Trying to explain what Beau Is Afraid of might sound simple and straightforward, but ultimately it’s one of the biggest cinematic mind trips ever made. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
For me, that explains the process of simply watching this film. It’s an audacious Rorschach test, which describes a movie that dares to be unconventional and leaves us picking apart sequences and making of them what we will.
I’m sure those who are curious enough to see it will have a polarized response. Many will find it a bold and daring film, while others will no doubt find it frustrating, perplexing, and ultimately a waste of time. Despite certain reservations, I have to put myself squarely in the former as I’ve never seen a movie like Beau Is Afraid, and I have a level of puzzling admiration for it.
It stars Joaquin Phoenix as Beau Wasserman, a milquetoast man with extreme anxiety living in a city filled with crime. He’s preparing to fly home to see his mother, but he oversleeps and misses the flight.
Beau then takes his medication prescribed to him by his therapist but goes into a panic when there is a water shortage in the city, and his therapist specifically requires him to take the medicine only with water. He succeeds in finding water, but he’s ultimately locked out of his apartment when a group of homeless people takes over. The next morning, he calls his mother only to find out that she’s dead from being decapitated.
Beau decides to go home for the funeral, but on the way, he’s injured when a car hits him, and he finds himself in the home of a married couple (Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan). They take care of him and promise to get him home. However, through a bizarre set of circumstances, Beau ends up fleeing their home and wanders into some woods where he’s met by a traveling theater group. He becomes so spellbound by the plays they put on that he imagines himself as one of the performers who has a family that becomes separated after a flood. The movie shows us a visually dazzling animated sequence which is one of the normal parts of the film.
Are you with me so far?
The journey Beau takes is existential and never black and white. It’s a non-linear film with a mixed-up chronology. If anything, it’s a film that tells its story in a way that is antithetical to the way that we are accustomed to. Maybe that was the point of writer/director Ari Aster who has made other peculiarly terrifying forays into human existence, such as Hereditary and Midsommar.
Beau’s life could be interpreted as the idea of Murphy’s Law, where everything that can go wrong will go wrong. For those who wish to dig deeper, he could be someone straight out of Kafka’s philosophy which means he’s a character that faces surreal and absurd challenges and people throughout his journey. It’s certainly a befuddling, nightmarish fever dream of a journey, and not everyone will want to go on it.
Phoenix and Aster create a character that is genuinely sympathetic at first glance. As the layers begin to get peeled back, the sympathy remains somewhat intact, but it also delves deeper into a man’s potential madness.
Beau Is Afraid is a movie that has a velocity for its three-hour runtime and never runs out of ideas that bewilder. Some will find it ingenious while others will find it bafflingly elusive – so much so that they may decide not to finish it.
Every once in a while, we get a movie that nourishes our desperation for originality and delivers a virtuoso experience. Last year it was Everything Everywhere All at Once. This year, it’s Beau Is Afraid.
Grade: A-
(Rated R for strong violent content, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language.)
