Freudian Slip

Movies: Beau is Afraid

Between Skinamarink, Infinity Pool, are Ari Aster's latest film, Beau is Afraid, we are getting some wild shit in theatres these days and I. Am. Loving. It.

After the success of Hereditary and Midsommar, horror buffs were waiting with bated breath for Ari Aster's next film. But as images and information about the film started coming out, it was hard to tell exactly what this movie was going to be about. We knew it would be a three hour long film starring Joaquin Phoenix and that was about it (or, at least, the extent to which I knew about it going in).

Beau is Afraid has been categorized as a "horror-comedy", but personally I would describe it as a surrealist comedy where horrific things happen. The film is about a man, Beau Wasserman (Phoenix being very Phoenix-y), who suffers from intense, chronic anxiety. The opening scene is Beau meeting with his therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and airing concerns that he might have stomach cancer after swallowing some mouthwash by accident.

But unlike most people who suffer from chronic anxiety, Beau actually lives in a world in which his worst fears come true all the time. Beau lives in a shady neighborhood where he has to dodge knife-wielding naked men and violent skinheads just to get to his apartment. The apartment, by the way, is home to brown recluse spiders and the water gets turned off right after Beau takes anxiety meds that his therapist warns MUST be taken with water. When Beau fearfully leaves his apartment to buy a bottle of water, he comes up ten cents short and the bodega owner screams that he will call the police on him...etc etc. Basically, the movie is like "what if all the dumb shit you worry about actually came true all at once?"

Beau ends up on a journey to visit his overbearing mother, Mona (played in flashbacks by Zoe Lister-Jones and in present day by Patti LuPone). Of course, this journey is beset with obstacles, including Beau being hit by a car and having to recuperate at a couples' home. The couple, played by Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan, serve to further confuse and frighten Beau, as does their aggressive teenage daughter. Again, nothing is easy for Beau and when tragedy that has nothing to do with him strikes, he is blamed for it and forced to run away. That's another theme of the movie: guilt. Especially too much guilt for small things or things that aren't actually your fault.

Beau is Afraid leans into being outrageous and over-the-top. It would be annoying if the film wasn't so damn funny. The first hour has the most jokes and visual gags-per-minute, but depending on how dark and weird your sense of humor is, there are laughs to be had all the way until the bitter end of this fucked up Freudian nightmare. Aster showed off his sense of humor in Midsommar, which has some pretty funny moments in between a lot of emotionally heavy shit. He goes full-on surrealist comedy with Beau is Afraid. Some of the jokes are hidden in the production design and only visible for a few seconds of the film (for example, Beau is seen warming up a Hawaiian/Irish frozen meal from a company called O'Aloha)...and some of the jokes involve enormous testicles giant penis monsters. I'm not even kidding.

Here are a few ways I described Beau is Afraid to others:

• It's like if Wes Anderson directed a horror movie while on drugs.
• It's like a Hieronymous Bosch painting.
• It reminds me a lot of the show Big Mouth (it has: anthropomorphic genitalia, Richard Kind, Jewish fretting, etc). 

If any of that sounds like your cup of tea, you'll probably enjoy it. If you are confused or turned off by the above statements, you'll probably hate it. It's a very divisive film.

I do have some criticisms of the movie. For one thing, there is zero character growth or change. Beau is Afraid is a journey movie, where a character must travel and overcome obstacles to get to where he is going. Typically, journey movies involve spiritual changes in the main character(s) as well. Beau ends exactly as he begins: a terrified, cowed man, whimpering and blubbering for help and forgiveness. And none of the other characters are in the movie long enough to experience change. 

I was left wondering what the point was. The movie is hilarious and fun to look at, but other than that, it's pretty shallow. Sure, there is "symbolism" and "a message", but unlike Midsommar, which had some interesting things to say about how cults prey on vulnerable people and how grief can lead to profound loneliness, Beau is Afraid doesn't feel like a full meal. It feels like you ate a bag of potato chips and expected to feel full. 

I feel like the plot alone earns a C, but the production design, humor, and sheer audacity of the movie raise it to a B+. It's my third favorite Ari Aster film (not including his short films), but the worst Aster film is still better than a lot of movies. Do I recommend it? Well, you probably already know if you're the kind of person who is going to enjoy, or at least appreciate, this movie. Follow your heart. Or, in this case, your enormous, distended testicles. 

Grade: B+

Stuff I watched in...March, 2023

Triangle of Sadness

Director Ruben Ostlund is the king of taking cringe comedy and turning it into art. I saw his movie Force Majeure a few years ago and loved it. That film is about the breakdown of a family after the father reveals that he would abandon his wife and kids and save himself in a disaster situation--a hilarious and excellent commentary on the absolute house of cards that is the male ego. 

Ostlund's most recent film, nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards this year, is Triangle of Sadness. This time, Ostlund turns his satirical eye towards the extremely wealthy and how useless they are when money and rank are stripped away. The film is broken into three parts. The first part focuses on the relationship between Carl and Yaya (Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean), two models who are unspeakably shallow. The second part takes place on a luxury yacht--Yaya and Carl have scored a free vacation in exchange for Yaya promoting the cruise line on her social media. This section of the movie is absolutely hilarious, with mega-wealthy people doing stupid shit like demanding that the entire crew take the day off and go for a swim, which fucks up the schedule and maintenance of the boat and even causes the food served at dinner to go bad, which leads to a long scene of everyone puking everywhere. 

Although most of the actors are unknown to American audiences, Woody Harrelson plays the ship's drunken captain who gets into a playful argument over the values of socialism vs. capitalism with one of the super-wealthy passengers. Most of this argument takes place over the ship's intercom while the majority of the passengers are barfing their guts up due to the spoiled food and intense waves.

The final part of the movie takes place on an island after the yacht is bombed by pirates and sunk. A handful of survivors--some of the them the wealthy passengers and some of them the ship's crew--must work together to stay alive until help arrives. When one of the crew--the woman who cleans toilets--reveals herself to be the only person who can catch fish for food, the power dynamics between the rich and the proletariats comes toppling down.

Triangle of Sadness is hilarious and ridiculous in the most delightful way. Fans of "eat the rich" movies/TV will love it.

Grade: A

***

The Bear

Streaming on Hulu, The Bear was the most critically acclaimed show of 2022. The very short season (8 episodes, about 30 minutes each) follows Carmine "Carmy"Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White, who starred in the show Shameless before this, but I think most people will see The Bear as his breakout role), a James Beard award-winning chef who worked in a Michelin starred restaurant in New York, but moves back to his hometown of Chicago to take over his dead brother's sandwich restaurant. 

Carmy is determined to make over the shitty, yet beloved Original Beef restaurant and turn it into something great, something better. But the crew that worked under his brother's supervision is stubborn as hell and outright hostile, especially Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), a close friend of Carmy's brother. 

On top of this, Mikey Berzatto (Jon Bernthal in flashbacks), the dead brother, was an addict and is dead by his own hand. So Carmy is deep in grief on top of all his other problems. He's so deep in grief, that he doesn't even see it, let alone allow himself to feel the fullness of it. Like a lot of shows and movies coming out these past few years, The Bear is about loss and trauma. 

The Bear is great, although I can't quite give it a straightforward "A" or A+" rating simply because I didn't connect with it as much as I suspect people who have worked in the restaurant industry would connect with it. To say the show is intense would be an understatement--it will give you anxiety. The restaurant industry is mysterious to me and, based on what I've heard, I would prefer it to remain that way because it kind of sounds like hell on earth to work in a restaurant. Instead of working in one, I'll just watch shows and movies like The Bear and The Menu and continue to tip well and be thankful I don't work in such a stressful atmosphere.

Grade: A-

***

Nocebo

I was pleasantly surprised at how good this psychological horror film was. Eva Green plays Christine, a high-powered business woman who designs expensive clothing for children. After receiving some shocking news at work one day, Christine sees a mangy dog who approaches her and shakes, causing a tick to fly off and attach itself to Christine. This seems to just be a stress-induced hallucination, but from that day forward, Christine is plagued with vague health problems that force her to stop working even though she doesn't really have a clear diagnosis. 

One day, a Filipino woman named Diana (Chai Fonacier) arrives on Christine's doorstep, claiming that Christine hired her to help out around the house. Christine has no memory of this, but since forgetfulness is one of the symptoms of her illness, she chalks it up to a faulty memory and invites Diana in. Christine's husband, Felix (Mark Strong) is highly skeptical of Diana and their daughter, Bobs, is cold to Diana at first. However, after Diana's household help and folk remedies appear to be helping Christine, the family (especially Bobs) warms up to Diana.

Ah, but this is a horror film so things are not as they appear. I won't spoil the twist, but I will say that I saw it about a mile away. It's pretty obvious from contextual clues. In fact, maybe it shouldn't even be considered a "twist" at all. In any case, Nocebo roars to an intense climax that had me on the edge of my seat. For fans of psychological thrillers/horror, check out Nocebo. It might be the "cure" to your boredom. 

Grade: B+

***

The Last of Us

I wasn't planning to watch The Last of Us because I don't play vidja games and figured I wouldn't be into it. But when I found out that the infection in the show that turns regular folks into crazed zombies was a fungus--specifically, a cordyceps--I was intrigued. And I am so glad I watched the show because hot damn it is good!

The Last of Us is less about the zombie/fungi apocalypse and more about how people relate to and love one another when the world as we know it has basically ended. If you don't live under a rock, you've probably heard about episode 3, "Long, Long Time", which follows the relationship between survivalist Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett), a man who accidentally falls into one of Bill's traps. After a lovely meal of rabbit and Chablis, followed by singing some Linda Ronstadt around a piano, Bill and Frank fall deeply in love and live together in Bill's house, which he has made into a fortress, for nearly two decades.

This episode doesn't feature any zombies, it just shows what human relationships might look like in the aftermath of a worldwide calamity that kills like 90% of people. Similarly, the main plot of the show is Pedro Pascal's Joel Miller escorting Bella Ramsey's Ellie to a facility where her seemingly magical ability to be bitten by the zombies but not become infected herself will be studied in the hopes that a cure might be developed. But the REAL story is Joel learning to open his heart to a daughter-figure again, two decades after his daughter was killed when things went to shit after the initial outbreak. 

While there is plenty of action and violence, The Last of Us places the emphasis squarely on "us"--humanity trying not just to survive, but find meaning and joy in that survival in the most dire and soul-crushing situations. 

Grade: A+

***

Boston Strangler

What if Zodiac, but with chicks? Director Matt Ruskin takes heavy inspiration from David Fincher's Zodiac (one of my all-time favorite films) for his film about the journalists who covered the story of a series of stranglings in Boston in the mid-1960s. Sadly, he comes up short. The film is well-acted and the cinematography is slick, but the movie never excites and terrifies in the way you want a true crime thriller to excite and terrify you.

Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon play Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole--journalists for the Boston-based newspaper The Record American. Despite pushback from their bosses, the two women pound the pavement to do excellent investigative journalism about a disturbing number of women in Bean Town who have been found strangled to death with their own stockings. It's a fine, but forgettable film, and I'm willing to bet that there's a book, podcast, or documentary about the Boston Strangler that goes into more depth (the murder investigation was indeed complex, and there were likely multiple killers) and is more interesting than this film. I recommend you find that piece of media and enjoy it instead.

Grade: B-

***

Aladdin (1992)

So, obviously I've seen Aladdin before, but probably not in over 20 years. I watched this at my friend's house with her two little ones and the nostalgia hit hard! The songs and animation are top-notch, which is no surprise since this is Renaissance-era Disney. Admittedly, this is not my favorite Disney movie and maybe I'm just a terrible person, but I find Robin Williams' genie a touch annoying (he's A LOT). But overall I can't deny the power of a classic Disney movie. Also, Jafar is fucking cool. All those queer-coded villains from Renaissance Disney are cool. 

Grade: A-