Beau is Afraid
Written and Directed by Ari Aster
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Parker Posey
Rated R for strong violent content, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language
Runtime: 2 hours, 59 minutes
In theaters April 21

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

“I should warn you that while Frasier is a Freudian, I am a Jungian. So there'll be no blaming Mother today!” –Niles Crane (David Hydre Pierce), Frasier, “Frasier Crane’s Day Off” 1994.

It is impossible to truly know the interior life of another human being. Through conversations, whether with friends and family or talk therapy, we can try to convey what it is like to live inside our own heads, but language and vocabulary are limiting factors, as words can be imprecise when describing the intangible. Visual arts can be far more emotionally expressive, but especially when it comes to plays, movies, and television, they can be somewhat hindered by expectations when it comes to narrative. But as much as I would like them to, brains don’t work in linear progressions, nor do they adhere to narrative coherence. In fact, some narrative structures, like the work of Joseph Campbell and others, are often used by Jungian-leaning psychologists to help give patients a sense of their own story. 

Beau is Afraid, the third feature from writer-director Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar), has more narrative than some brains, but is entirely a journey inward rather than anything external. Nothing presented “actually happens.” Whether set inside the dreamscape of Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), depicting some sort of therapy session or psychedelic trip, what we are seeing is his inner psyche brought to life on screen. If only Beau were a more interesting person. 

Divided into five sections (thankfully without intertitles), each part of the film delves into a specific aspect of Beau’s psychology, with all of them explicitly or implicitly tied to his mother. The first section sees Beau in therapy, anticipating a visit to his mother for the anniversary of his father’s death (we are also told this was the same night Beau was conceived). His anxiety is represented in a chaotic and violent cityscape as a series of escalating worse case scenarios make it impossible for Beau to make the trip. Everything that happens in the first movement feels like an intrusive thought, a worst case scenario coming to life, all triggered by his reluctance to see his mother. 

He winds up in the home of an affluent couple (Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan), recovering from injuries. While there, he learns about their family dynamic, including their daughter (Kylie Rogers) and Jeeves (Denis Ménochet), a veteran suffering from PTSD. Beau’s desire to leave to get to his mother’s house causes escalating tensions, and makes him feel out of place. Here is a “perfect” family, fractured and pushed to the brink by the arrival of a Jewish man into their suburban paradise. Beau (by way of Aster) suffers that characteristic sense of self-deprecation and assimilation fear felt by many Jews, especially in America.

After a few more misadventures, including a moving sequence that utilizes animation to create a deep sense of longing and pathos, Beau finally does confront his mother. So much of their interactions border on the allegorical, evoking the way the worldview of children is shaped by their parents. We see Beau being shaped, even gaslit, by his mother. His perception of her mood swings makes her criticize his inability to make up his own mind about something for fear of her reaction. Ultimately, Beau wrestles with these feelings as well as humiliation. 

For all of his trials and tribulations, Beau has no character arc. He barely has any character to him beyond his neuroses. Oedipal stories and mommy issues are not a new realm for storytelling, obviously, and while it is tempting to ascribe some of Beau’s issues to Aster, that’s not entirely how filmmaking works. There is likely some interesting subtext present, but as a character, Beau is as interesting as Forest Gump, which is to say not very. Phoenix is a fine actor and serves the script and world well enough, but shows little of the grounded humanity present in his recent C’mon C’mon performance. The issue is not with passivity, as Beau is the catalyst for much of how the film unfolds, but there seems to be little underneath. While Beau is confronted with upsetting imagery or feelings, we only see the surface level of him reacting to these things, and three hours is a long time to sit with an unchanging, hollow, protagonist. 

While my overall reception to Aster’s work has been mixed so far, there’s no doubt that he is an exceptional visual stylist. The tableaus he deploys across his filmography are engaging and effective, and his frame composition is always engaging. There are long stretches of Beau is Afraid where I found myself on the film’s wavelength, even when it veered into the garish and absurd. However, there was no satisfaction to be found. Not because of the way the film ends, which makes sense given everything that has come before, but because there seemed to be no larger purpose of our journey through Beau’s inner life. Each piece of Beau is Afraid teased out the same ideas repeatedly, shading in details, but never building to anything larger or more interesting than can be extrapolated from any single section.