At a surprise New York City screening, or rather unveiling, of Beau Is Afraid a few days ago, the Q&A moderator, actress Emma Stone, reportedly began by asking writer-director Ari Aster, “Are you okay, Ari?”, That seems to be to be a reasonable question after seeing the filmmaker’s latest epic, a 179-minute Homeric odyssey of the mind of its protagonist, the deeply paranoid and underdeveloped man known as Beau Wasserman. The film’s title is perfect because it sums up this guy with severe mommy issues as Aster takes us on what can best be explained as a mind trip through all of this sad sack’s anxieties living in an unstable world that even the most sane among us has to agree can be a dicey proposition, but it’s one that Beau in particular has a great deal of trouble navigating. That is an understatement to say the least.
Aster is the brilliant artist responsible for, arguably, genuine horror masterpieces with his first two features, 2018’s Hereditary and 2019’s Midsommar. The latter is one I still am processing, a fantasia of cult weirdness set at a summertime festival in rural Sweden that lives in my head and won’t leave. Although both have elements that can be labeled horror, the nightmarish human drama that is at their core makes trying to pinpoint them as genre exercises of any stripe a folly. Beau Is Afraid, however, was an idea Aster had before embarking on either of his previous two features, but now he felt its time had come — and perhaps it reveals more about its creator than either of his two acclaimed first efforts. That makes this overlong, often exhausting and sometimes indulgent new movie as much a curiosity as anything else. But as I get further away from it, the more I think about it., Fortunately, Aster has Joaquin Phoenix, coming off an Oscar win in Joker, in charge of a character that is even more disturbing to spend three hours with, if you can imagine that
