Film Review: "Beau Is Afraid" (2023)

"From his darkest fears comes the greatest adventure". This is Beau Is Afraid. This surrealist black tragicomedy horror film written and directed by Ari Aster. A paranoid man embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother.

In February 2021, A24 announced the film, then titled Disappointment Blvd., with Joaquin Phoenix attached to star in the leading role. The film had been in development by Aster for some time, with a 2011 short film entitled Beau, that would later serve as the basis for a sequence in the feature film, and a 2014 draft of the script that circulated on the internet. Aster has described the film in many ways, including initially as a "nightmare comedy", "a Jewish Lord of the Rings, but [Beau's] just going to his mom’s house", and as "if you pumped a ten-year-old full of Zoloft, and [had] him get your groceries." By late June, Armen Nahapetian, Patti LuPone, Zoe Lister-Jones, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, Kylie Rogers, Denis Ménochet, Parker Posey, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Richard Kind, and Michael Gandolfini rounded out the film's cast. At the same time, with a budget of $35 million (A24's most expensive film to date), principal photography commenced and wrapped in October. Filming took place in Downtown Montreal, and Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Henderson described Aster and Phoenix as "so simpatico ... their way of working together was like they were really old friends. They could get upset and make up in the span of seconds, it seemed. But the work was always the better for it." In early April 2023, during a Q&A session with actress Emma Stone, Aster recounted an incident in which, during the shooting of a "very intense" scene involving LuPone, Phoenix suddenly collapsed and lost consciousness as a result of the physical intensity of his stunts, which included breaking through glass. Initially annoyed because "it was a really good take", Aster realized it was serious as "[Phoenix] was letting people touch him and people were tending to him and he was allowing it".

The film stars Phoenix, Nahapetian, LuPone, Lister-Jones, Ryan, Lane, Rogers, Ménochet, Posey, Henderson, Kind, and Gandolfini. You will enjoy another superb performance by the great Joaquin Phoenix, one of the greatest actors of his generation.

Phoenix is strong in this third effort from Aster. While not as accomplished as his first film, his attention to detail, tone, and cinematography are superb. An interesting mixture of scenes that touch on the absurd and the real, the intellectual and the banal in a constant state of paranoia. The film is an exquisitely visceral cinematic experience that leaves you both physically and emotionally exhausted as the credits begin to wash over you. I did not like the film as much as I appreciated its audacity and the skill that clearly went into making it. This was a stunning work of art that embraced excess with a few positive results. Aster proves what a formally accomplished director he is, and how he totally understands that the medium is all about aesthetic and spectacle.

Simon says Beau Is Afraid receives:

Also, see my review for Midsummar.