Beau is Afraid

While Ari Aster’s third film was in pro­duc­tion, it was rumoured to be titled Dis­ap­point­ment Boule­vard – a tid­bit that was debunked when its release date was announced, along with the actu­al name, Beau is Afraid. While the offi­cial title makes log­i­cal sense con­sid­er­ing the chron­ic state of per­ma-anx­i­ety expe­ri­enced by Aster’s pro­tag­o­nist, it does lack a cer­tain mys­tique that its debunked pre­de­ces­sor had in spades.

Beau is Afraid as a descrip­tor might be cold­ly accu­rate, but it also serves as an unwit­ting alba­tross around the film’s neck. Stuck in a grave state of arrest­ed devel­op­ment, Beau’s jour­ney is entire­ly lit­er­al. Beau is, was, and seem­ing­ly always will be, afraid.

We open on a ses­sion with a ther­a­pist (a clas­sic Stephen McKin­ley Hen­der­son appear­ance) as the paunchy, bald­ing, chron­i­cal­ly ner­vous Beau Wasser­mann (Joaquin Phoenix) men­tions an upcom­ing trip to vis­it his moth­er Mona (Pat­ti LuPone). The ther­a­pist hints that the rela­tion­ship between Mona and Beau is dif­fi­cult; Beau min­imis­es his con­cerns, express­ing hap­pi­ness at being able to see her.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly a series of unfor­tu­nate mishaps in his neigh­bour­hood – includ­ing the pres­ence of a dead­ly brown recluse spi­der, a noisy neigh­bour, a med­ica­tion sna­fu, a rob­bery and get­ting locked out of his apart­ment build­ing – pre­vent Beau from mak­ing it to the air­port in time for his flight. When he relays this infor­ma­tion to his moth­er, she appears incensed by what she takes to be a per­son­al slight rather than an hon­est mis­take. Beau, dis­mayed at the thought of dis­ap­point­ing his moth­er, embarks on a per­ilous jour­ney back to vis­it her.

This pil­grim­age brings Beau into con­tact with a colour­ful cast of char­ac­ters, from kind­ly cou­ple Grace (Amy Ryan) and Roger (Nathan Lane), their vicious teenage daugh­ter Toni (Kylie Rogers) and their dis­turbed lodger Jeeves (Denis Méno­chet) to his brief child­hood sweet­heart Elaine (Park­er Posey) and a troupe of wood­land drama­tists, who count the sweet Pene­lope (Hay­ley Squires) among their num­ber. Aster has cit­ed The Wiz­ard of Oz as a direct influ­ence, but these encoun­ters do lit­tle to change Beau, or bring him clos­er to his goal of reunit­ing with his mother.

In fact, Beau remains as he is when we first meet him. The only thing that real­ly changes is the phys­i­cal man­ner in which Phoenix’s face is warped by fear, a live-action iter­a­tion of Courage the Cow­ard­ly Dog. Phoenix, an unshake­ably com­pelling and com­mit­ted actor, isn’t giv­en much to do with the char­ac­ter, whose emo­tion­al range varies only from ​‘mild­ly dis­con­cert­ed’ to ​‘freak­ing the f*** out’. Sad­ly it’s the same for LuPone’s Mona, pre­sent­ed as an over­bear­ing hag with a psy­cho­sex­u­al obses­sion with her son. Park­er Posey is the obvi­ous stand­out, despite her brief screen time.

Still, Aster has nev­er been much for the char­ac­ter study – Hered­i­tary and Mid­som­mar were also mount­ed on the strength of spec­ta­cle, and that at least, the direc­tor com­mits to. This is a more ambi­tious film in its exe­cu­tion, fea­tur­ing dis­tinct tonal and visu­al shifts and many var­ied set­tings, from a dank city apart­ment to a mag­i­cal for­est. An entire sequence staged as a play is the film’s big swing, and per­haps its most poignant moment, but it becomes over­shad­owed by more juve­nile flour­ish­es, such as a giant, crude man­i­fes­ta­tion of Beau’s entrenched mom­my issues. This amounts to a fin­ished prod­uct that has all of Char­lie Kaufman’s weird­ness but none of his self-awareness.

Such swing­ing for the fences is admirable in the age of the mono­lith­ic stu­dio film­mak­ing that dom­i­nates the box office, and Aster con­tin­ues to march to the beat of his own drum, but Beau is Afraid doesn’t quite hang togeth­er with the ease of his pre­vi­ous two fea­tures. It’s a shame, as there are some inter­est­ing ideas that emerge (Beau liv­ing in the shad­ow of his mother’s great­ness; Beau attempt­ing to reck­on with the trau­ma of his child­hood; Beau, mid­dle-aged, fum­bling through romance) but after three hours, we are very much in the same place as we were when the film start­ed. This is a road movie that quick­ly seems to run out of road, ambling errat­i­cal­ly down a dirt path to nowhere until com­ing to an abrupt, unsat­is­fy­ing stop.

It’s not an entire­ly unpleas­ant jour­ney, but the film does have a jar­ring, unfin­ished feel to it, and while the detail-ori­ent­ed might find it nov­el to unpack its myr­i­ad cin­e­mat­ic homages, and Aster’s ambi­tious exe­cu­tion is wor­thy of cel­e­bra­tion, ulti­mate­ly it’s an uneven ride, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the incred­i­ble tal­ent involved.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.