![]() ![]() ![]() It’s not just that Beau isn’t safe he’s in active danger at nearly all times, as people around him behave in unpredictable ways - like the nervous cop who mistakes him for a serial killer or the PTSD-addled ex-soldier (Denis Ménochet) who eyes Beau as if he’d like to rip him limb from limb. Still, while Beau is easily lulled into a false sense of comfort, the audience can’t ignore the pervasive undercurrent of menace. From Grace and Roger (Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane), the disconcertingly cheery couple who “adopt” Beau after hitting him with their truck, to the motley commune of so-called Orphans of the Forest who rescue him on the run, Aster’s ideas can be quite funny, as he tiptoes the line between relatable and random. Horror and comedy are flip sides of the same coin, confronting taboos en route to catharsis, and detail-oriented Aster seems uniquely wired to meld the two disciplines. But longtime fans will recognize the same long-standing obsessions that Aster’s been picking at since his AFI thesis film, “The Strange Thing About the Johnsons,” a transgressive, incestuous quasi-“Cosby” sitcom sendup. There’s no denying Charlie Kaufman’s influence on Aster’s worldview, crossed with the navel-spelunking cynicism of underground comic artists. ![]() Beau has no children or fortune, so the setbacks don’t resemble a test of faith so much as the whims of some cruel god - in this case, the director - punishing his creation for our amusement. (That’s Broadway legend Patti LuPone’s voice we hear on the other end of the phone.) But Beau has a way of self-sabotaging, which becomes a running joke in a movie that inflicts the trials of Job upon a character who starts out from a far less stable place. Had the day gone as planned, Beau would be on a plane to Florida to see his mother. The simple act of crossing the street becomes an almost superhuman challenge, and in the time it takes to do so, all the freaks Beau tried to avoid outside march zombielike up to his apartment, where they proceed to tear the place apart. Instead, after showing Beau’s delivery, Aster skips forward four dozen years to find the mama’s boy in psychoanalysis, where character actor Stephen McKinley Henderson makes as convivial a therapist as one could hope to confide in.īeau has enormous trouble managing his anxiety, which is understandable, since Aster depicts his terrifying inner-city neighborhood as a Hieronymus Bosch-like hellscape, the way Swedish director Roy Andersson might have filmed it: Everyone looks threatening, from the kids with firearms to the face-tattooed creep who chases Beau to his front door. That sight gag would’ve suited Beau better. Watching the movie’s transparently Freudian opening scene, it’s kind of a shame that Iñárritu beat the director to it, since “Bardo” began with a newborn so repelled by the world that the obstetricians actually forced him back in the womb. He’s persecuted by agoraphobia and fear of spiders, for starters, plus there’s that genetic condition (swollen testicles, nearly subliminal here, but soon to flood the internet in animated GIF form) that’s kept him a virgin all these years. The Hitchcock comparison could be misleading, since Aster (who helmed indie studio A24’s two most successful horror movies, “Hereditary” and “Midsommar”) makes a surprising tonal shift away from traditional nightmare material for this deranged road trip, which follows Beau cross-country - and through several substitute families - to face his intimidating Jewish mom.Īster’s signature slow-building sense of dread pervades a film that can be outrageously violent, although the fear advertised by its title is more satirical than scary, as the cult-fave filmmaker pokes fun at a hapless man-child crippled by guilt, shame and countless other neuroses. Not since “Psycho” has an off-screen mother loomed so large over a film’s protagonist, played here by Joaquin Phoenix, cowering from the world. Sure, he was born - that much director Ari Aster depicts from Beau’s point of view at the outset of his wildly self-indulgent and frequently surreal third feature, “ Beau Is Afraid,” lingering long enough to witness the infant’s umbilical cord being snipped - but what has Beau done with his life since then? Can it be said that he ever really developed an identity apart from his successful single mom, Mona Wasserman, who haunts the film for the better part of three hours before finally revealing herself? Nearly half a century on Earth, and he’s never really lived. ![]()
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