Shadows on the Wall | Beau Is Afraid

Beau Is Afraid

dir-scr Ari Aster
prd Lars Knudsen, Ari Aster
with Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, Parker Posey, Kylie Rogers, Denis Menochet, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Hayley Squires, Richard Kind, Zoe Lister-Jones, Armen Nahapetian
release US 21.Apr.23,
UK 19.May.23
23/US A24 2h59

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Another indulgent auteur project, this epic odyssey feels both deeply personal and in desperate need of an independent editor. Genius filmmaker Ari Aster definitely knows how to push the audience's buttons, and his rambling, over-the-top movie is packed with moments that are hilarious, terrifying, riotously outrageous and darkly emotive. It's also infused with almost Lynchian surrealism, defiantly refusing to bring its fiercely clever segments into a coherent whole.

In a big city, the nervous Beau (Phoenix) relies on his therapist (Henderson) for both a listening ear and anti-anxiety meds. Deeply paranoid, he feels like he's on the verge of calamity, menaced from all sides. Then he is told that his beloved imperious mother Mona (LuPone) has died, and he's propelled naked into an out-of-control journey, run down and then tended to by a lively couple (Ryan and Lane), plus their surly daughter (Rogers) and an unstable veteran (Menochet) lodger. He also runs into a pregnant commune member (Squires) and his childhood crush (Posey).

All of this is intertwined with Beau's cataclysmic self-image, which leaves him revisiting and questioning moments from throughout his life, including stories his mother told him about the father who died just as he was conceived. Aster depicts this in a spiralling onslaught of intense scenes that bristle with pitch-black humour and rather heavy-handed symbolism. Along the way, there's an animated storytelling interlude, as well as a horror-style visit to an attic. All of it looks amazing, even if the pieces never quite fit together.

Phoenix gives an astonishingly committed performance as a middle-aged guy who has never quite cut the umbilical cord. Beau is a complex mess, and the film's first act is especially powerful in depicting his fevered vision of the world around him, down to some mind-spinning details. In later scenes, Beau becomes more stunned, mumbly and elusive. Costars register strongly, most vividly LuPone, who takes no prisoners in her late-appearing role. Ryan, Lane, Posey, Rogers and Menochet also have show-stopping moments.

Over the course of this very long film, so much happens to Beau that it becomes increasingly difficult to make sense of what Aster is trying to say here. Is this a spiralling epic about growing up with the ultimate Jewish mother? Or a psychedelic head trip into an over-medicated mind in free-fall? Aster has salient things to say about both of these, and so many other things, that we basically lose track of where we should be looking. Which makes the film dazzling but oddly uninvolving.

themes, language, violence, sexuality 24.Apr.23

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