One of the best films people didn’t see in theaters recently was Beau is Afraid. It’s coming on on Blu-ray on July 11 from Lionsgate and I urge you to experience it’s maniacal charms. Directed by Ari Aster’s it’s about schlubby, balding, paranoid Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) and his dark odyssey to get home to his mother’s funeral. But it’s also a three-hour, hilariously bizarre mindfuck of a film, more in tune with Charlie Kaufman’s crackpot visions.
Aster’s brilliant earlier films- Hereditary and Midsommar were subversive, atmospheric horror films that really got under your skin in disturbing ways. This is scary in a different, darkly humorous way. It’s like looking straight into the disordered mind of a poor soul, severely damaged by a shrewish, suffocating mother (Patti LuPone, giving a go-for-broke, harrowing performance).
Beau lives in an urban nightmare- imagine the city hellscape in Taxi Driver but then triple it. Chaos rules on the sidewalks and nude killers with knives roam the streets and he has to quickly sprint to his door to evade a psychotic tattooed loon. His apartment building is a cacophony of screaming and despair, where crazed neighbors leave countless notes under his door in the middle of the night threatening him about his loud music (he is in bed with no music on). And there is notification that a venomous brown recluse spider is loose in the building. Things only go from bad to worse the day he is to fly home to be with his mother. His keys are stolen, psychotic vagrants invade his apartment and he gets hit by a car.
He is taken in by a weirdly cheery couple (fabulous Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan), still grieving over their son who died serving in the military. They put Beau in their daughter’s (hilarious Kylie Rogers) bedroom to heal, which puts her in a pill-popping fury. It’s impossible to describe what happens next in the movie, and besides, it’s better to be surprised by the endless misfortunes Beau goes through.
One of my favorite sequences is when he stumbles through the woods and runs into a traveling acting troupe who are putting on a show and Beau stays to watch. There are full-out animated sequences too as Beau is forced to examine his past, his mother, and the girl he met once on a cruise that he fell madly in love with. A terrific Parker Posey plays the older version of this elusive love. But Aster’s imagination is in overdrive. Every frame is bursting with creative visual lunacy.
How great is Joaquin Phoenix? He just inhabits this sadsack character and burrows in with a heartbreaking intensity. His journey is a little like Candide– but if it was written by someone having a really, really bad acid trip.
I don’t know whether to laugh or scream in terror but one thing I do know. Beau’s neighborhood reminds me of the characters I encountered on my way to work everyday during the pandemic.