On May 4, “Beau Is Afraid” is released in Russian cinemas. Ari Aster’s new film is currently the most expensive project of A24. We tell you whether the multi-genre project with Joaquin Phoenix and a budget of $60 million managed to surpass the Oscar-...
In “Beau Is Afraid”, his third feature film, Ari Aster, who directed the unsettling post-horror films “Hereditary” and “Midsommar”, once again explores dysfunctional family relationships.
The surreal nature of events, deceptive reality, unusual visual solutions — as in his previous works, the bizarre exposition and mystical attributes serve only as a backdrop for displaying the characters’ inflamed consciousness. However, whereas before Aster made inventive horror films, now he has attempted to frame his favorite theme as a Freudian drama. But in this scenario, diving into the unconscious is extremely exhausting.
A leisurely pace, stunning atmosphere, well-developed characters, a thrilling ending — all this is about slow burner films.
Open materialUsually, great creators prone to confession want to give a guided tour of their feelings, experiences, and memories. How did “Beau Is Afraid” by the 36-year-old director of two films end up in the same list as Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God”, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Bardo”, or Leos Carax’s “Annette”? A question. Burned out? Aimed too high? Or discovered the truth of life? In short, the decision of a young innovative director to follow the path chosen by modern cinematic classics during periods of creative stagnation is frightening.
On December 15, a new film by Paolo Sorrentino, “The Hand of God”, filled with the director’s life experience, was released on Netflix. We tell you about another work of art by the modern Italian
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Even at the draft script stage, Aster characterized the film as a “four-hour nightmare comedy”. The runtime of the final version was reduced by an hour, but the conditional comedy — initially genuinely terrifyingly funny — did not become less nightmarish. Enduring three hours of someone’s introspection, unless you are a psychoanalyst, is quite a torture, so perhaps the director should have stuck with the 2011 short film “Beau”, on which “Beau Is Afraid” is based.
In the six minutes of Ari Aster’s claustrophobic psychological thriller lies the premise of the feature film, where a mother-bound infantile man cannot leave his apartment. The man sees only threats in the outside world and the people around him, so when strangers approach his home, he panics. The loss of his keys triggers a terrible paranoia in the protagonist, and at this surreal moment, at the very climax, “Beau” ends.
“Beau Is Afraid” exploits the same plot, and the bold, intriguing, absurd beginning is the best part of the film. After that — a bit of grotesque violence, and then — a dive into the halls of the mind, which was hinted at by Joaquin Phoenix, urging viewers not to eat hallucinogenic mushrooms before the screening.
Globally, if you remove the middle of the film, the story would not suffer at all. Yes, it’s a shame to lose the vivid images and details of the journey of a man struck by an existential crisis, but watching the return of the prodigal son is still unbearable. By the final part, the viewer is so exhausted that even the interesting erotic scenes cannot invigorate them.
Having produced such a tedious cinematic canvas, the favorite, who, apparently, the studio did not restrict or control in any way, showed that he can make mistakes: an outright unsuccessful story stagnates despite an abundance of artistic means. Ironically, it is precisely the inability to stop in time that gave birth to a strange and completely unnecessary film, narrating the impossibility of releasing sexual desire and dissecting the Oedipus complex.
Studio A24 produces films truly worthy of attention. And which among them will guarantee you a wealth of emotions — find out from our selection.
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