'Beau Is Afraid' Might Be The Most Ambitious Movie Ever
#222: "Beau Is Afraid," "How To Blow Up A Pipeline," "Phantom Of The Opera," "The Soloist"
Edition 222:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: An overwhelming epic from the former horror king Ari Aster. Is it brilliant or psychotic? Plus, an unambiguously awesome new indie movie with a provocative title. We get an update from Broadway and pay tribute to Jamie Foxx. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Fast X has like 25 different characters and I can’t keep them straight.
Beau Is Afraid
Ari Aster was the horror prince who was promised, creating in Hereditary and Midsommar movies that scared the crap out of everyone and still remain iconic in the cultural consciousness years later. Now only in his mid-30s, he’s a ‘name brand’ director and one of the faces of the A24 Movement. People whisper and wait for “the next Ari Aster movie.”
He’s used that leverage to make what I can only describe as one of the most ambitious movies of all time. Beau Is Afraid is the kind of movie that wants to explain everything about everything, comparable only to something like Terrence Malick’s Tree Of Life or Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. As anyone who has seen either of those movies will tell you, this is definitely not going to be everyone’s cup of tea.
At the center of every frame is Beau, played by the equally talented and idiosyncratic Joaquin Phoenix. The story centers around Beau’s anxieties, for which he is in therapy and on medication, though both seem woefully insufficient. It’s unclear exactly how much of what we’re seeing is taking place in Beau’s head, because the setting of the movie is a mix of hallucination and some kind of hellish near-future in which lawlessness has entirely overtaken an unnamed New York-ish city.
Watching it for the first time is either going to be a mind-expanding or mind-numbing experience for a viewer. I can’t entirely account for how much of the three-hour runtime I spent with my mouth entirely agape, jaw on the floor, but no five minute stretch passes without some shocking assault on the senses. A mix of surreality and absurdism mean that at any given moment, literally anything could happen. The list of possibilities isn’t constrained by the rules of logic.
The effect of this is like a fever dream in which Beau searches simply for any sort of equilibrium, proven impossible by obstacles both internal and external. Given Aster’s background, you can be assured that he expresses himself in the language of horror, trauma and tragedy. While Beau Is Afraid is certainly not a horror movie, nobody would confuse it for a heart-warmer (that said, it’s surprisingly very funny, as long as you’re willing to laugh at the absurdity of some truly awful things happening).
You might think based on everything I’ve just told you that this is a movie solely about mental health. It’s not. By my interpretation — and let me be clear, this is a movie that could have a million different interpretations — themes include everything from motherhood to urban decay, the pandemic, public misbehavior, therapy, cancel culture, the death of innocence, and go all the way to exploring the very meaning of life.
Regardless what your personal tolerance is for narrative incongruity or artistic ambiguousness, one cannot walk away from this movie anything but overwhelmed by Aster’s creativity and filmmaking prowess. The imagery is powerful and some shots could become as iconic as the most enduring scenes from his previous two films, giving a viewer the confidence to buy into whatever bizarre journey he is putting them on.
For me, you all know I’m normally someone who values telling a good and coherent story above all. Yet my skepticism was more or less beaten into submission throughout the course of this movie, and I and the other people in my theater sat transfixed in something of a daze for several moments after the credits began to roll. We simply didn’t know what to do.
In a movie landscape of reboots, sequels and a mountain of boring and predictable, it’s impossible not to give Beau Is Afraid major points for being so consistently surprising, and conjuring up actual emotions within me. One of those emotions is confusion, admittedly, and I know that alone will cause many people who see this movie to hate it. But I can only call them like I see them:
This is my new No. 1 movie of the year.
Something New
How To Blow Up A Pipeline (Theaters): It’s still very early in the movie calendar, but looking forward I’m not seeing anything on the immediate horizon that will threaten what I see as clearly the three best movies of 2023 so far: Beau Is Afraid, A Thousand And One, and How To Blow Up A Pipeline.
Usually when I talk about a movie feeling “of the moment,” I’m talking about the dead-eyed gallows humor of Gen Z (Bodies Bodies Bodies being the best example), but this might be the first movie to capture the brand of extremist activism that has come to define our recent past. The protagonists of this movie are quite literally domestic terrorists attempting to blow up an oil pipeline in Texas, in the name of climate change. An extremely ungenerous reading of this movie would be to say that the only difference between this group of young people and the Jan. 6 insurrectionists is their belief in what future each is trying to “save” the country from.
A title as provocative as this one begs such questions, but the movie itself is far more of a heist thriller than a political statement. The story is powered by an incredible amount of nervous energy as our first-time criminals carry out various stages of their plan, which at all times is made to feel as dangerous and illicit as it is. The shoestring budget nature of the indie production, including unknown actors and bargain bin sets, actually bolster a DIY feeling that serves the story. And the intermittent flashbacks to each of the group member’s backstories, while not my favorite narrative device, do well to ratchet up the emotional stakes at strategic moments.
At 1hr45min (the type of thing you appreciate after Beau Is Afraid), this is the type of fast-paced, gripping-your-seat thriller that I think could appeal to viewers on any side of the political spectrum. Either way, I’ll be keeping an eye on filmmaker Daniel Goldhaber going forward.
Something Old
Phantom Of The Opera (1988, 2011 on Amazon Prime): Broadway’s longest-running show is finally closing after 35 years, $1.3 billion grossed and some 20 million viewers. People who know me know I’m a musical theater guy, but I’ve never been a big fan of Andrew Lloyd Weber. So I’ve called upon this newsletter’s Official Broadway Correspondent, Will Kennedy, to recommend both the stage show and the 25th anniversary filmed performance:
“It’s one of the more complex love stories in the musical theater cannon, but more so than that it just has some of the most objectively beautiful music. It’s wide-ranging and can make you feel joy, sadness, excitement and nervous all within a few moments of each other.
The 25th anniversary the best possible version you can ever watch of Phantom, outside of seeing it in real life. The cast, primarily the Phantom (Ramin Karimloo) and Christine (the love interest) {Sierra Boggess} are wildly regarded as the best to play the roles in the last 20+ years and arguably of all time.”
Something to Stream
The Soloist (“Max”): No one really knows exactly what the “medical complication” was that has left Jamie Foxx in the hospital for the past week, but some celebrity tributes were so effusive it made me think his condition might be life-threatening. That would’ve been a real tragedy, because I’ve always said Jamie Foxx might be the most naturally multi-talented guy on the entire planet.
His movie catalogue is long and rocky in parts, but in there you’ll find plenty of gems like Any Given Sunday, Collateral, Due Date, Django Unchained, Baby Driver and more. Still, my favorite Foxx performance continues to be as a real-life homeless music prodigy in The Soloist. In the capable hands of director Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, Darkest Hour), Foxx’s street musician is discovered by a famous L.A. Times columnist played by Robert Downey Jr. (this is your periodic reminder that RDJ is one of the best actors on the planet when he steps out of the super suit). Their relationship is messy and complicated but also beautiful, touching on issues like mental health, homelessness and — as cheesy as this sounds — the power of music. It’s a really moving true story.
Trailer Watch: Fast X
The Fast series gave up on things like coherent plot and character motivations literally five movies ago, and now its cast has gotten that even knowing everyone’s name is too much to ask. As a collection of ridiculous stunts and CGI whack-a-mole, I’m sure it’ll be pretty impressive. But I’m making a promise to you right now, and I want you to hold me to this: I’m not going to watch this movie.