Ari Aster has finally returned to the wild world of filmmaking with his recent directorial return, through the form of “Beau Is Afraid”.
This is the third instalment from the mind of Ari Aster, with his first two movies being the widely praised and highly acclaimed, Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019).
The first two full-length features from Ari Aster have gained a massive cult following due to their intense amount of disturbing scenery and use of unique representation to discuss certain matters. It’s fair to say that you can expect the same thing to happen with “Beau Is Afraid”.
It’s clear to see that Aster is dedicated to the idea of allowing audiences to interpret certain factors within the film their own way and allow them to create their own storyline within their head, based on what decisions they decide to take with what they are provided.
We saw it with Hereditary and Midsommar and we are now seeing it with this film.
This is a unique route and a big risk for any director to go down, and for that I applaud Aster. But for those in the audience that are the much more simple-minded and casual moviegoer, they won’t like this one bit.
I initially described this film as a movie of two halves. The first of which is easy to follow, and the audience can fully understand what is occurring. Although some weird stuff has happened, we are able to keep up.
And then the second half is essentially a battle between Aster and the audience members where Aster challenges them to be able to keep up with him. And for the most part, we can’t.
I even sometimes found myself lost in the storyline, questioning others as to what was actually happening and what we were watching unfold before us. And the real answer is, you probably will never know – there is no right answer.
There are many themes within this film that stand out amongst a hefty crowd of subtle representation. Strong themes such as drug abuse, sex, anxiety, crime etc are all touched upon by Aster. But the main theme and main antagonist throughout this film is the idea of generational trauma.
Ari Aster touches extremely heavily on the idea of what can happen to a person if they continue from generational trauma as a child – and the relationship between Beau and his mother is pretty much as strong as an example gets for this.
Across the opening act of the movie, you really can’t help but feel sorry for a guy like Beau, and we soon find out the reason for this.
Despite the open-ended storyline that is destined to leave the majority of the audience scratching their head in confusion, Aster does take on a number of creative filmmaking decisions that I did find impressive.
The use of cinematography to express certain events within the storyline and display various emotions throughout Beau’s adventure are very creative – we have no right to expect anything less from the talented director.
Not only was this one of the strong points throughout the film, but Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as Beau simply must be mentioned.
The talented actor has produced a heavy handful of subtle yet still powerful performances throughout his decorated career, and the case is no different in this film. Most audiences will compare his performance as Beau with his Oscar-winning performance as the Joker back in 2019.
And that’s fair enough because the characters do have some key similarities, but we haven’t really seen Phoenix play someone so anxious and as uncomfortable in their own skin as Beau before, and he nails is perfectly.
Although this film does have some positive aspects about it, the 3-hour runtime and fact that it is absolutely littered with subtle symbolism that is designed to leave it’s viewers confused can easily lead to audience members’ heads being turned away from this movie.
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