366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
“It’s like a Jewish ‘Lord of the Rings,’ but he’s just going to his mom’s house.”― Ari Aster
DIRECTED BY: Ari Aster
FEATURING: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, Parker Posey, Armen Nahapetian
PLOT: On the anniversary of his father’s death, Beau Wasserman misses his flight to visit his mother; his guilt is magnified by his mother’s surprise death by falling chandelier. He attempts to attend the funeral (to be held immediately in accordance with Jewish tradition), but he is waylaid crime in his anarchic neighborhood, an accident that leaves him in the care of a couple who seem to be using him to replace their dead son, and a wandering theater troupe that spurs thoughts of another possible life. When he finally arrives at his mother’s house, he is surprised by both the appearance of a lost flame from his youth and by a revelation about his mother’s fate that calls into question every aspect of his existence.
BACKGROUND:
- Following his successes in the horror genre with Hereditary and Midsommar, Aster determined that his next project would be a comedy. This is that film.
- The feature is massively expanded from a short Aster made in 2011.
- Among Aster’s descriptions of the picture: a “nightmare comedy,” a “Freudian Odyssey,” and “if you pumped a 10-year-old full of Zoloft, and [had] him get your groceries.” Co-star Lane called it “the Jewish Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
- The animation was created by Cristobal Leon and Joaquin Cociña, whose work Aster discovered in their Apocryphally-enshrined film The Wolf House.
- The logo for Mona’s corporation appears among the vanity production cards at the start of the movie. Some have suggested this means she is controlling the very film you are watching.
- Winner of two 2023 Weirdcademy Awards, including Weirdest Picture and Weirdest Scene for what we chose to call “Phallic Attic.” Phoenix also grabbed a nomination for Weirdest Actor.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Well, this site’s readers didn’t declare it the year’s weirdest movie for nothing. When Beau’s mother coerces him into her attic, he is confronted with three terrifying visions: an emaciated creature chained in the dark who might be a lost twin or an alternate version of himself, the homicidal mercenary who has been chasing him across the country, and (most shockingly) enormous, grotesque monolithic male genitals that throb and scream and kill like the brain bug in Starship Troopers. Beau has been emotionally neutered his whole life, and this is the moment that suggests where his lost manhood may have been this whole time.
TWO WEIRD THINGS: Crossing Hell Street; phallic attic
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Beau’s very existence is a nightmare, from the moment that he is born with a wail-inducing smack, and even dating back to the moment of conception that stopped his father’s weak heart. What unspools here is three hours of the intense and unrelenting discomfort that Beau endures just by virtue of being alive. He manages to be both the most luckless man who ever lived and a person who is thoroughly incapable of coping with misfortune. Aster concocts the most elaborate Jewish-mother joke ever told, and he never relents in demonstrating just how awful things can get, and how they can still manage to get worse.
Original trailer for Beau is Afraid (2023)
COMMENTS: Beau Wasserman’s life is governed by a few simple principles. He will never be good enough. No one will ever appreciate how hard he’s trying. He will be despised for his every shortcoming and punished in the most severe manner possible. And most importantly, he loves his mother, and he hates her, too. These facts are immutable, and Beau Is Afraid is an epic examination of how these rules collude with Beau’s own lack of agency to rain chaos and misery down upon our hero at every turn.
Beau’s journey to his mother’s house would be a classic hero’s quest, with perils and temptations trying to lure him from the path, except that he completely lacks the willpower to get from A to B on his own without a violent push. No matter how urgently he feels the call to move on, or how distressing he finds the prospect of staying where he is, he just can’t move forward, blockaded by his own indecision and anxiety. Amusingly, he doesn’t even have the fortitude to escape the dangerous environment of his neighborhood—a Fox News-wet dream of a blighted urban hellscape where mentally ill murderers ply their trade on the daylit street and no one listens to a word he says—without the gentle push of a horrific car accident. Beau’s world is one where each option comes with peril, and he will reap the whirlwind every time.
The world Aster has created is as fantastical as any tale populated by elves or wizards. Sometimes the signs are subtle, like the alt-universe conflict in Caracas that claimed the life of Grace and Roger’s son and turned the soldier Jeeves into a high-strung ball of barely contained violence. Other moments are blatantly surreal, such as the twee productions of the forest-borne theater troupe that seems to have stepped directly out of “Station Eleven.” No matter how ridiculous it might be—a vagrant hanging from the ceiling, a TV channel that can see the future, a plaque to mark the spot of a fallen light fixture—every coincidence and absurdity is consistent with the world as Beau sees it: confusing and illogical and hostile. Even in his idealized dream life, a spectacular set piece combining animation and community theater set design, the moments of wonder are tempered by harsh payback. For Beau, every silver lining adorns a dark cloud.
The extent to which this is all his mother’s doing is shockingly great. In the film’s ultimate twist, Mona has not only faked her death, but she has built an impossibly large conglomerate on the backs of products derived from her own stifling protection, and that immense power has put her in direct control of every single pitfall that has befallen Beau in his travels. Her desire to love and protect and her fear of abandonment and rejection have completely derailed any opportunity for the boy to mature, and then she resents him for failing to do so. The way she has turned the world into a watchful empire, with everyone on the planet in service to her goal of watching and judging her son, perfectly represents the pedestal upon which he has placed her. She is the alpha and omega, and her disappointment lords over everything. The epitome of the Jewish mother stereotype.
To be fair, Beau insists upon that disappointment, too. Are we to believe that Elaine, the headstrong girl he met on a cruise who he never forgot, shows up at his mother’s house purely by coincidence? Or that her presence will blossom first into an intensely romantic reunion, and then into a ludicrously mechanical sexual encounter? No, this is Beau’s doing, demonstrating an adolescent’s view of love and his own personal certainty that nothing good will ever come his way. It’s a perfectly Beau viewpoint to think longingly about what a sexual experience would be like despite his belief that it would prove fatal; and then to imagine that, if he were to somehow survive, someone else must die in his place. Beau’s life is a monkey’s paw: a bad outcome is preordained, just never the one you expect. This is the heart of Aster’s biggest joke. Beau is a loser, through and through, and regardless of how he got to be that way, the state of being a loser creates an inescapable feedback loop, compounding the loserdom with more losing. This is made explicit in the final trial, when every deed Beau has ever done, good and bad, is interpreted in the most negative manner, and the reckoning is at hand.
Beau Is Afraid is terrifically well-made, highlighted by brilliant production design (Beau’s urban nightmare is a spectacular trash fire, while the theater company’s sylvan glen seems like the best camping trip ever) and savvy use of some of New York theater’s finest. Phoenix is almost too perfectly cast as Beau, given his fascination with sad-sack losers. But at 4 minutes longer than The Godfather, the film is a tough sell as an epic of anxiety and misery. Beau never really grows, so much as he discovers just how trapped he really is, and the film’s comedy is mostly found in the geometrically absurd heightening of his circumstances. (Aster himself has said that he expected the film to be divisive among audiences, but he somehow failed to anticipate that this might be a barrier to entry.) When he finally decides to surrender and accept his last punishment, it’s really the only thing left to do. Beau is afraid, because he’s never known any other way to be.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
“Beau is pretentious, indulgent, and weird. It is also broadly entertaining, masterfully made, and undeniably funny. What happens? A lot. But also… who really knows?… consider Beau an enormously fun—if also mind-boggling and head-spinning—trip through his twisted subconscious. – Max Cea, Esquire (contemporaneous)
IMDB LINK: Beau Is Afraid (2023)
OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:
Martin Scorsese on Beau Is Afraid – A recording of the director’s rave review of the film and Aster’s ambitious work
The Best Movies of 2023, According to John Waters – The legend himself puts Beau in the #1 slot on his Top 10 for the year
Script Apart, Episode 88 – Aster joins the podcast to discuss early drafts of the screenplay and the intent behind some of the symbols
Vanity Fair: Ari Aster Still Wants You to Consider Beau Is Afraid – Aster reflects on the film’s successes and shortcomings several months after its release
r/beauisafraid – The main Reddit thread for the film, in which viewers discuss the many interpretations and share a multitude of Easter eggs
Beau is Afraid Review: Beau is Relentless – Content strategist Jeremy Leal reviews the film with an eye toward the psychological journey of our hero.
Explainers – Many attempts have been made to address the basic question of just what the hell is going on in Beau Is Afraid, and if you feel like this is a worthwhile pursuit, then there are many compelling theories and deep dives into the film’s deliberate obtuseness, including Sam Adams at Slate, Bilge Ebiri at Vulture, Alex Harrison from Screen Rant, and Alissa Wilkinson of Vox. I’m particularly fond of the dialogue between Matt Brennan and Josh Rottenberg in the Los Angeles Times, thanks in no small part to Rottenberg dubbing the monster in the attic as “Jabba the Nuts”
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BEAU IS AFRAID (2023) – Gregory J. Smalley’s original Apocrypha Candidate review.
HOME VIDEO INFO: Lionsgate wasn’t afraid to release Beau Is Afraid on DVD (buy) and Blu-ray (buy) a few months after it’s theatrical release. That doesn’t mean they were especially enthusiastic about it, though, including only one slight bonus feature, the 15-minute “Finally Home: Making Beau Is Afraid .” Beau seems like the type of future cult item likely to get a more reverential release down the road, if some specialty releaser can pry the rights away from Lionsgate. And fear not, disc-o-phobes; the film is also currently streaming on Paramount+ and, naturally, available on VOD for purchase or rental.
Beau Is also, at the time of this writing, free on Hoopla, though scheduled to leave that service on Dec. 13, 2024.
- A paranoid man embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother in this bold and ingeniously depraved new film from writer/director Ari Aster.
Perhaps the weirdest thing for me was his own internalized trial of his life, allegedly, in my opinion. He looked back on missed opportunities, contradictions, and people he betrayed, and hurt. These were moments only he would know about. Now he imagines his lawyer present, literally projecting these memories, which Beau is ashamed and embarrassed of, back at the audience. Because, well, yeah, Beau sees himself as a loser and believes that he derves the worst of what the world has to offer or the worst he can imagine.