"Beau Is Afraid"

   ☆☆½ 

In 1987, Woody Allen made a film in which an anxious, neurotic dweller in the big city encounters unexpected, surreal difficulties with his mother. The film was Oedipus Wrecks, included in New York Stories, and at 40 minutes it made its point, provided some amusement, and overstayed its welcome.

Now, Ari Aster, fresh off the undeniable (if divisive) arthouse horror hits Hereditary and Midsommar, has made a film in which an anxious, neurotic dweller in the big city encounters unexpected, surreal difficulties with his mother. Aster's film is ten minutes shy of three hours, and to say it overstays its welcome would be a drastic understatement.

Other than that most vague of summaries of Beau Is Afraid, there isn't much way to describe what happens in the movie, which takes place in some alternate universe of a MAGA-ites worst nightmares about urban violence and artistic theater types and a liberal's most ardent fever dreams about big business, suburbia and military veterans.

Within its rambling three hours are grotesque giant penises, enormous testicles, vomit, much blood, ample nudity, intense violence, questions of incest and sexual dysfunction, plus surreal moments played both for laughs and for artistic integrity — like a hypnotic (that's not necessarily a good thing) animated sequence that's simultaneously dazzling and dull.

There's one moment in the film in which one character — it's far too difficult to try to explain who — is doing a puzzle and Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) says he's found the piece she needs. Beau Is Afraid is a lot like a cinematic puzzle, or maybe an intellectual's film version of an escape room: It offers intriguing, sometimes genuinely tantalizing, individual pieces, but none of them add up to a whole or offer anything like a solution. There are hints at dystopian science fiction, weird echoes of corporate satire, and a lot of amusing and silly spoofs of popular culture ("Professor Marvelous!"  reads a poster on a bedroom wall, a dig at super-hero movies).

But what does it mean? A film doesn't necessarily need to offer any solutions — we've been scratching our collective heads over Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey for nearly 60 years. But there should be some point, some cohesive idea, not just a bunch of strange images and even weirder plot twists that never pay off. There are call-outs to The Truman Show, The Shining, Ex Machina and Defending Your Life (weirdly) throughout, yet none of it ever coalesces.

If it's meant to be a head-scratcher, it is. And except for that languorous animated sequence (both a marvel and a challenge to behold), it's never boring. Beau Is Afraid is compulsively watchable, I'll give it that — but what are we watching? And why? In the end, I am afraid the answer is: not much.

Viewed April 23, 2023 — AMC Topanga 12

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