Ari Aster Puts Himself on Trial

The Big Picture

• Beau Is Afraid is an unhinged and oddly compelling film that takes viewers on a Kafkaesque odyssey, delving into the darkest fears of its troubled protagonist.
• The film combines elements of existential horror and absurdist humor to explore the brokenness of the main character and the accumulation of failures in his life.
• The ending of the film leaves the audience pondering their own role as viewers, as they are forced to confront their judgments and the potential for the work to be forgotten and disregarded.

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Beau Is Afraid. So how about that giant patriarchal phallus? That was really something. If that opening salvo didn’t tip you off about where you’ve now found yourself, we recommend that you strap in, as this piece is going to be an analysis of the Joaquin Phoenix-led Beau Is Afraid that spoils absolutely everything in the film. This third feature from writer-director Ari Aster is, to put it lightly, an experience that is equal parts unhinged as it is oddly compelling. However, while there are plenty of jokes to be made about the way it frequently dicks around, the ending beyond all of that is worth delving into in detail, as it’s a beast all its own. Where his previous films such as Midsommar were unsettling yet relatively straightforward in how they all wrapped up, this one takes us to places that make those prior works look like a cakewalk for their characters.

What Is ‘Beau Is Afraid’ About?

Specifically, life has taken quite a turn for the troubled fellow that is Beau. The film charts his course as he braves the outside world beyond his apartment, gets seriously injured after being struck by a vehicle, wanders through the forest, and discovers that his journey to the home of his mother was all built upon a lie. Though he thought said mother, Mona (Patti LuPone), had died in an unfortunate accident involving a chandelier, she is actually very much alive.

Beau discovered this at an inopportune time when he was having sex with his childhood crush Elaine (Parker Posey) who died upon reaching her climax. This was unexpected, as he had been told as a child that if he were to reach this pinnacle of pleasure, then it would be he who would meet his end. Right as this reversal happens, Mona reveals herself to her son and informs him she has been watching him the whole time. As it turns out, the various people he met along the way were spying on him and recording his every move. To top things off, Beau learns that his past nightmares were all actually real in that his twin brother was indeed banished to the attic where he was trapped with their father, who is really a gigantic monstrosity of a penis. Still keeping up? This is all merely the appetizer for the main course, so put a pin in this for now.

‘Beau is Afraid’ Makes a Case Out of Everything

Angry that he has been lied to, Beau proceeds to strangle his mother in a fit of rage. When he snaps out of it, she continues choking and falls through a piece of furniture. Shocked at what he has done, Beau quickly flees from the house in a daze with his expression frozen in fear. He then comes upon a motorboat that he takes out on the water, through a tunnel, and finds himself in a stadium of some sort. Not only is his mother there, once again back from the dead, but an audience of people is watching him. With Beau trapped floating in the water, a trial begins. It is a spectacle that delves into all his many flaws. Prosecuting him is Dr. Cohen (Richard Kind), a family friend we’d only heard in phone calls, though now, is tearing Beau apart.

His defense attorney is minuscule by comparison, barely able to raise his voice enough to be heard before he is thrown onto the rocks and killed. It is a sham trial where Beau’s guilt is all but certain. This culminates in the boat being flipped upside down with him presumably drowning underneath it as the crowd, as if bored by the whole thing, wanders out as the credits roll. It is almost anticlimactic with little fanfare or climax other than death to indicate that this is the conclusion everything has been building to.

With all this established, it should be made clear that the film is very much a joke. From the phone call where Beau is informed of his mother’s death to the discovery made in the attic, Aster is dialing up a tone that had only been a light undercurrent in his past features though it was an integral part of his many shorts. He has created a spectacle of existential horror that becomes interwoven with absurdist humor to lay bare the brokenness of one man. In the film, this man is Beau, and he carries with him many troubles. The film is about the way life can be an accumulation of failures that prove to be too much to bear. One could read Beau as being Aster creating a character based on his own deeply held fears. This is what I’ll call the mommy issues hypothesis with all the easy riffs to be made about Freud or other broad applications of psychotherapy. The more interesting ideas come when we put this aside and view everything, even papa penis, as window dressing for what Aster is most interested in: his relationship to the audience.

Beau and Aster Are Most Afraid Of Us

When Beau reaches the end of the road, there is no salvation to be found for all his suffering. He has been on an almost classical hero’s journey, complete with the crossing of a literal threshold to exit his apartment, though nothing was accomplished. As Beau is made to look back on all that he has done up until now, he does so not by himself. Rather, there are complete strangers who all now get to dissect and pick apart every step he took to get there. Whether Beau is meant to be literally a version of Aster or not, there is something that every creator leaves of themselves when they make something. Every decision they make is then put under a microscope to be picked apart. This very piece is one version of that, as it deconstructs the literal events to get to their thematic core. As Beau is then annihilated, unable to defend himself from all that is being levied against him, Aster humbles himself before the audience. Though many have rushed to call the film pretentious, classifying it as indulgent when it is much more restrained than that, there is also something deeply unpretentious about this ending. The final shot ends up speaking volumes in this regard.

That we are left to see the seemingly ambivalent audience walking away, as if they didn’t even really care about what happened, is significant. Even after the character we have come to know is dead, the story is not over. There is a hyper-awareness of how all who took part in it, including us as the audience, will now go about their own lives. We as viewers spent three hours getting a look inside Aster’s mind just as the crowd gathered got a look inside Beau’s. The process ended with the latter’s obliteration, the aftermath of which the film lingers on. This destruction is not a fraught resurrection or rebirth as in Midsommar or Hereditary. Instead, there is a finality to it, an acknowledgment from Aster that all he puts out there can be dead and forgotten by the countless audience members who will walk out without ever thinking of it again. It serves as one final confrontation with fear. Whether it is of the judgment of one’s work, life, or a combination of both, this destruction carries with it a desolation. No matter how much one gives of themselves to tell a good story, as Beau himself imagined in vivid detail midway through, there is always the grim potential that you’ll be left to drown.

Beau Is Afraid is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video

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