Beau is Afraid

Ari Aster's Beau is Afraid is a paranoid nightmare revue of the life of its protagonist. It is separated in five fairly discrete acts and it gets worse, in effect more obvious, as it goes along. Unlike Damien Chazelle's Babylon, however, it appears that on some level Aster knows he is constructing a white elephant and injects some badly needed satire and yuks. It is this humor that redeems this three hour epic of a messed up mind.

I have a skewed sense of humor that tends towards the dark, I find both Dostoyevsky and Kafka to be jolly fun for example, so I recognize that the comic aspects of Beau is Afraid may be lost on some. It is there, though. The opening dystopian segment is black comedy in the vein of A Clockwork Orange, to which Aster tips his cap by mimicking that film's use of scatological graffiti amidst urban decay. The other specter that haunts this film is that of the Cohen brothers, especially Raising Arizona. Little ironic touches abound: the combo Hawaiian/Irish from his mother's conglomerate that Beau pops into the microwave, the goofy business names throughout the film, the cod Shakespearean play put on in the Arden forest sequence, the threat of a brown recluse spider. The music in the film is funny, also. Bobby Krlic's score is in a witty mock epic mode. The pop songs Aster utilizes are also gauchely amusing: songs by the Swingle Singers, Bread, and Nina Simone ploughing through a George Harrison dirge. Best of all is Parker Posey's Elaine selecting a Mariah Carey tune as her love jam to get her in the mood for a long delayed tryst with Beau. This gives the film a climax that is premature for the audience if not the players.

Some of Aster's satire is a little too au courant. Jibes at selfish tycoons, America's pharmaceutical addiction, and our upcoming invasion of Venezuela seem like shooting fish in a barrel to me. Likewise, the last two acts, where Beau's mom, played in her older guise by a clenched Patti LuPone, harangues Beau for being ungrateful and rejecting, is a good example of a director spelling out in dialogue themes already implicit in the film. You know a film is a little off the rails when a giant genital monster is introduced. Still, I can't help but think that there is more than a trace of self-parody in the film. 

As yet, I have failed to mention the film's other saving grace: Joaquin Phoenix as Beau. Phoenix is the foremost actor currently working in English language films. He has great range ranging from a raging monster of the id (You Were Never Really Here) to a docile shaggy dog who is catnip for the ladies (Inherent Vice). Phoenix is expert at capturing Beau's anxiety without resorting to tics or mannerisms. It is a largely passive performance until Beau has to flee from whatever new terror is stalking him. Phoenix has already shown his skill in portraying infantilized males, especially in The Master, and Aster scored a major coup in casting him as Beau. The supporting cast is also well chosen, not only the reliable Ms. Posey, but also Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, and Richard Kind. Best of all is Zoe Lister-Jones, as Beau's Mom in her younger days, expertly capturing the steeliness behind her character's Betty Crocker façade.

Another factor in Beau is Afraid's favor, something Aster shares with the Cohen brothers, is its embrace of Jewish identity. A number of critics, especially Sheila O'Malley, have presciently diagnosed the deracination of American Jewry in recent features such as Mank and Oppenheimer. Beau is Afraid, like the Cohen's A Serious Man and Emma Seligman's Shiva Baby, is not timid about placing its characters within a Jewish milieu and having them grapple with their heritage. The guilt heaped upon Beau by his mother and her lawyer is portrayed as specifically and indelibly Jewish. All of Aster's films have dealt with dysfunctional families or surrogate families. The Jewish elements of Beau is Afraid give the film a personal flavor that refuses to swamped under by the film's Sturm und Drang.