A Life Less Ordinary

It’s the end of the world and, quite rightly, Beau Is Afraid

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IF YOU READ ANY OF the reviews of Ari Aster’s third feature Beau Is  Afraid, you’ll likely encounter the word “departure”. In Hereditary and Midsommar, Aster gave us a pair of instant-classic horror movies; Beau is a three-hour comedy (of sorts) which its writer/director has flippantly referred to as “a Jewish Lord Of The Rings”.

But is it really such a hairpin turn? Like his first two films, Beau is obsessed with the themes of guilt and family, as Joaquin Phoenix’s eponymous “hero” –a man so crippled by anxiety, he struggles to leave the house – must travel cross-country to the funeral of his mum (Patti LuPone), the woman largely responsible for his splintered psyche. And while it’s certainly Aster’s funniest film, it’s also, arguably, his most discomfiting.

Aster can see the throughlines. “Yeah, certainly,” he says, his words faltering, for Beau’s anxiety and awkwardness were born of his own. “In some ways I saw this as… I mean, it’s too reductive, but this functions almost as a parody of the last two, while also, I think, going deeper, in a way. If anything, I’ve always seen these as an unofficial trilogy, and the things I’m planning to do next are much more divorced from those three, which are obsessed with the question of family and the burden of being a parent, or an offspring. Really just the burden of being in relationships with anybody else!”