Though one could categorize Ari Aster’s third feature as a horror film, it’s decidedly different in tone and effect than his first two, Hereditary and Midsommar. Those were more conventional horror films in that the viewer was meant to identify with protagonists who themselves were subjected to horrifying experiences. The protagonist in the new one, Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), is purposely positioned outside the viewer’s realm of empathy. We observe the horrors and indignities that befall Beau without necessarily taking them to heart, and as a result we are complicit in those horrors and indignities. With a story that goes on for three hours, it turns out to be a lot of complicity to live down. In addition, the universe embodied by the film is not as familiar as the ones in Aster’s first two films. The setting is a fantasy-scape, so there isn’t much to identify with. The horrors don’t register as directly.

Still, there’s enough overlap to provide several layers of irony. Though we meet Beau as he’s actually being born into a world that has it in for him, the proper story starts much later as he’s living in a city where death and violence are ever-present right outside your apartment door. Beau has already been rendered super-paranoid by his overweaning mother (Patti Lupone), who has conditioned him to fear everything. Preparing himself to visit her for the first time in six months, he must overcome so many arbitrary and deadly obstacles, including threats from neighbors and a home invasion that turns into an occupation, that you assume Beau is comically cursed, but in any case his mother won’t accept his excuses with sympathy or even magnanimity, thus deepening his guilt and self-loathing since she interprets it as further proof he doesn’t love her. But that isn’t the worst of it, and when the other shoe drops Beau becomes so desperate to rush to her side that the obstacles turn the journey into a howling odyssey of pain that just keeps getting louder and louder. Aster occasionally interrupts this epic trip with flashbacks that show how Beau’s anxieties about everything from food to sex evolved, and all are connected to his Oedipal frustrations. 

Aster frames this suffering as a cosmic black comedy, combining Kafka’s sense of the absurd with a Gilliamesque visual design, though for the most part the jokes are not particularly deep. There are many sequences that seem to be happening only in Beau’s imagination, and after a while it becomes difficult to care much about what happens to him. Though Phoenix can do wonders with characters who are difficult to like, Beau is beyond our help and his tortures become a slog—it’s all too hopeless and artificial to provide any kind of emotional purchase. In the end, Aster makes concrete what the journey implies, which is that Beau is on trial for not loving his mother enough, and while I appreciated the amount of imagination that went into depicting one man’s worst abstract fears in literal terms, my reaction was exhaustion rather than repulsion. Aster gets more ambitious with each movie, and, to tell you the truth, I’m not sure I’m ready for what he has up his sleeve next. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Beau Is Afraid home page in Japanese

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