Image via A24 Films
Ari Aster doesn’t want for ambition. After helming two towering entries into the horror genre with the hauntingly demonic family drama Hereditary and folk day terror Midsommar, you wouldn’t blame someone like Aster for parlaying his indie bonafides into a splashy franchise project or simply taking a break.
And yet, Beau is Afraid sees the director reject any notion of settling or compromising. His third film unequivocally goes for broke, seemingly filled to the brim with every idea he’s ever conceived onto the screen.
“This one just was always special to me,” Aster tells Complex during a roundtable discussion about the film that included other outlets. “It was just a world that I loved, and that world kind of gave me license to throw in ideas and set pieces that just wouldn’t fit in any other context.”
The narrative circumstances surrounding Aster’s newfound world are relatively straightforward: Our titular scaredy cat Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), sets out on a journey to visit his mother (Patti LuPone, but played by Zoe Lister-Jones in flashbacks) on the anniversary of his father’s death. The story unfolds across distinctive landscapes: A war zone of a city reflective of every conservative’s metropolitan nightmare, a stereotypically quaint suburban home owned by a doting Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane, a forest home to a traveling theater troupe, and a ritzy (yet menacing) home worthy of an Architectural Digest cover.
But in the fashion of The Odyssey or even The Lord of the Rings (name-checked by Aster in interviews leading up to the film’s release), Beau’s journey along the way is anything but normal. As in most travelogs, the full extent of his adventure is better left experienced. Each specific segment of the story is chock-full of ideas that could easily sustain their own films.
The protagonist’s fear has manifested in big and small ways over the movie’s three-hour runtime. The mysteriously abrupt death of his father imbues Beau with lingering existential angst, while smaller threats—like a poisonous brown recluse spider who’s recently taken up residence in his apartment building—linger on the periphery. Everything is out to get Beau right down to his new medication, which his therapist insists must be taken with water. Aster infuses the film with a darkly comedic tone that quickly proves Beau’s anxieties as largely self-imposed and trite—but that doesn’t stop him or Phoenix from playing it all as deathly serious.
“The script was wholly original, and that’s always exciting, right? I think I’m always looking for something that feels unique,” Phoenix tells reporters. “But really, it was the conversations with Ari that made the difference between me doing it or not.” Phoenix went on to further state that he and Aster spoke “every day” for “four days in a row or something.” The Oscar-winning performer is absolutely committed in his dedication to playing Beau, and in fact, the movie hinges on Phoenix’s ability to bring the character to life and be the grounding force in the surreality of it all.
Image via A24 Films
That’s something Aster himself acknowledged when he told Complex that if he hadn’t previously made Midsommar and Hereditary, he wouldn’t be in a position where he’d have the ability to get someone like Phoenix for this role. “It happened the way it was supposed to,” he says. While Beau’s apprehension is palpably present—it’s right there in the title, after all—it is guilt that hangs over the film like an albatross. As in Hereditary, Beau digs deep into the idea of motherhood but filters it through Beau’s singularly fearful perspective.
In this regard, Aster posits a meaty idea about what children do or don’t owe their parents and what it costs to try and define life on their own terms. “I know that’s a preoccupation for me,” Aster says to reporters of his familial fascination. “But it feels, to me, like the obvious place to start and end.” With so much trauma lingering over Beau’s life, the question becomes more about whether or not he can succeed in carving out a life for himself. The answer, like much of the film, is a reflection of Aster’s unique perspective.
Part of what makes each of the worlds Beau encounters along the way work is the staggering production design from Fiona Crombie. Her notable work on The Favourite and Cruella made her a standout and she elevates her craft here, particularly in the theatrical segment. “We started working early on, color-coding each world and making sure there was this overarching color palette so that all the worlds were kind of cohesive with each other, but at the same time, very stark and very different, or very stark in their differences,” Aster says to Complex. “Because this was an invented world, which was basically a mirror of the world we’re in now, but just a little bit worse…everything needed to be invented along with it.”
Within this radical invention are details and considerations you might not even notice. Aster mentions the name of the bottled water Beau purchases or the graffiti on the apartment lobby ways. “These are things that you might not see but mean the world to me, and I think to all the people on the set because it makes this world very real,” he says. “It encourages a different kind of engagement for me, to search the frame and pay this thing respect because I feel respected as a viewer.”
While moviegoers may respect Aster’s craft, they may find the intricacies of Beau hard to wrap their arms around. That’s something Aster himself acknowledged to GQ in late March, saying. “I just really wanted to make something strange.” In that regard, the mission was accomplished. Beau is decidedly less clear-cut than his prior works. Some may consider the vagaries to make the film impenetrable, while others will eagerly dive into its depths to turnabout its themes and imagery repeatedly—as evidenced by the already visceral reception in its limited release.
People have gone so far as to declare Beau a “career-killing film,” a statement that’s just factually untrue; Aster confirmed to GQ he’s already hard at work on a western. Feedback of that magnitude also doesn’t support the critical and audience narratives around the movie. At the time of this writing, the film’s Rotten Tomatoes Audience Scores are at 73 percent. Should that hold, it proves that Aster’s vision, twisted as it is, is connecting—at least with the majority.
Aster’s nervousness about his big swing mirrors the anxiety hanging over his titular character. But the thing about fears is that once you face them, relief arrives alongside them. “I’ve always been excited about making this just because it always felt to me like the most liberating of the films, like the one that would allow me the most freedom to just kind of go wherever I wanted to go,” the director tells Complex. In forcing Beau to confront his fears, Aster’s freedom allows him to create his most singularly ambitious work yet.