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With: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Kylie Rogers, Parker Posey, Patti LuPone, Richard Kind, Zoe Lister-Jones, Hayley Squires, Denis Ménochet, Armen Nahapetian, Bill Hader
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Written by: Ari Aster
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Directed by: Ari Aster
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MPAA Rating: R for strong violent content, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language
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Running Time: 179
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Date: 04/14/2023
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Panic Womb
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Nothing in director Ari Aster's previous movies Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019) can prepare viewers for what awaits them in this strange, unsettling, surreal, experimental epic with a deep-dive performance by Joaquin Phoenix.
Beau Is Afraid begins with a baby being born, from the baby's point of view. Then we meet adult Beau (Phoenix), a wreck of a man with scraggly, thinning gray hair, a perpetual victim of bad luck and bad tempers. His city is an urban hellscape filled with angry, shouting, violent citizens, his apartment building is covered in graffiti, and his elevator shoots electric sparks from below. (And there's a deadly spider loose.)
Beau sees a therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson) for his crippling anxiety. He is given a new prescription for tablets that MUST be taken with water. On the way to visit his mother, his keys and his luggage are stolen. Then, when he takes a tablet and the water isn't working, he must temporarily leave to rush across the street for a bottle of water, and his apartment is invaded by a horde of denizens. And this is the most normal part of the movie, and the funniest (although the humor is pitch dark).
He learns that his mother has died, and must get to her funeral. Unfortunately, he is hit by a truck, and winds up in the care of kindly surgeon Roger (Nathan Lane) and his wife Grace (Amy Ryan). Escaping a deranged neighbor, he embarks upon an odyssey that turns more and more surreal.
As it goes further and further, it explores the roots of Beau's fears, most or all of them stemming from his relationship with his mother. But there's no simple armchair psychology here. Aster does the work and spends the time to go to dark places. Every frame here of Beau Is Afraid is intricately designed to contribute to the whole, and it's a brilliant work.
Its major drawback is that, like its closest cousin, Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York (2008), it's not easy to actually recommend to anybody. For many it will fall somewhere between baffling and unwatchable. It's a challenge.
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