BEAU IS AFRAID Explained: Acid-Fueled Psychotherapy

Beau Is Afraid, or Ari Aster’s third film, is an unusual kind of therapy and an insight into the mind of an anxious protagonist. Beau Is Afraid of life, surroundings, closeness, sex. The director and screenwriter in one tries to present to us the causes of this condition, taking us on an unusual, mad, and full of hidden meanings journey into the depths of the human psyche, full of frustration and fears.

The film opens with a brilliant sequence that literally pins you to your seat. On a black screen, we hear strange sounds. At first, we do not know what exactly they are, except that they are extremely disturbing. Soon we discover they are female screams. But where do they come from? From behind the wall? From the water, when the screaming woman tries to save herself from drowning? (The sounds are muffled, not clearly audible.) Before we see anything, Ari Aster makes us guess what we are dealing with, building curiosity and tension within us.

We want to know what exactly we are witnessing and where this introduction is leading us. When, after several seconds, the sound is joined by a misty vision, we realize we are participants in childbirth from the perspective of the fetus and the newborn child. This moment is extremely important because it sets the most crucial rule for the entire screening – we are watching the world through the eyes of the main character and through the prism of his emotional states.

The opening sequence of Beau Is Afraid is another outstanding opening in Aster’s career. It ranks just behind the perfect beginning of Midsommar, which remains one of the most emotional, disturbing, and spine-chilling moments in history.

Beau Is Afraid: a three-hour epic about human fear

Ari Aster’s latest film is a work of vast proportions – Beau Is Afraid lasts nearly three hours and tries to approach its central problem from many different angles. The first thirty minutes are a prime example of outstanding tension-building. Aster achieves this with the help of merely two pieces of information that immediately grab us by the throat. We constantly expect a confrontation with the announced adversary.

However, the director knows what our expectations are, so he delivers a solution that cannot be predicted – and at the same time gives us exactly what he promised. This duality of the move served to the viewer represents true mastery of playing with the audience, making the first half hour of Beau Is Afraid deserving of the loudest possible applause.

Equally brilliant is the third act, which is a wild ride on the edge and a stylistic excess we did not expect from this work. The problem remains the longest middle act – thematically strongly tied to the film’s main issue, yet containing many elements that seem to slightly distract from the proper message of the work and inflate it to enormous proportions while saying not all that much. (At least, at the moment of writing this text, I have not found that much sense in the sequences from the middle of the film, which take up quite a lot of screen time.)

Beau Is Afraid: therapy as a cure for everything?

With his film, Ari Aster tries not only to show the world of a fearful man but also to make us realize how one can deal with the paralyzing fear that may rule our lives. He does it, however, in an exceptionally perverse way, as befits a film with horror roots. Aster’s answer seems to be therapy – something meant to help us cope with our fears. The trick is that at a certain point, while outlining the protagonist’s numerous troubles, the director presents us with a world in which one can start fearing the very process of therapy and its related elements. A devilishly ironic move in which what is meant to bring relief may lead to an even greater intensification of symptoms.

Beau Is Afraid: a stylistic mishmash that is hard to describe

The strength of Aster’s new film also lies in its unique style. Beau Is Afraid is absurd, exaggerated, caricatured, and downright bizarre. On one hand, it is deeply rooted in popular culture; on the other, it serves us completely new ideas and solutions. The key to this style is the fact that this is reality according to Beau. This setup allows us to swallow a wide range of stylistic and narrative moves, including the addition of metaphysical elements or depictions of altered states of consciousness, like after the best drugs.

This also makes Beau Is Afraid echo The House That Jack Built, The Truman Show, The Wizard of Oz, or even elements straight from Scary Movie. Without giving anything away, I will only say that there are several sequences here that look as if they were taken straight from a cheap parody of horror films. It sounds absurd, but it does make sense and has meaning in the context of the whole. Absurdity and exaggeration are seen here as ways of dealing with deeply rooted fears by mocking and diminishing them.

That is what even Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban taught us, giving us scenes with the Riddikulus spell, which turns the worst fears into something we can laugh at. Considering that Beau Is Afraid represents what the protagonist sees (including through his imagination), in this context even the most twisted or seemingly stupid scenes gain immense meaning.

By placing the viewer in the protagonist’s position, Ari Aster manages to sell us many diverse elements connected by the loose logic (or rather its absence) of a dreamlike world. Thanks to this, Beau Is Afraid also includes a confrontation with Christian guilt (Jesus sees your abominations) and, at the same time, sequences set to 1990s and early 2000s pop hits from the repertoire of Vanessa Carlton and Mariah Carey (the latter used, notably, in one of the best scenes of the film!).

Beau Is Afraid: an acting tour de force

The film is held together by the central figure of Beau and the main actor: Joaquin Phoenix. The man is an ambiguous character, full of pain and compulsions, and the types of fear, anxiety, tension, or agitation painted on his face can strongly affect the viewer. Armen Nahapetian, who plays young Beau, also performs excellently, bringing the right dose of neuroticism and fear of the world, as well as fascination and a desire to act on impulses sparked by his hormones. The exaggerated Parker Posey and the hard-to-classify Zoe Lister-Jones are also good. Yet it is Patti LuPone who steals the screen entirely.

Her role is outstanding – not only excellently written but above all acted with incredible verve, grace, and layers of subtle, unspoken emotions. When the actress appears on screen, it is impossible not to watch her performance with your mouth open, absorbing every line she delivers. Her character is, moreover, key to the entire film, and what the actress does with this role makes us fully understand why she is so important.

Beau Is Afraid: reviewing Ari Aster’s latest film

Beau Is Afraid is an extraordinary production and quite an assault on the viewer’s mind and senses. A film that overwhelms not only with its scale but also with its lavish ideas, it powerfully draws us into its world and conveys the protagonist’s emotional states in a contagious way. We ourselves feel the tension that rules the man’s life and try to find our place with him in the sometimes fragmented story.

At times, this film resembles putting together a puzzle and trying to find pieces that fit the whole. (Not without reason, the puzzle-assembling sequence is one of the best in the entire film.) I have the impression that engaging with Beau Is Afraid is a process that does not end with the physical conclusion of the screening but rather when the ideas and concepts shown here take root in the viewer’s mind. For this reason, for example, I have not yet fully deciphered some of the middle act’s moves, so I am not completely convinced by them.

Gathering one’s thoughts after Beau Is Afraid is not an easy task. One primarily feels overwhelmed by what has just been seen and experienced. However, this is a fully intentional move, provoking a strong reaction.

It seems that nothing can prepare a viewer for the screening of this film. And that is a very good thing! Cinema should surprise and evoke unprecedented emotions. Beau Is Afraid does this abundantly, treating us to a wide spectrum of sensations. Not all of them are positive, which, however, seems crucial to the film’s reception.

A great work that you will want to analyze and discuss. That is why I myself am extremely curious about other reviews, opinions, and a whole series of think pieces on the subject. Beau Is Afraid simply has the potential to stay with us for a long time. And that’s already something!