Review of Beau Is Afraid (2023) by Jluis_001 — 22 Apr 2023

As soon as it was over, a professional review I'd read popped into my head. That review said that Beau Is Afraid is the result of a director who was given too much freedom, and after weighing it for a while I admit that I fully agree with that opinion.

You can defend it in many ways, visionary is what I hear most, but on this occasion, Ari Aster went too far with the pretension.

And there will be enormous concealment to mask its issues with the excuse that there are too many elements buried in its plot. That you yourself as a viewer will need more than one viewing to examine, reflect and evaluate its content, and yet Aster, as he did with Midsommar in his two versions, in my opinion apparently believes that coherence is overrated.

I won't do an autopsy of this film, after all there will be multiple interpretations, and this is mine, and the process itself, even beyond the social critique it implies, Beau Is Afraid seems more like the demons its director couldn't get out in therapy and better decided to express them on film.

I can't deny his ambition and the scope of that ambition, but that's not enough to articulate to best effect that this film is the epic journey he undoubtedly believes he has created.

From its excessive running time - I can't fathom how he had a four-hour cut ready - to its devastating self-indulgence and exhaustive psychological onslaught, Beau Is Afraid is a tortuous, psychedelic and metaphorical journey that showcases much of its director's creative talent, and is supported by a more than solid performance by Joaquin Phoenix, but never seems to find the right route between its black humor, its surreal horror vibe and the psychoanalysis of its Oedipus complex.

It's wanting to reach for so much that its director forgot that a narrative structure is needed and not just letting the passages flow, believing that this amounts to the sum of a better argumentative experience.

Ari Aster delivered the kind of film for which the casual moviegoers hate auteur cinema and offered a perfect odyssey to those who advocate too much for such "smart" arthouse filmmaking.

I won't be the one to say that Beau Is Afraid is a bad film, because it's not, but in terms of results above expectations, the gap between the two ends of the spectrum is huge.