Bleak odyssey
Terrific cast endure cruel and unusual punishment.
BEAU IS AFRAID directed by Ari Aster
It will come as little surprise to those who saw the folk horror Midsommar that when writer-director Ari Aster created that film, he had just gone through a terrible relationship break-up. Sending Florence Pugh’s heroine to visit a mystical Scandinavian cult with the boyfriend who’s trying to dump her could be interpreted as thinly veiled catharsis.
Judging by the gruelling emotional cruelty inflicted upon middle-aged sad sack Beau in this, his third feature, it’s reasonable to assume Aster might also have some unresolved mummy issues.
Joaquin Phoenix plays pathologically apologetic Beau, who lives alone in a part of town reminiscent of a Hieronymous Bosch painting soundtracked by pumping dance music and police sirens. His neighbours include a naked, screaming serial-stabber and a troop of zombied-out homeless folk who break into Beau’s apartment and trash the place.
This serves as foreshadowing for a Lynchian psychological horror that soon devolves into a three-hour von Trieresque story of misery and futility. It is billed as a black comedy, but the truth is none of this is funny.
Disturbed by the home invasion, Beau misses his flight to visit his mother, Mona, and embarks on a Sisyphean journey across the country, encountering kindly strangers, bullying teens and a barrage of very confusing situations. Occasional snippets of hope are swiftly dashed by an apparently uncaring universe, with Phoenix’s face a mask of beleaguered bafflement through to the film’s astonishing (not in a good way) final act.
Aster has wisely cast terrific actors to portray his mad ramblings – Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane bring temporary relief as the sweet couple who bandage up a broken Beau and call him “sweetheart” – and there is a stunning animated sequence that adds a (grim) fairytale tone to Beau’s travails.
But Aster’s script, conceived before his well-received and terrifying 2018 film Hereditary (also a parental case study) feels incohesive. Beau ricochets from one indignity to the next on his quest to prove he’s a good son. Relentless nastiness is more forgivable when it’s making a point, but here the litany of bizarre happenings in Beau’s macabre existence just feels extremely stressful.
Far more interesting than watching the film would be to do an analysis of Aster’s three movies and identify the tropes and themes ‒his obsession with gruesome head trauma continues here. But then you would still have to sit through Beau is Afraid, and that is one cruel and unusual punishment too many.
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