TMS Movie Review: Beau is Afraid
(A24 Films)
After the dismal returns for Robert Eggers’ The Northman (2022) and Damien Chazelle’s Babylon (2022)—recent big budget, wide released studio efforts by two contemporary auteurs—my first thought when I learned of the budget for Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid was: “A24 must be sweating bullets and hoping their new extravagant release by their own critical darling doesn’t bomb this hard.” Since viewing the new feature, I think it’s safe to say there’s a high possibility the indie studio really is perspiring at the fact that they gave $35M to a movie that the vast majority of the public is not going to enjoy. A24 might be the most successful independent film company today, but they are not Disney or Warner Bros, in that they can quickly jump back from a big flop. We’ve seen how once in a blue moon a major studio will toss a bunch of money to a popular stylistic writer-director with no restrictions just for the hell of it. Nearly every time this happens the movies end up doing only decently with critics and terribly with audiences. We’ve already gotten three of these types of movies in the past year, and right after a global lockdown no less. So it’s a little bewildering to see the film industry continually struggle in real time.
Unlike The Northman, which was essentially a traditional action/adventure with some flashy direction; or Babylon, a movie I generally had problems with, but also featured elements I appreciated; Beau is Afraid is very hard to simply enjoy from beginning to end. It’s three full hours of Joaquin Phoenix’s Beau experiencing either an anxiety attack, a nightmare, a paranoid fantasy or all of the above while getting bombarded with bad luck and misfortunes. Patti LuPone and Zoe Lister-Jones play Beau’s overbearing mother during various periods of his life; Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan are a seemingly caring couple with alternate intentions who take in Beau after a serious accident; and Parker Posey appears as ‘the one who got away’ in Beau’s non-existent love life. The first act is reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s The Tenant (1976), the middle calls back to Aster’s previous movie Midsommar (2019), and the final act makes us wonder if Aster watched Woody Allen’s ‘Oedipus Wrecks’ segment of New York Stories (1989). Imagine Alejandro Amenabar’s Abre los ojos (1997) or Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky (2001) made by a complete cynic without any heart.
(A24 Films)
There’s no doubt Aster is a visionary. Even with the polarizing, pessimistic nature of Beau is Afraid, we get some striking direction, editing and cinematography, just as we did with his horror hits Midsommar and Hereditary (2018). The thing is, those two movies felt like they utilized their genre a lot more naturally than Beau does. I’m not even sure what Beau wants to be. It’s technically a surreal, dark comedy with fantasy elements, but it’s not grounded enough for anything to pay off realistically or metaphorically. The cast is solid and filled with talent, but the characters are insufferable. The lengthy runtime makes Beau is Afraid feel extra tedious and is a good reminder of why we have studio execs and producers reining in their filmmakers to make sure nothing gets too bloated. I’ll be honest, whenever an artist gets carte blanche on their next project or a director’s cut of a past movie that was ‘ruined’ by studio interference, I’m usually thinking, “Wow, your producer or editor was right suggesting you trim that scene or get rid of that sequence.”
So I guess my main conclusion to this review/tangent is...why does Hollywood keep doing this? Especially when theaters are still pushing through post-lockdown fatigue currently. Is it that ‘one for them, one for me’ deal we always hear about with studios and filmmakers? Except Eggers, Chazelle or Aster have yet to give ‘ones for them’ in their still fresh careers. I don’t want to downplay the importance of an artist’s vision. Obviously we wouldn’t have entertainment without that. But in this case, throwing three harsh hours of self-indulgence and no restraint with no reason to care or root for any of the characters into major theaters, really isn’t the best release strategy. And for the record, I still think the script’s working title of Disappointment Blvd. sounds much better than the official Beau is Afraid.