BEAU IS AFRAID Review

How does one pack for a yearlong trip, let alone unpack upon return?

What a picture. What a way to spend three hours at a theater. This is something built for that experience, that forced attention, because its plotting can grate an audience. An emotion easily soothed by a phone or conversation, but if one ignores that reaction and immerses in the journey, this is quite rewarding.

A mess to many in the mass audience, I'm sure, but that is also impulse. Unlike the efforts of Aster's contemporaries with a similar label/audience, this is coherent. A linear story? Well, no. But it is doubtlessly centered. Borderline hyper-focused in its pursuit to wend a path its own. Is that always an asset? Is that very nature a danger to the audience Aster has built? Surely, in both pre and post-production that had to be known. But he takes the risk anyway and, again, we are the better for it if we are game.

Aster's earned audience will need a new umbrella for Beau. This new path has less head-chopping terror (although there is a serving of that), but just as much world-building via trauma. This is life in the shoes of the smallest man alive. A baby tiger shark swimming in the abyss, searching for and fleeing both mother and the great whites. Its journey a spasmodic one, fueled by ceaseless anxiety. That feeling beginning in utero and force multiplied on a man for 40+ years. The result of which is a human so utterly controlled by words and gaslighting over time that, when asked a simple question without a concrete answer, his throat is arid. Dried to dust by decades of inexperience and constant control. The grip used like a theater spotlight: blanket-warm when on you, emotional frostbite when pulled away. By mother or by surrogate, the shadow of authority is his shadow. Even following him into the bedroom, a fear incepted into his brain when his cake still had few candles.

While the terror is on a new channel, there is also more beauty functioning as such. The theater group threadline being the exploratory standout. Aster's visuals are always something to behold, coming out of the gates here in a city pan near the beginning. It operates like the "Belle" sequence from Beauty and the Beast, if those townsfolk all had extensive criminal records and were constantly serenaded by ambulance sirens. But that sliver of fairy tale is more apparent with the theater group. The forest, stage, and Beau's journey within all lead to something whimsical. A word you wouldn't typically associate with this film or his output before. Aster has certainly dealt in dreams, but this is no nightmare. It's gorgeous. It's a life raft of fantasy to a man drowning in disquiet, fearing that tiger shark's (improbable) return.

While there are still the patented anvil-drops of horror, and the mother v. son/gaslighting terrorizations aren't new, this is absolutely more adventurous in regards to genre. Still much to be afraid of no doubt, and one could say this is overstuffed, but from different angles and avenues of fright. One of those angles being comedy, and you can feel this is meant to be more — dare I say — fun.

Aster ultimately crafts an adventure film for neurotics. A hero's journey, but he's a loser. An exploration of beauty in finding one's voice, but without shyness towards the grim outcome if unfound. A grandiose tale, but with childhood trauma and a personified penis monster. The result isn't singular, but anachronistic in relation to its big release peers. It's fresh. It's different. And, despite the danger in that, it's undoubtedly Aster's vision. Which (I hope) is one of the biggest points of this entire industry.

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The above was taken from my Letterboxd review.