![]() This is Beau’s familiar starting place - well, rewind. One local seems to spend a lot of time trying to dig people’s eyeballs out of their skulls while grinning maniacally. (It’s called Corrina, in the fictional state of Corrina, but resembles more than anything a Fox News fever dream of what a city is like.) His apartment is over a store called “Erectus Ejectus” (you get it) and the lobby is filled with obscene graffiti. Now paunchy and middle-aged, Beau is the saddest of sacks living in the worst neighborhood you could possibly imagine, even if you’ve personally lived in a very bad neighborhood indeed. She presented him with a world of dangers, in which she was his safe guide, and maybe his only safe guide. ![]() Throughout his childhood, Beau was his mother’s companion he appeared in her advertisements, absorbed all her attention, was the focus of her life. Act 1: The DepartureĪt core, Beau Is Afraid is the tale of a very lost soul named Beau Wasserman, the only son of his mother Mona Wasserman (played at different ages by Zoe Lister-Jones and Patti Lupone), a business maven who raised him on her own in their town of Wasserton. It’s funny and messed up, and that’s what makes it great. The ways it disintegrates into chaos is what makes it comitragical, or tragicomical. But you can discern the outlines of the monomyth inside Beau Is Afraid, perhaps in a hilarious reinforcement of Campbell’s sense that the hero’s journey is built into the human heart. Now, he has freedom to live.Īster, being Aster, has turned the whole thing inside out. At home, everything is familiar but changed because the hero himself is changed. Having been transformed, he must atone for himself, and then can return home with a gift. He crosses the threshold into an unknown world, where he encounters helpers and mentors, challenges and temptations that he must overcome, and ultimately a moment of revelation, where he stares into an abyss and is reborn. Think of, say, Odysseus, or Frodo in The Lord of the Rings: A hero is called out of his familiar life and armed by some supernatural power to embark on an adventure. The other is that this is a funhouse mirror version of the classic hero’s journey story, as codified by Joseph Campbell, sometimes called the “monomyth.” In its normal state, the hero’s journey is a narrative archetype for a particular kind of classic story. And not even afraid of something specific, but afraid in a chaotically multidirectional manner. ![]() One is the promise of the title: that this is a movie about a guy named Beau, and he is afraid. If you really want to wrap your head around Beau, though, there are two main things to keep in mind. Get stuck on the details and you’ll lose the plot. Sink into it and don’t try to pick it apart, and you’ll get it. Yet it’s important to remember that Beau Is Afraid, which is out now, is not a puzzle to be solved or a mystery to be unlocked. There are little rabbit trails you can trace, jokes to notice in the background (the signs scattered throughout this movie are a rich source of humor), part of why your second viewing of the movie might be more illuminating than the first. ![]() Backtracking over the plot, you can start to see the outlines emerging, some themes, some breadcrumbs scattered throughout. You know what’s happening, but you’re never totally sure why or what’s important to remember. It’s manifestly not for everyone.īeau Is Afraid is also, I think, the least scrutable of Aster’s three features. Obviously, it’s great and I love it, and a lot of people won’t. It’s what would happen if all the stuff you worry about in your therapist’s office - that everyone was mad at you, that you’re a huge disappointment to your parents, that you’ll get accused of doing something wrong and not even know what it is - was true. If it’s about anything, it’s about guilt. It’s more of a nightmare movie, in which our main character, Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), is just having a pretty bad time of it. It is not, properly, a horror movie, though there’s horrifying stuff in it. It’s also kind of the plot of Beau Is Afraid, a demented unraveling of the hero’s journey from Ari Aster, the guy who brought you Hereditary, Midsommar, some stuff you can never forget seeing. I have this recurring dream - a nightmare, really - where I’m trying to go somewhere, I must be there, I simply must, but people keep making me late, and no matter what I do, I can’t make any progress. Proceed at your own risk! Spoilers! Beware! Warning: Spoilers for Beau Is Afraid follow.
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