Beau Is Afraid; I Am Afraid

Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid (2023) is a sickness unto death. Or, to roll with another Kierkegaard book, it shoves your face into the concept of anxiety. Or, to catch the end of that text’s subtitle, it’s a deliberation on the hereditary problem of original sin. Take your pick. In any case, it’s a film for those who stay awake at night watching an endless algorithm of past blunders made more decreating by time. I saw a tweet recently (an original thing to say, yes): anxiety is your mind telling you you’ve done something terribly, terribly wrong. That is Beau Is Afraid.

This is Aster, and so the film is a comedy. There’s no other way to express the unyielding absurdity of all your worst fears coming true. A dramatic version, when a director has pulled it off, as with Todd Haynes’ Safe (1995), requires a particular referent, even if it’s “the world.” But Aster’s ambitions are too grand for “the world” or “everything.” The referent must be all-encompassing, pulling back and pushing in, inside and out. Only the absurd will do.

Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) has a therapist because he is not well. Something about his mother, we learn early on, bugs him, even if he won’t admit it. The streets around his apartment are filled with vagrants, naked knife-wielding criminals, and men on fire. His bare apartment abuts those of neighbors who accuse him of blasting loud music late into the night, even when he is not. In response, they retaliate with deep bass of their own. Most of all, he is afraid when, his back turned for mere second, someone steals his house key. Now, he can’t possibly visit that mother of whom he is so fond and afraid. He calls to let her know. “Mom, what should I do?” Her pitch-perfect response: “I’m sure you’ll do the right thing.”

After the vagrants break in and party in his apartment while he sulks on the fire escape, he learns that she has died. But Jewish tradition dictates—per a lawyer—that he returns immediately. His mother’s own request requires no funeral until he shows up. So begins his odyssey (that’s really the only word for it). I can’t reveal anymore (okay, just a bit—a teen girl torments him into smoking weed and watching her drink paint and his childhood crush shows up just in time to take his virginity—he’s been waiting decades for her, you see).

From there, it’s a wild ride, one with its own internal logic, only the barest of plots, and the fulfilment of every deep-seated fear you spend your days repressing.

Which brings me to the only “point” I’d like to make about Beau. Over and over, I’ve read reviews in which the first forty-five minutes or so come in for celebration while the rest gets mild praise or utter condemnation. It’s “messy,” “too long,” and “loses steam.” Not for me, but then again the movie’s dream logic made total sense for my part. The worst, most perverse version of your fears will come to pass. Nothing will go your way. The only solace you can expect as the viewer is an opportunity to laugh at it, to recognize the intractability and ultimate smallness of the little gremlins in your head. A bit like life really.

I fear, then, that this one is for the sickos. I don’t mean to say something about intelligence or emotional acuteness. Some of us are more prone to anxiety—and more universal anxiety—than others. Some of us hold to psychoanalysis because we are the sorts of people prone to anxiety—and more universal anxiety—than others. For us, there’s not much to do but laugh and pray, that is, at the concept of anxiety, or, if you like, the hereditary problem of original sin.