Ari Aster, the American writer-director of Hereditary and Midsommar, describes his sprawlingly picaresque third feature as a three-hour “anxiety comedy” – an archly surreal “odyssey of sorts” that is also an “elaborate Jewish joke” inspired by Greek plays and Kafka-esque paranoia. A rambling, labyrinthine, navel-gazing romp, it has narrative echoes of Tristram Shandy (both Sterne’s novel and Michael Winterbottom’s film) and an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink aesthetic reminiscent of the chaotic Cinerama comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Personally, I think Beau Is Afraid is best described as an amusingly patience-testing shaggy dog story that asks: “What if your mother could hear all those unspeakable things you tell your therapist?” Parts of it are hilarious. Other sections sag. Some will find it insufferable.
Joaquin Phoenix, to whom Aster was significantly drawn following his career-torching identity-crisis mockumentary I’m Still Here, is middle-aged bundle of nerves Beau. Propped up by counselling and meds, Beau lives in a grim apartment amid a hellishly dystopian cityscape beset by bad plumbing, grubby crime and violent public nudity. He has an air ticket to visit his mother on the anniversary of his father’s death – a prospect that cranks his anxiety levels up to 11. But when car-crash circumstance conspires to make Beau miss his plane, he embarks on a long day’s journey into fright, encountering absurd metaphorical manifestations of his miserable life.
