Beau Is Afraid: A Freudian Guilt Trip Of Epic Proportions
Following the sudden death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic, Kafkaesque odyssey back home.
Beau is afraid of everything. He’s afraid certain foods — or even drinking a bit of mouthwash — could give him cancer. He’s afraid of the many homeless who occupy his street, and he worries about them infiltrating his apartment while he’s away. He’s afraid he’ll become a victim of the Birthday Boy Stab Man, a violent naked vagrant who wanders the city. He’s afraid that he would be shot at — instead of protected — by the police, and he’s afraid he could die from smoking pot (though he has no issue taking the medication his therapist prescribes — unless it’s without water). Beau is even afraid that ejaculating will result in swift death, thanks to a medical condition he may (or may not) have inherited from his father. He’s afraid of the whole crazy world around him, and he believes everyone in it is out to get him. More than anything, he’s afraid of being a disappointment to his mother, and he’s drowned by the guilt of an unlived life, one which is pervasively paranoid and crippled by anxiety.
Beau is essentially a Billy-Pilgrim type character (from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five), a meek weakling who prefers sinking to swimming, someone who doesn’t necessarily make choices but is pulled or moved about by outside forces; things happen to him, and he reacts. Joaquin Phoenix reacts beautifully, dialing in a performance that’s perfectly pitched to the material and always working in service of that. He’s committed to the role, flexing a more feeble side than usual, and he imbues Beau with the necessary pathos to connect us to the hilarious, Grand Guignol proceedings. We empathize with him not only because we’re seeing — and feeling — everything from his perspective, but specifically because the palpable feeling of terror, guilt, and shame Phoenix portrays with his face and body, the latter of which always appears to be a deflated, adult-sized husk of his fractured inner child.
Beau’s perspective is distorted by his many fears and phobias, and we experience everything in the same way he does: as if they were real. No matter how false or absurd Beau’s notions or suspicions may be, Aster gives them a fittingly heightened, exaggerated, and absurd externalization, which is intended to reflect Beau’s own distended testicles — err, we mean, “reality.” He further roots us in Beau’s wacky headspace with the many cleverly crafted perspective shots (including the incredible opening POV birthing scene) that litter Beau’s wacky pilgrimage home to his mother, and he even allows the herky jerky pacing to be an outward reflection of Beau’s constantly shifting inner anxiety. The resulting journey is a thematically dense and psychologically symbolic trek into the anxiety, panic, paranoia, distrust, distortion, guilt, and fear of our protagonist, and because we are never given an outside perspective, we are never truly sure if anything we see or experience is actually real or true. Aster more or less invites us to play armchair psychologist as we attempt to make sense of this sprawling, madcap, macabre masterpiece that puts the “odd” in odyssey.
It’s entirely possible to view Beau Is Afraid as a three-hour long Freudian mother joke written jointly by Charlie Kaufman and Franz Kafka, and you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. In a sense, it is a long-winded cerebral riff on that old parental saying: “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it.” It also has a certain Infinite Jest quality with its mother/son theme and dynamic (“The woman who kills you in this life will be your mother in the next life”), but also in how deeply funny and profoundly sad it aspires to be. Like David Foster Wallace’s gargantuan novel, Aster’s bonkers opus feels extremely personal while also remaining abstract and open enough to allow multiple readings and interpretations. To only view it simply as an overly bloated cruel joke about a man who was doomed from birth robs you of the reward of peeling back its meticulously crafted layers.
Similar to Aster’s past films, trauma and the sense of “the home becoming unhome-like” (to paraphrase a line from his short, C’est La Vie), plays a big role here. Specifically, there’s a lot of generational trauma on display, thematically (both with Beau’s inherited condition, and the lack of love his mother received for hers), and structurally (in its return to watery, womb-like darkness only to be reborn and repeated). There’s still a lingering sense that Aster is working out his own issues on screen, but Beau feels less like flagellation and more like he’s pointing a funhouse mirror directly at society. The reflections are comically absurd and horrifically exaggerated, but they have relatable roots, cinematic appeal, and a comedic chomp. You’re never quite sure which direction it’s going to veer next, and that alone makes it very exciting.
Whether or not you rock with Beau’s narrative and the stupid places it boldly — and gloriously — ventures, you can be in absolutely awe of the craftsmanship, from the technical to the performative. The cinematography from long-time Aster collaborator Pawel Pogorzelski is downright stunning and features some incredible techniques and flawlessly smooth camera moves. The production design and world-building are astounding and crammed full of little details that tie into the larger tapestry, narratively and thematically, making its insane, unhinged journey feel more coherent, despite the film’s intentional push-and-pull pacing. There are unmistakably notes of Peter Greenaway, Charlie Kaufman, Roy Andersson, David Lynch, and Ingmar Bergman in Aster’s rich and hearty traumatic stew, but Beau never feels like anything short of original. The performances are phenomenal down the line, with knockout supporting performances from Nathan Lane, Kylie Rogers, Patti LuPone, Parker Posey, and Zoe Lister-Jones, who all get their time to shine.
Overall, Beau Is Afraid is a distinctive, deranged, and uncompromising delusional fantasy that spews its creator’s internal sickness — no matter how silly or strange — straight into your gullet until you violently drown. When it’s all said and done, you’ll be saying “Isn’t it a pity,” either because you feel the profound sadness of Beau’s plight, or because you didn’t connect with Aster’s risky, go-for-broke vision. We were transfixed for the whole weird and wild ride, and we look forward to suffocating on this filmic panic attack again.
Recommendation: Beau Is Afraid is with either make you erectus or rejectus. Enter at your own risk, but for our money, this is the best film so far this year, and it’s so ludicrous and bonkers that it merits a watch on the big screen.
Looking for more fucked-up fun?! Check out the links below:
Joaquin Phoenix movies
Hereditary review
Midsommar review
Midsommar Q&A w/Ari Aster
Midsommar Director’s Cut
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!