Review: Beau Is Afraid

Beau Is Afraid
Cert: 15 / 178 mins / Dir. Ari Aster / Trailer

Well. It's usually a sign of a good night when you get in from the cinema*¹ and your partner asks how the film was and you realise you can describe in intricate chronological detail what happened, but you have almost no idea what the film was about.

Beau is Afraid then, is production company A24 having an absolute normal one...

BEAU

Ari Aster returns to bring us Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix), a middle-aged and deeply-troubled man trying to catch a domestic flight to visit his cold yet over-protective mother on the anniversary of his father's death, when his entire life suddenly falls apart in the most extraordinary sequence of events. What unfolds is a hallucinogenic psychodrama - part therapy-session, part panic attack - filled with guilt, grief, discovery and recrimination. Like Philip Larkin, transmogrified into hard celluloid. It's always engaging and never knowingly straightforward.

Phoenix gives a masterfully emotive performance of course, although to be fair we'd expect little else at this point in his career. So much of the film is just extended reaction-shots of the lead actor that it's actually quite amazing in itself. The central storyline is a meth-enhanced cheese dream of Clockwise, a persistently dark and escalated farce which constantly blurs the lines between fantasy and tragedy. Although at a certain point you can stop trying to connect the points of symbolism and just relax into how absurd the whole thing has quickly become.

MADISON COUNTY

That said, this is being variously billed as Horror (among other genres) when it's really not. Aster's previous outings Hereditary and Midsommar had a far more linear narrative to rein in their very focused shocks, whereas this makes Darren Aronofsky's mother! look like an insurance documentary. As well as a flamboyant number of plot-feints, every scene in the movie veers between slightly-too-long and excruciating (which means the entire film is either far-too-long or perfectly elongated, depending on how you're approaching it). It's a calculated exercise in testing the commitment and patience of the viewer*², and the film snob in me respects the fuck out of that. I have to respect it because in terms of emotional storytelling it's a masterpiece; it's just a masterpiece that I did not particularly enjoy the experience of sitting through.

Full marks then for how uncompromisingly demanding this film is of its audience, yet still managing to secure a mainstream cinema release. Ari Aster glibly reaches so far that he will leave many people cold, and if anything I love it more for that.

Beau Is Afraid is 100% what it's supposed to be, and yet so much so that I cannot honestly recommend this to anybody...

*¹ It should be noted that in 2023, advance-screenings of subtitled Korean and Arabic dramas attracted very healthy audience numbers in this provincial multiplex, whereas only nine people wanted to see what lunacy Ari Aster was offering this time. One has to assume that's down to previous experience when even Russell Crowe's Italian accent can somehow get bums on seats... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Credit where it's due though, not one of the nine people walked out throughout the film's almost-three hours. And bonus marks for you if you watch right this to the very end (like six of us did). ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Midsommar

Midsommar
Cert: 18 / 147 mins / Dir. Ari Aster / Trailer



Perhaps the biggest surprise with Ari Aster's claustrophobic folk-horror Midsommar is that it's found a release window (appropriately) in the height of summer, rather than the March/October slots usually reserved for more challenging fare.

We follow four young Americans (Dani (Florence Pugh), Christian (Jack Reynor), Josh (William Jackson Harper) and Mark (Will Poulter)) as they're invited for a month-long vacation by their friend Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) to his home village in northern Sweden. Rural and more than a little isolated, it's a special time of year for the villagers as they begin a series of longstanding celebrations. But they're more than welcoming to their new guests, and before long the gang are getting involved at every level, no matter how odd it all seems...

RAGING

Nobody does raging, existential paranoia quite like Ari Aster, and his film is surreal, soporific and in places bluntly unsettling. In other words, not something to watch when suffering from a hangover. This could easily have been Hostel for hipsters, but Aster has more restraint than Eli Roth, even if Midsommar does have moments which play like a psychopath's fever dream. It's tempting to think of this as experimental, but Aster knows exactly what he's doing here, and precisely what the outcome will be.

With Pugh, Reynor and Poulter onboard, there was always going to be an expectation regarding the performances, and the cast do not disappoint. True to the longstanding tradition of teen 20-something roadtrip flicks, the group basically spend the movie off their collective box on either over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, or a range of home-formulated psychotropics. There's an interesting contrast and crossover between the two, as American and European cultures clash.

FLORENCING

Once our travellers arrive in the village and start exploring, an array of overtly placed pictograms illustrates forthcoming plot-points, underlining the sense of inevitable ritual with the heroes eventually accepting their roles in a play they know can't be re-written. Although this determinism proves to be the film's only real downside, and ends up running like it's on rails. Beautifully shot and scored, hallucinogenically bleak rails, but still. Symbolism, foreboding and fatalism are plaited together until each becomes indistinguishable from the others, and the whole thing is stronger than the sum of its parts.

There's enough here for fans of mainstream horror (providing they can sit out the steadily paced two and a half hour runtime), but there's more to Midsommar than a straight A-to-B shockfest. And while there are spikes of flat-out scare-tactics during the first two acts, these are more akin to dramatic punctuation, a release valve for the escalating unease.

DOUGALLING

Aster takes his time almost to the point of self-indulgence, but when the shit finally hits the fan it's been well earned. Much like its A24 stablemate, A Ghost Story, this feels designed to test both the patience and resolve of its audience*¹, with no promise of reward other than the first-hand experience of intricate art. It is a thing of terrible beauty.

Midsommar is great and definitely not for everyone, which only makes it greater. I can't wait to see what Aster does with his next adaptation, Bergüraac*².

The Ritual, mother!, Suspiria, The VVitch, Mandy.



It is.



It is.



It is.



That's a possibility.



There isn't.



Level 2: Well we almost had Han Solo in this, but Florence Pugh was in The Commuter alongside Liam 'Qui-Gon' Neeson.





*¹ The patron next to me had a particularly hard time with some of the more graphic scenes, especially the jump-cuts that switch to close-up gory shots. If you're squeamish, this film is not for you and carries its 18-rating for a reason. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Sorry, obvious John Nettles joke, couldn't resist, no you shut up. ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Hereditary

Hereditary
Cert: 15 / 127 mins / Dir. Ari Aster / Trailer



Y'see, this is why I don't like being late to the party. Between Hereditary's UK release and me finally catching it, I'd heard multiple - unconnected - reports of mid/late-stage walkouts, audience laughter when nothing was being presented as a joke, and a third-act which completely undermines the craft and skill of the first two.

And tonight I saw all of those in action.

Ari Aster's debut feature begins as a claustrophobic treatise on abuse, secrecy, regret, and crippling guilt, all with an ambiguous supernatural edge. We, the audience, slowly pan across the pieces of a jigsaw which have been slowly put into place for decades before we arrived, watching as more are added to reveal the horrifying emerging picture. Toni Collette is positively haunting as a mother trying to hold her family together whilst knowing that she's the very one threatening to tear it apart. Gabriel Byrne is cautious weariness personified as her husband, and Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro effortlessly wear the psychological battle scars of the pair's children.

Then at the chalkboard scene, it all goes downhill. Rapidly.

It appears that Ari called in sick, just as M. Night Shyamalan came home pissed*¹ and decided to re-write Being John Malkovich so the studio decided to use that instead. All of the existential dread (and a fair portion of the actual technique) in the film's intricately drafted setup is thrown in the bin as a cheap, batshit-crazy possession-horror hurriedly assembles its own backstory in a vain bid to be taken seriously. Even Gabriel Byrne stops trying to do his own accent when he realises the wheels have fallen off, presumably in the hopes of being mistaken for another actor.

The other thing I'd heard about Hereditary is that as silly as it becomes, the film's strengths just about make up for its weaknesses. No they don't. That's like someone pissing in your pint and telling you it's okay because you enjoyed the first half.

There's a great film in here somewhere. It's a shame Ari Aster stopped trying to make it.

I'm still trying to work that out myself.



Some of it is.



Only if there's a commentary track explaining what the fuck happened.



Credit where it's due, Toni Collette is is awards-worthy here, even when things turn silly.



That's entirely possible.



There isn't.



Level 2: Toni Collette's in this, and she was in that last xXx abomination, along with Sam 'Windu' Jackson and Donnie 'Îmwe' Yen.





*¹ As in 'drunk', for the non-UK readers among you. Steamingly, embarrasingly, 'don't-remind-me-what-I-did'-level drunk. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.