading to the couple assuming that Beau killed her and they send the PTSD affected war friend to hunt him down. This segment helps paint the character of Beau a bit better as we see that he has trouble making decisions for himself and people seem to make decisions for him. Every time he’s asked to make a decision during this segment of the film, he freezes and the other person makes it for him. It showcases how he gives everyone control over his life because of his stress and he never really makes these choices foe himself.
The third quadrant sees Beau discover a group of orphans who live in a forest and act. This leads to an impressive animated portion that sees Beau live a life as a parent, have a wife and kids, lose those he loves and spends his life searching for him. This version of himself is thrown into wild scenarios until he ends up finding his kids at an old age. This dream sequence ends when his kids question him about their mom and Beau says that he’s never had sex with a woman before. It’s shown in flashback that his mom told him that his father died during sex with her and that Beau has the same disorder that causes that. Beau snaps out of that dream sequence and discovers from a random man in the woods that his dad isn’t in fact dead. The PTSD ridden soldier shows up out of nowhere and starts gunning down the orphans leading to Beau escaping. This quadrant gives a bit more light on the relationship between Beau and his mom as well as gives Beau an experience that makes him realize what it feels like to be a parent and what it’s like to lose who you care about. Essentially we see more of his relationship with his mom and he gets to experience what it’s like to be a parent.
The last quadrant sees Beau make it back to his mom’s house after the funeral. He sees his mom’s decapitated corpse and hangs out in his mom’s house a bit until a random person shows up later that night at the house. It’s Elaine, the woman that Beau had a crush on and promised his virginity all those years previously. They decide to go up to his mom’s room and hook up. This is where it’s fully revealed that Beau has never had sex and his balls are much larger than they should be. He finishes and doesn’t die leading to him feeling relieved. Right before Elaine finishes she ends up dying. This scares Beau and he falls of the bed. He looks up and sees his mom who is not dead. She gets a couple people to take away Elaine’s body and they head downstairs. Beau and his mom get into a fight as he is mad about the fact that his mom pretended to be dead and it’s revealed that she had been controlling his life the whole time and keeping tabs on him. Through pictures on the wall and the entrance of Beau’s psychiatrist from the beginning scene, it is revealed that she has had her finger in everything in his life. He asks about his father and his mother reveals to him that his dad is actually a big penis monster. Beau gets infuriated and ends up choking his mother out, leading to her falling into a table and dying. Beau leaves his mother’s house and gets on a boat. This quadrant showcases how Beau’s life has been controlled by his mom in every little detail and how before the events of this film, he never really made decisions for himself. His mom has kinda became an overbearing helicopter parent of sorts. I also believe that the reveal of the dad is suppose to represent a father who was an asshole and was never there in his life.
There’s one more scene but I felt that it should be discussed separately because it kinda wraps the film up in a way. Beau on the boat is heading away from his mom’s house and he ends up going into a cave. The lights come on and it’s an arena filled with people. At that moment a trial takes place over Beau’s “guilt”. We see the audience watch moments from his life as he tries to make an argument for his side. It ends with Beau being trapped on the boat and drowning. This moment of the film left me feeling a certain way and I didn’t know what to think about the film on the first watch but on the second watch I got what this scene was trying to say. The way I see this moment, this is when Beau’s mom decided to cut Beau out of her life. She has had enough of how Beau treated her and she decides that her life would be better if he wasn’t apart of it. The drowning is the representation of the death of the relationship. It meshes Midsommar and Hereditary in a way because Hereditary saw the rocky relationship between a mother and son while Midsommar’s finale saw Dani deciding to get rid of someone toxic in her life in a brutal fashion. This ending takes both ideas of his previous films and puts them together to further examine what those films were trying to say.
Through this examination, I believe that the film is about a toxic relationship between a mother and a son and the journey the son goes on to fix that relationship before it falls apart. The end showcases the effort to be for nothing as his mom decides to cut him out of her life. Like his last two films, this one examines the idea of how toxic relationships can become in a person’s life, with this one even mashing thematic elements of both films together. I still prefer Midsommar and Hereditary, but on the second watch I was able to fully understand what Ari was trying to say with the film and that led to more of an appreciation for the film. It’s still a standout film from a filmmaker that I think deserves the world, but Midsommar continues to have my heart. Ari Aster is one of the best filmmakers working today and Beau Is Afraid is further proof of that.
The Rating
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