Ari Aster’s latest film is a weird, surreal, disturbing three-hour long journey that leaves the viewer wondering there was something more to the story than obvious one-note premise. Beau is Afraid tells the story of the Beau Wasserman, a nervous and indecisive man, as he travels through a wacky and oftentimes frightening world to visit his mother. The film is almost episodic in nature, however, to its detriment, the many parts fail to develop or build off of one another. Because of this, the main theme of the film, namely trauma and the effect of child abuse, feels extremely underdeveloped given the films long runtime.
To begin with, the good. One can critique many things about Ari Aster’s films but his skill with camera placement is undeniable. The cinematography of the film is excellent throughout. In particular, the use of the language of film to make Beau’s feel surreal and out of the ordinary. The cinematography works hand in glove with the set design and colors to create visually memorable and interesting shots. A standout was Beau’s apartment building which has a bizarre grimy quality and is equally terrifying given the vast array of wild characters that inhabit the place. The film also has a unique animated section in the middle, which will probably be what a lot of people remember from the movie and felt almost like a standalone short film on its own. While Beau is Afraid is technically sound, the plot and characters are not interesting enough to come close to justifying the insane three-hour runtime.
Most of the problems with Beau is Afraid come from the fact that it is probably double the length that it should be. The main idea of the film could easily be conveyed in under an hour and so the three hours of film end up just saying the same thing over and over again. Additionally, what little mystery and intrigue the film has, it does not value. There is not really a big reveal which shifts our perspective but rather, the finale only reinforces what we kind of already knew. It seems Aster does not know the limitations of surrealism in a film. The surrealist elements must be continually dynamic in order to keep the viewers attention, and even then, its value lies in its irregularity. When the viewer is steadfastly fed bizarre scenarios and images with no rhyme or reason, it becomes the new normal and any sense of weirdness is lost. In other words, we are drawn towards the surreal because of its contrast to what is normal. In Beau is Afraid the entire film makes no realistic sense which means that outside of its relatively basic theme, there is nothing to the plot. I was curious of when Aster would tie Beau’s extraordinary adventures to the real world but this never occurs and Beau (and the viewer) are merely left accepting that all the crazy and insane stuff that happened as the film’s reality. Aster essentially took three hours to say a message which could have been conveyed in a much, much shorter length of time. The lack of strong characters also makes this a problem because Beau is entirely uninteresting. He lacks initiative and all the events of the story basically happen to him as an unwilling participant.
Interestingly, Beau is Afraid might function better as a tv series with each part of the movie being a different episode. This would give the viewer a bit of a break from all the craziness between episodes. Another way to improve the film would be to expand on the themes in a deeper level or tie them back to reality so the viewer can have something more to take away. All in all, Beau is Afraid is not a film I would recommend anyone watch unless they absolutely adore weird surreal imagery with little concern for characters, plot, or any semblance of reality.