WARNING! This article contains SPOILERS for Beau Is Afraid.Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid repeats the same weird qualities found in Everything Everywhere All At Once but goes even beyond the eccentricities of the Best Picture winner. It stars Joaquin Phoenix as Beau, a middle-aged man whose anxieties are hypertrophied to such an extent that the world outside the safety of his apartment is represented as a ghoulish, violent hellscape filled with serial killers, criminals, and the mentally unstable. After he learns that his disapproving mother, a titanic figure in his life, has died under mysterious circumstances he sets off to attend her funeral, thus beginning a surreal and chaotic journey of self-discovery.
With a three-hour run time, Beau is Afraid is an ambitious film that covers a lot of ground, blending genres and styles, just like Everything Everywhere All At Once, as Beau navigates his changing environments. Beau is poised as both a sympathetic figure on a hero’s journey and a hapless victim of circumstance, and as he gets closer to his mother’s final resting place, it becomes clear that she had a large part in shaping the befuddled person he’s become. Beau is Afraid’s characters and their colorful environments all coalesce into an absurd odyssey, challenging perceptions of identity and human nature, both for Beau and for the audience.
Beau Is Afraid Repeats Everything Everywhere’s Trippy Genre Mashup (But Is Way More Confusing)
Just like Everything Everywhere All At Once, Beau Is Afraid begins in a mild-mannered, almost mundane way, before quickly revealing itself to be a wild genre-blending rollercoaster. Beau visits his therapist, starts a new medication, and prepares for a visit to his mother, a visit which drastically changes shape when he finds out a chandelier fell on her head. When Beau tries to leave the city, he’s accidentally struck by a car and taken in to recover by the couple responsible, experiencing their homicidal neighbor, and their paint-guzzling teenage daughter, among other bizarre things.
Everything Everywhere All At Once had logic grounded in the fact that its central character, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) had extraordinary powers that allowed her to transcend her banal life as a laundromat owner to travel through space and time. Beau’s odyssey isn’t through a multiverse that he begins to understand; he moves from the couple’s house to a traveling theater troupe in the woods, and forward and backward in childhood memories without any rhyme or reason. At one point, he’s even part of an animated sequence that, while one of the more beautiful aspects of the film, feels random rather than intentional.
Why Everything Everywhere’s Weirdness Worked So Much Better Than Beau Is Afraid
Both Everything Everywhere All At Once and Beau is Afraid are about the main character’s relationship with their own existence and their family members, but whereas the former is a surreal adventure with clear parameters, the latter is jumbled. It helps that Everything Where has a supporting cast of characters who have specific meanings for Evelyn, whereas every character Beau meets terrifies or startles him, but without leaving a lasting impression on him as a person. Beau is Afraid relies on unexpected twists to remain engaging, but they don’t really add to the overall narrative concerning Beau’s deeply rooted sexual dysfunction and mommy issues.
The biggest fundamental difference between the two films is that by the end of Everything Everywhere, Evelyn has changed – she’s heeded the lessons of her bizarre journey, and she’s found contentment with her husband and daughter. By the end of Beau is Afraid, Beau is still trying to make excuses for himself and faces a grim reality from his lack of acceptance. There are definitely truths to be found in both films, but whereas the quirks of Everything Everywhere All At Once only add to its appeal, the ones found in Beau is Afraid detract from it, proving that the success of a surreal adventure is in how it’s told.
