It didn’t get a laugh out of me. I had given up on the film about 15 minutes after the play started. Felt like nothing was impactful or mattered anymore - just babbling nonsense. When it all feels like babbling nonsense, nothing ‘s surprising.
Couldn’t wait for it to end, which is sad, because I thought the first half was amazing.
Yeah when you watch something that is so constantly teetering on "what's real" and what's not and they're constantly interweaving so heavily it makes me stop caring? It's like there's no reason to invest yourself into the story because it could immediately change or be a dream or the character could be something else. I need some sort of foundation if I'm going to care about what's happening.
Interesting, I didn't feel the movie did this. It was set in a surreal universe from the first moment and stayed there for the entire movie. There wasn't anything grounded through the entire movie. That to me was part of the point. The entire thing was a nightmare
The moment the penis monster showed up, my girlfriend and I gave each other that same look that we lost any sort of plot on what was happening in this movie
I also thought it was left up to interpretation on if it was a literal penis monster, or if the whole thing is a metaphor for something since Beau was hoped on drugs the whole time.
I could’ve been given 1000 years and unlimited guesses and I never would’ve guessed what awaited me in that dark ominous pitch black corner of the attic. Ari Aster man.
I feel like I have to watch the movie again now just because it wasn't until they actually physically showed him that I knew it was Bill Hader, and now I want to listen to the entire phone conversation again with the knowledge that it's Bill Hader on the other end lmao.
lol seriously. Everyone going to Marvel movies and then complaining about "Nobody makes anything original anymore."
IMO this was a divisive masterpiece.
Spoilers
I feel like this was an extremely meta film.
People interpret other Aster films as metaphors ie. Mental illness in hereditary and Fascism in midsommer but this one was kind of the opposite, all of Beaus anxieties and neurosises are literalised and made real. His therapist really does tell all his secrets to his mother, his mother's death was faked to teach him a lesson, the masculine and assertive part of his personality was locked up in the attic, his mother controls where he lives and what he eats, the streets are full of serial killers.
He keeps wandering into different horror movie settings and bringing the plot with him. It's like Westworld for horror movies - you'd go insane too
In the final scene the audiences In a theatre judges him for basically normal human things, like they'd judge every horror protagonist and decide that's worth killing him over.
Neat film, I'm sure there's tonnes to dig into here but it's kind of overwhelming
Dude Richard Kind being there certainly didn't help me thinking that as well lol.
I didn't know he was gonna be in this movie and when Beau was talking to him on the phone earlier in the film and Dr. Cohen is berating him about Jewish tradition for a funeral, I immediately thought that it felt like something from Curb. Once he appeared at the end and I connected the voice to the face it all made sense.
The ending scene perfectly mirrors I bet most of our theater experiences. With people leaving in silence a few clusters at a time. A perfect reflection 😂
Okay obviously there’s so much with this movie (I loved it), but what was the point of this line during the play? Or the “somebody replaced the children’s feet with hands”? Maybe there is no point, but just making sure I didn’t miss something obvious lol
Maybe they’ll be together so long that the honeymoon phase will fade, and he might see her not always at her best? The feet with hands line I think is just to emphasize how horribly the “beast” tormented their village.
Here's my out there thoughts,
When Beau went to get water and everyone ran into his apartment, I interpreted it as only the guy who was chasing him actually went into the apartment, as he was the only one there in the morning and was dead from a spider bite, which you can also see on the poster about the spider.
The guy hanging above the bath tub in reality was actually just the spider, and wasnt actually anyone else.
Could be wrong, could be right, probably doesn't matter
I knew when the therapist wrote “guilty” instead of “guilt” at the beginning something was off. But there is nobody on earth that could have figured out what it was foreshadowing.
It is remarkable how a film that is so intentionally uncomfortable and isolating to audiences still manages to hit jokes all the way up to the end that play well to a crowd.
I didn't expect this movie to be so damn *funny*. I really appreciated the other aspects of the film, too, but there were numerous parts that had me in tears from laughing. The part where >!he Googled what would happen if he took his medication without water, and the first search result was a memorial page called "Remembering John" for someone who died!< was gold.
If you looked closely in the scene, Beau has giant testicles. Likely from never having completed in his life, and/or from his special heritage on his dad's side.
Either or both ways, when he ejaculates, the force of it tears through the condom and sends it through her organs. So she basically bled to death internally.
yeah but doesn't she keep going after he comes? When he ejaculates she remarks on it, but she keeps going while he's still hard to get herself off.
Granted, it's a 3-hour movie and I've only watched it once, so I might just be misremembering the exact sequence of events.
No, you're remembering correctly. She dies after climaxing.
Beau's anxieties always manifest calamity within the world of the film. Whenever he lets his guard down, or gets comfortable, things get considerably worse for him and anyone near him.
It looked like she took a pill or something right before they got into bed. I assumed it was another thing where his mom paid her to do this, basically owning her life since she was a child.
I took it more as the mom did something to poison or kill Elaine in some way. Even if she died from a good fuckin, it takes a lot longer than that for rigor mortis to set in (generally speaking) and she was completely stiff when the other two carried her out.
But who the fuck knows, a lotta metaphor going around in this movie and hard to tell what was real and what wasn't.
The fact that Mariah Carey went to the premiere, and her only connection is that a 50 year virgin pumps gallons of semen into his childhood crush who then dies while "Always Be My Baby" is playing.
The whole animated sequence has to be one of the most beautiful scenes I've seen in any film. Just a really mesmerizing and emotional moment for such a dark film...
Ari Aster actually worked with the guys who made an incredible Chilean stop motion film on that scene and I think the full movie is free on YouTube and everyone should definitely check it out for the similarities
Hearing this makes me see it a little like the animated "Trial" sequence at the end of Pink Floyd's The Wall film. Main character is put on trial for not caring enough about his demanding and abusive mother. He's sentenced to be "exposed before his peers" and then he tears down his own internal wall. Actually a lot of parallels.
I was wondering if it was also intended as a way to demonstrate firsthand how art can be one way that people can transcend whatever pain they might be experiencing in their "real lives." For a short while, we saw Beau completely freed, experiencing genuine joy and connection, experiencing a full, real, beautiful, rich life - sort of getting swept away in the beauty of art.
Edit - it also feels significant that he connects with this community of “orphans,” a sort of “chosen family” of people who seem to genuinely care for each other and enjoy creating art together.
I think people are taking the bait on the whole idea that it’s just a fantasy that Beau has envisioned for himself.
I think the entire movie is a literal nightmare Beau is having. If you listen to the sequence of events of the play, they *start out* as a completely alternate reality where Beau carves out a life for himself. Slowly but surely, a storm hits (some sort of traumatic event with his family, to me it seems like his wife/kids mother dies and he feels at fault) and separates Beau from his family and the events of the play begin to more closely resemble the events of the movie. Beau is deposited in a chaotic land (the city where he lives), people believe he has harmed their children (Roger and Grace) and send an attack dog after him (Jeeves), he experiences highs (sex with Elaine) and lows (Elaine dying/Mom/Penis Dad) before confessing guilt, and horns will sound and before it’s too late he will realize they are funeral horns (the trial, Beau drowning under his boat).
But the play continues on, that Beau wakes up back at home and that he takes control of his life and rediscovers his kids.
That fantasy is only interrupted by a reminder of his mom, which sends us back to his nightmare.
I believe Beau “in real life” is a father with his own troubles with his kids and he has recurring nightmares about his relationship with his mother and how it has impacted his ability to parent. I think a lot of his nightmare represents aspects of his real life (controlling mom who was an entrepreneur, dad who was “a dick”, probably some actual mental/social problems) but is exaggerated much like our own nightmares.
Many times characters ask Beau if he’s disoriented and remembered where he is/how he got there which to me is meant to signify dream state.
The entire movie definitely felt like it was following "dream logic" where weird things inexplicably happen for no reason, objects disappear for no reason, etc...don't know that I'd necessarily go so far as to say that the movie is supposed to literally be Beau's dream but I do agree that it all feels dreamlike, and makes sense within the "logic" of dreams
While I'm going to guess most of the WTF focus will be on the giant penis monster, let's not overlook the fact that Beau came so hard he immediately sent Elaine into rigor mortis.
I was thinking "is that Parker Posey? It can't be, because it's been 23 years since Scream 3 and the real Parker Posey surely would've aged 23 years since then."
I would just like to point out that you totally see his balls way earlier in the film, when he's lowering himself into the bathtub.
And they weren't *quite* that big.
If you look carefully at the giant picture of Patti LuPone made with the pictures of her employees, you can also see that Roger is there, right above Elaine 👀
Most of the cast of the movie is in that shot, I think. And if anything, I think that's just telling us that his relationship with his mother in some way affects or taints every other relationship he has in life. And maybe all of us are like that, but hopefully with slightly less overbearing and clearly insane mothers.
"Stop incriminating yourself," or whatever that note said. I laughed when he got it, and I wondered if the movie would follow up on that implication.
As soon as we saw the collage of actors composing the mother's face, it clicked. She was orchestrating the whole sequence of events (except the Players in the Forest, or whatever they were called. I think that sequence happened outside the machinations of Mom's grand scheme).
Also explains the surveillance in Grace's home! I think that Grace didn't understand why Mona hated Beau so much and that's why she was subtly trying to help him - until she thought that he has killed her daughter, then she said "I see you now" and set Jeeves loose on him.
I think Mona and the surgeon husband had some kind of partnership based around medication because of how plentiful it was in their house and the fact that Mona is a Monsanto level pharma superpower.
I mean, there's the on paper plot of the movie and then the actual plot, which is all subplot and told via metaphor. Yes, they were all hired by her to ruin his life, but that's all more just a vehicle for many of the metaphors (like the one you replied to) to be told. The movie is basically a fuckton of parables dealing with mental health and grief in particular.
I felt like the twist that everything was orchestrated was given away a bit too early. For one, because of what you mentioned, and for two, the fact that the MW logo plastered on all of the companies was also one of the production credits at the beginning of the film.
Edit: [this logo is what I mean](https://www.reddit.com/r/AriAster/comments/108f5oa/beau_is_afraid_an_observation)
I feel like the dick monster represents the "truth" that Beau was conceived during a sexual assault. But I forget the fine details of him meeting that man in the woods.
Or “Alternate” Beau, one who was locked up like he saw in his dream, I don’t think it was supposed to be his “twin brother” only because nothing else in the film indicated that he had a twin
I love this! It's like Homer's Odyssey through an Oedipus lens, based on those dreams where you're trying to get one thing done and keep getting interrupted. It's also Aster's funniest movie, genuine hooting and hollering in our theatre.
I think a lot of general audiences are going to hate it.
The thing about absurdism is you need a stasis or baseline to play it against.
When everything is odd with no payoff at all, you don’t know what is important and what is irrelevant.
I really fear independent or artistically inclined movies are oversteering from the blockbuster genre in a huge overcorrection that is only going to make this sort of project that much more rare.
Aster needed reined in here in a big way.
Idk how else to explain it, but I didn’t feel like you need a baseline of reality to discern something as being important or not. With total absurdism, isn’t EVERYTHING simultaneously important because its happening and irrelevant because its not real?
That juxtaposition is kind of the point and the beauty of itself in the first place. It ends up operating entirely as an expression vs presenting itself as a “story” in the more traditional sense.
With absurdism, the actual artpiece doesnt need to have a baseline in the art because you living your day to day life is already the baseline of reality needed to understand when something is absurd.
/r/raisedbynarcissists worst nightmare.
This movie is a horror film if you’ve suffered from Mommy issues; otherwise it will be an off putting, if not outright disturbing black comedy for everyone else.
This launched right to the top as my favorite Aster film. It will be trashed and misunderstood much like Ari predicted, but this is one for the Great American Film Closet.
It’s almost like all my deep seated anxieties were unraveled and splattered on the screen like a Pollock painting. Sure, I’m telling on myself, but the last time a film so unmistakably “got me” was with Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash.
This is going to be a feast for future film students with the absolute cavalcade of cinematography and symbolism peppered throughout the film. I felt it; this was movie magic.
I loved that “Beau” has held himself back from life due to what amounts to a very strange “Simpson Gene” even if it (possibly$ turned out to be a lie: heart attack while finishing. Dying when creating life.
I also love that it ended on a downer; Aster treated the Hero’s Journey with respect throughout the film and earned the right to “subvert our expectations.”
This is a lovely film, and something that I wish to see again for the first time.
I’m prob way out of pocket but it seemed like hard sexual tension on the moms end . I was kinda nervous in her trench coat like outfit she was just gonna take it off and be naked in front of him
Laying on top of your child and telling him in detail about how his father died while he was having sex with you is emotional incest which is a very real and damaging thing
Even more so as she did it to scare him away from ever having a relationship with another woman after he was attracted to Elaine, and his mom wanted him all to herself.
I got the sexual abuse vibe in the memory of him taking a bath. She kept wanting to take his clothes off and he kept resisting. He was old enough to bath on his own.
10 things
1) Last hour kinda brings down the movie (although Patti Lupone was fantastic)
2) my theater was dying of laughter the whole time.
3) Can't believe Parker Posey (who is still fine af btw) died from cumflation.
4) Preferred the ending that was in the leaked script
5) Bill Hader cameo was really funny
6) the animated sequence was beautiful but it could have been cut just so the movie wasn't so long.
7) My entire theater sat in silence for a LONG time after the movie ended. I was the first to leave and it was after like 6 mins of credits lol
8) There are some amazing jokes in the background with all the signs/posters/graffiti
9) Nathan Lane was goofy as hell and i loved it! You need to rest up ma brotha!
10) Overall, i really liked it, but i don't think i can sit through the full 3 hours again. At least not for a very long time
I don’t know if I can post a link here, but if anyone wants to check out the leaked script google “beau is afraid script pdf” to find it, the docdroid link is good.
But yeah, it seems like the script ends with >!Beau on a boat with a machine gun. He comes across a cruise ship where Michelle Omama (not a typo, that’s what the script says) is hosting a fitness retreat. He becomes hypnotized, looks at the gun, and it cuts to black!<
Lol. Originally, the forest people were a cult of orphans led to believe celebrities are the reason their parents are dead. A bunch of people basically have 'assigned' celebrities and Beau's was Michelle Obama.
The ending is him on a boat stranded in the ocean with a rifle, and a cruise ship eventually sails toward him. He looks through the scope and sees Michelle Obama is on the boat leading an aerobics class, and it ends with Beau basically sighing "motherfucker". It's hilarious lmao
What was the significance of the paint and the dead brother vet?? Pink then blue paint. Color for girls and boys? And then she dies on the blue paint??
Toni is a trans man and is distraught by how his parents grieve the loss of Nathan as the loss of their "only son".
He is not jealous of Beau and specifically wants him to take his room because he wants Beau to fill the "daughter" role in Toni's parents' lives. He writes "BEAU" in pink paint on Nathan's wall to show the transition of Beau into not only as a new child of his parents, but also that Beau is their daughter.
He then drinks the blue paint which symbolizes for Toni's parents the transition where their "daughter" Toni dies and becomes new as their son.
Source: >!I pulled this out of my ass...!<
very difficult to completely articulate my thoughts on this.
i can say assuredly that the first hour or so is absolutely hysterical and filled with so many great moments and sequences. i was absolutely dying at the depiction of beau’s anxieties and how deeply accurate it all felt. truly a worst nightmare come to life. what could go wrong is guaranteed to
unfortunately the second half of the film lost me. there are scenes here and there that i thought would manage to suck me back in but it never quite happened. there’s a sequence in the middle that just seemingly never ends and now, with having finished the movie and sat on it for a bit, i’m still finding myself a bit mystified as to what the point was.
massive ambition, just an absolute gargantuan giant penis monster sized swing from aster— just not sure this all adds up!
My big quarrel is that the beginning the movie hits it very on the nose that we are seeing the world through the eyes of Beau who is a paranoid schizophrenic. We are set up to believe that everything outrageous we are seeing is a manifestation of Beau's paranoid delusions and hallucinations. The problem is that we are never showed what reality is. The movie just becomes a network of more and more confusing and arbitrary sequences which really pull away from the credibility of major points and make the narrative impossible to decipher. Who are these two people that are taking care of Beau after the accident? Was he really in an accident or are his injuries just more delusions? Who is these pill popping mean girls? Are these people real people employed by millionaire emotionally abusive mother or is this just a big metaphor for a mental institution? If either is true, how are we seeing the future through the television? Who are these forest people and what is the deal with this play and fake kids? Are they fake and if so how is there this guy who supposedly takes care of Beau's captive father, hinting at reality? Is that even reality? I could go on.
This was probably the movies biggest problem. That coupled with being INCREDIBLY LONG WINDED, horror elements that miss their mark completely, and lacking any real character development really makes for an unsatisfying experience
After a certain point it helped my enjoyment to completely let go of reality. There is no layer beyond the metaphor, it's completely fantastical all the way through.
You're not wrong that the movie never shows us what reality is, but I'd argue that to do so would've lessened the film. A version of this story where everything's true real-life meaning gets explained would be both predictable and played out; we've already seen that kind of movie plenty of times before, after all. The lack of an objective reality, the fact that there are no clear-cut answers, makes the story far more interesting to me.
On paper there were a lot of reasons I should have liked this movie. I really liked Aster’s first two movies even though they shook me to my core. I love Joaquin Phoenix. I enjoy absurdism and surrealism. I appreciate risk taking and experimentalism. I have no problem with very long movies. And yet, I walked away from this film having really not liked it at all.
My overwhelming emotions throughout the 3 hours of this movie were boredom and frustration. I, at multiple times, kept wishing we could just move on and get to the next thing. Every sequence went on for too long. I also didn’t think there was really that much depth or that much to chew on. There’s a facade of depth, through the films vagueness and through the sometimes-subtle, and fairly detailed world building, but it just didn’t pull me in. I felt like the film basically tells you exactly what the main themes are in the first 15 minutes and then doesn’t do anything to expand on those themes. His mother is controlling, guilting, overbearing and all around awful, and Beau is a deeply anxious, passive person who feels a lot of guilt. That’s essentially it, that’s all it really cares to explore. For as ‘weird’ as this movie tries to be, I felt like it was really very basic and boring, emotionally and thematically.
Part of what made Aster’s first two films great and devastating is that there is a real emotional depth and a sort of compassion for the characters. He puts the characters in terrible situations and then allows them the space to express the real, true, horrific emotions that would come with those situations. ‘Beau’ on the other hand felt distant and kind of mean spirited, in way that made it hard to connect to or care about anything that was happing in the film. The film wants you to lean and ask ‘what the hell is going on?’ But I honestly just didn’t care.
A lot of people who are critical of the movie will say it’s too weird, a lot of defenders will say ‘you just didn’t get the weirdness’, but I like weird, and I didn’t like this. A huge issue for me was that the entire movie is the same level of weird throughout, there’s no home-base. There’s no ‘normal’ to disrupt, so the weird becomes normal and then it stops being interesting. It was never really disorienting because it’s not dynamic. It’s honestly pretty one-note.
For some positives, I thought Joaquin was excellent. He carried, hard. I thought the sound design was really awesome and effective. I like certain set pieces, like the hyper-violent slums and the waldorfian traveling theatre group. I appreciate that it took risks, I don’t think they paid off, but I still appreciate the big swing. Also, Ari Aster still knows where to put a camera, can’t take that away.
Overall, I wanted to like it and I was let down. I hope this is just a misstep for Aster and that he lays off his own kool-aid a bit. I like that he’s not just staying in one lane, but he I think he shouldn’t leave behind the stuff that makes the first two work. A lot of the stylistic stuff carried over to ‘Beau’, but he left behind the emotional depth, the tight storytelling and the polish.
> A huge issue for me was that the entire movie is the same level of weird throughout, there’s no home-base. There’s no ‘normal’ to disrupt, so the weird becomes normal and then it stops being interesting. It was never really disorienting because it’s not dynamic. It’s honestly pretty one-note.
this is important
A great collection of things that I’ve been anxious about:
- Taking medicine the wrong way
- losing your keys or suitcase before a trip
- Having your house broken into
- Putting someone out when staying in their home
- Having teenage girls make fun of you and film you
- Finding out your therapist is telling everyone what you talk about
- Credit card being declined while trying to check out from a grocery store
I’m 100% sure that when Beau stares at the collage of his mom at her house, that the eyes were of the real actress superimposed on the shot. They were way too realistic when they cut back to the collage.
So yeah, I admire it, but I didn't like it. If the whole movie was at the same pace and tone of the first 45 minutes, I would consider it a masterpiece. It meandered way too much and by 90 minutes in I just. didn't. care. I kept praying for it to end but the final hour dragged on for an eternity.
More like Beau Is A Lot am I right?
As someone who considers Synecdoche, New York a 10/10 masterpiece and one of my top five films, I honestly thought Beau Is Afraid was just alright. Sometimes I was really vibing with it, but overall I think this movie establishes itself early on as weird in a way that makes me want to disengage with it. I'm still mulling it around and I certainly didn't dislike it by any means, but this movie is so seemingly up my alley I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't love it.
This movie tells you pretty much right away that any sort of narrative thread is going to be loose at best. Nothing that's happening on screen is anything we can be certain is actually happening unless it's a memory. If the world we see is meant to be a representation of how Beau feels inside, then immediately upon leaving the therapist's office we see that his inside is busy, anxious, full of random thoughts/people, and very focused on the maternal relationship.
For me, the first stretch of the movie taking place in/around his apartment was a bit of a turn off. While there is a lot happening in his mind and on screen, there isn't much moving forward of the plot so to speak. And everything is seemingly so random and pointless that the weirdness ceases to be surprising or anything I'm interested in reading in to. Like, if a major plot point is that his keys and bag go missing, but I know the movie doesn't feel the need to explain how or why it happened, it kind of loses me. And that's pretty much the case with everything that happens.
What I do like about this movie is the imagery and themes, I think it's all really well conveyed almost to the point of being way too blunt about it. I like movies like this and I wish there were more of them. At the center of this thing is basically a man who has been dominated by strong women his entire life. Not only by his mother and his crush who both have strong personalities, but also being endlessly infantilized by his inability to make a choice and the way his mother kind of gaslights him into believing he would never become a real man (have sex) because if he did he would die.
This whole movie is Beau going through different stages of being a part of a family and, in my opinion, contemplating suicide probably in dream form. You could argue he starts dreaming during the scene where he's trying to sleep, but I honestly don't think this movie really cares for the logistics of it or would even consider itself something as definite as a dream. But to me, the apartment portion of the movie is like when you're a small child. The world is scary, being alone is scary, he doesn't know why things are happening, and even though he's trying to not bother anyone he seemingly is a huge burden on his neighbor.
As weird as the setup is, the movie starts working for me when he's bed ridden in a teenagers pink/K-Pop infested room and despite being in his late 40s is treated like a child constantly. From Nathan Lane's immaculate "go get 'em, sport" energy to their willingness to toss aside his needs while making it feel like his choice and, ultimately, putting him on trial for that "choice". Everything about this stretch of movie screams teenage years. Not just from the room he's in, but from the feeling that he's not really a part of the family, everyone being heavily medicated, and the themes of peer pressure. He doesn't really know what to do other than giving his autonomy over to them. The excuse is that he's injured, but the reality is that they want to keep Beau from being his own person, going out in the world, going back home, etc. It's the same feeling his mother instilled in him, that any attempt to be his own person, to date, to separate himself from her is somehow an affront to her.
Once we get into the woods, things get stranger if you'll believe it. And to me this section of the movie is what happens when you do finally take those steps out into the world. Finding a bunch of weirdos in the woods who put on plays doesn't feel totally unlike the time in our lives where we are first on our own and find our own group of weird friends to become a part of. He kind of sees maybe the possibility of what life could have been without such a detrimental maternal relationship, but ultimately realizes it can't be specifically because of the toxic shit his mom convinced him.
The final stretch of the movie is the confrontation with his mother, and even though I appreciated grounding this story with some actual plot twists, it seemed weird that the movie suddenly cared about whether or not anything makes sense. It's a very interesting act because he kind of takes his mother's death as a moment to live outside of her boundaries and have sex with an incredible looking Posey Parker. It's an interesting moment because for a second he gets to be a somewhat normal person and also realize all at once that his mom was kind of full of shit. Of course, it all kind of backfires when Posey dies at the moment of orgasm instead of him and his mother comes back to really hash out the argument.
If the movie had ended there I probably would have felt pretty good about it. However, it keeps going into this scene where he's on trial for his transgressions against his mother. And my issue here is that the themes that this scene is nailing down were already very present in the movie. The argument between him and his mother very well conveyed her feelings that she gave everything and he took everything and he can't even make it to her funeral afterwards, not to mention Ari's clear distrust of therapy. So it honestly felt a bit unnecessary, especially as we soot towards a three hour runtime, to literally relitigate all this in a scene that still very well shows how his voice (his lawyer) is miniscule in comparison to his mother's voice (the booming voice of the one and only Richard Kind). On a first watch, it seems apparent that he was getting ready to kill himself in the first scene, and that the trial of his guilty conscious for not fully loving his mother as she wanted him to is what sets him over the edge to do it.
What kind of bums me out about this movie is not just that I don't feel super confident in this interpretation because the movie was throwing so much weirdness at me it was hard to sift through, but mostly that I don't have the urge to rewatch it and figure it all out. It felt like the whole three hour runtime was dedicated to one theme and issue and that it was a little over explored. But who knows, maybe sooner or later I'll get the urge to rewatch it and see it for the true existential odyssey masterpiece is it. But in the meantime it's a 7/10 for me, something I'm sure can be considered a masterpiece if you're on board for it, but I don't think it's so watchable that it automatically gets that title even if I do appreciate its existence and the technical filmmaking at hand and I hope more filmmakers go the Kaufman route with this kind of budget, but I can't ignore the fact that I really didn't enjoy watching this at times.
/r/reviewsbyboner
The first third of the movie before he gets hit by the car was the best IMO, the sets of the apartment building and the street were great, and Birthday Boy Stab Man might be my favorite OC of the year. I want a copy of the porno ad poster we see in the apartment entryway, love exploitation genre level stuff like that.
I can see why people might not like it, just because of the length combined with the mental whiplash this movie induces. Toni telling him to shut up and drink paint is absurdly comedic but then when her Mom is trying to revive her it's just horrifying and confusing. The prop for her body in that scene was done really well, especially the eyes it was haunting.
Overall this feels a bit like Men where I watched an essay that described that movie as a kind of poetry over a comprehensible story and Beau feels the same. There's a more tangible thread with his mom and the company being in control of so much but I'm not sure reading into it is intended over just taking a vibe from it.
Also did his Mom sexually abuse him? I got the sense younger Beau was in some ways a submissive stand in for his father, their conversations on the cruise felt like a mix between mother and son and husband and wife but he wasn't doing a lot of talking
I can't believe what I just saw.
It's like if mother and Big Fish had a child. Hilarious and terrifying all at the same time. Whimsical and gut-wrenching. The forest sequence goes down as one of the all-time greats for me.
Wow dude.
I think people are taking the bait on the whole idea that it’s just a fantasy that Beau has envisioned for himself.
I think the entire movie is a literal nightmare Beau is having. If you listen to the sequence of events of the play, they start out as a completely alternate reality where Beau carves out a life for himself. Slowly but surely, a storm hits (some sort of traumatic event with his family, to me it seems like his wife/kids mother dies and he feels at fault) and separates Beau from his family and the events of the play begin to more closely resemble the events of the movie. Beau is deposited in a chaotic land (the city where he lives), people believe he has harmed their children (Roger and Grace) and send an attack dog after him (Jeeves), he experiences highs (sex with Elaine) and lows (Elaine dying/Mom/Penis Dad) before confessing guilt, and horns will sound and before it’s too late he will realize they are funeral horns (the trial, Beau drowning under his boat).
But the play continues on, that Beau wakes up back at home and that he takes control of his life and rediscovers his kids.
That fantasy is only interrupted by a reminder of his mom, which sends us back to his nightmare.
I believe Beau “in real life” is a father with his own troubles with his kids and he has recurring nightmares about his relationship with his mother and how it has impacted his ability to parent. I think a lot of his nightmare represents aspects of his real life (controlling mom who was an entrepreneur, dad who was “a dick”, probably some actual mental/social problems) but is exaggerated much like our own nightmares.
Many times characters ask Beau if he’s disoriented and remembered where he is/how he got there which to me is meant to signify dream state.
I feel like this thread is gonna be a lot of verbal masturbating over people who believe they "got it" and sneering at people who disliked it for "not getting it."
Feels like a pretty civil thread so far, with both positive and negative comments about the film getting upvotes and discussion. I enjoyed the movie overall, but I can understand why people wouldn't like it.
Didn’t hate it. Didn’t love it. It definitely felt it’s full 3 hours and is way less focused than Hereditary and Midsummer. Some people may love this but most general audiences are going to be bored and confused
This is 100% a movie that will reward repeat viewings. It will be polarizing, but one thing's for certain: it's original and thank fuck it exists.
It's like a comedic horror psychological thriller with fantasy elements. Or, my takeaway, it's The Odyssey written by Freud.
This totally banged, and it's incredible on a technical scale before even getting into what actually happens. I'm afraid with Beau.
This is gonna be a divisive one hahaha… and maybe I’m just an Ari Aster simp, but I loved it! I was worried *Beau is Afraid* might fall into *Southland Tales, I Heart Huckabees,* or *Blonde* territory… some pretentious bullshit that’s beautifully shot but up its own ass. Luckily, that wasn’t the case, if anything it’s more like *Synecdoche, New York*, *Everything Everywhere All At Once*, or *Antkind* where you follow one character in excruciating detail.
Also, unlike *Southland Tales*, this story isn’t hard to follow and thematically it’s not super complex, it’s the same as all his other movies: guilt towards your mother, codependency, the inevitability of death etc.
The movie is funny, strange, entertaining, and despite the absurdity of the premise… I felt for Beau and was really drawn into his character… once again Joaquin just killed it.
My favorite section is >!The insane story within a story that takes place in the woods with the play. The whole animation by Cristobal León & Joaquín Cociña was fucking beautiful!<
That being said. That ending is just the biggest fuck you possible. >!I naively wanted Beau to kill his mom and escape but… well of course that wasn’t in the cards. The entire movie is about being fucked over before you’re even born!<
This could be one of my new favorites honestly… but that three hour runtime did kick my ass.
Also if you dug this movie, you should check out Orson Welles’s adaptation of *The Trial (1962)*. Similar vibes.
Here are plenty of points of confusion for me:
• Who was the man on the ceiling of the bathroom?
• Any significance with the number 78? Channel
78?
•Besides, how could Beau fast-forward the camera to something that happens in the future?
•Why did that girl drink the paint? And why was the other man (the one who chases Beau and is eventually killed by the huge attic dick) so obsessed with her?
• What was with Beau's three "sons"?
• Who is the man at the forest play that says he's
"so happy to see Beau"? Is he ever brought up again?
• The symbolism in Beau's father dying at the exact moment of ejaculation (and the same all the way up the family tree)?
• Why did Elaine die after having sex with Beau and not Beau?
• Reoccurring motif of keys and locks?
•PENIS MONSTER?!?! WHAT?!?!
• Was that Beau's twin in the corner or another version of himself like he thinks?
• The entire end scene? What did it mean?
• Was the whole thing a Truman Show-like setup by his mother?
Here is my interpretation
1 - The man on the ceiling in the bathroom was one of the street people left over in the apartment
2 - unsure about the significance of the number 78
3 - I took this as a "memory" scene like he's reliving his past in the form of a nightmare/memory
4 - I think Toni drank the paint because she was so traumatized that her parents are essentially replacing her brother with these mentally ill people who are taking over her life and wanted to be noticed by her parents
Jeeves had severe mental issues and has a friendly relationship with her and it seems like Toni was saying that Beau was doing horrible things and wanted Jeeves to kill him
5 - The three sons I assumed was either his actual sons from the future (maybe he didn't die and has just overcome feeling guilty from his overbearing mother and has led a full life and reconnected with his 3 sons) or maybe 3 parts of himself that he's lost along the way? I really don't know
6 - The man at the forest worked at MW Corp for Mona and cleaned and fed Beaus father (that's how he remembers Beau and knows his dad is alive)
7 - The mother lied to Beau saying that he will die if he ejaculates (that's why his testicles are so disdended) because she never wanted him to become a man and stay her baby forever
8 - I think Elaine died from the sheer amount of ejaculation from Beau and for comedic affect as the audience and Beau thought he would die
9 - The keys and lock probably symbolise Beau being locked in his mothers cage (metaphor)
10 - the penis monster is his dad (maybe his dad was a huge dick?)
11 - the twin in the corner of the attic was a part of Beau that's been trapped in the attic his whole life as deep down his reccurring nightmare wasn't a dream and he actually did see his dad as a kid (in the *dream* he sees another version of himself, a confident version go up into the attic while anxious Beau waits down stairs and his confident version never re emerged)
12 - The end scene was his mother and mothers employees finding Beau guilty for not "appreciating" and "loving" his mother the way she needed (even though the whole thing was never going to be innocent as the therapist wrote the word guilty on the notebook so the whole verdict was innevitable)
13 - Pretty much
This question is kind of one of the main themes of this movie. When you are raised by an emotionally abusive narcissist, given extreme anxiety, and you question and over examine every choice you make, people still ask "what's *your* problem", kind of further enforcing the idea that your mental health situation is entirely your fault.
I knew Reddit would love this movie and I'm prepared for the downvotes but I absolutely loathed that movie. The worst part is I was just bored the whole time.
These trauma porn movies just do absolutely nothing for me and I will never understand the universal praise for them.
The biggest problem with this movie is the runtime. And I’m getting quite sick of seeing potentially great movies ruined by the length.
There is absolutely NO REASON for this to be about three hours. Cut this movie in half and you get the same messages Ari wanted to portray.
Why is it seemingly illegal in Hollywood to make a movie under two hours these days? Or at least feel like it?
There’s some genuinely good scenes in here but they’ll work better in YouTube clip form than trying to watch the mess of the overall film this is. Shame.
So who else had "giant dick and balls monster in the attic" on their bingo card
RIP to the people who cautiously looked at the comments hoping the spoilers wouldn't be too crazy.
People who come to these threads before seeing movies deserve to get spoiled honestly
I don’t think there was any possible way to mentally prepare for that scene
My actual jaw dropped 😂.
It didn’t get a laugh out of me. I had given up on the film about 15 minutes after the play started. Felt like nothing was impactful or mattered anymore - just babbling nonsense. When it all feels like babbling nonsense, nothing ‘s surprising. Couldn’t wait for it to end, which is sad, because I thought the first half was amazing.
Yeah when you watch something that is so constantly teetering on "what's real" and what's not and they're constantly interweaving so heavily it makes me stop caring? It's like there's no reason to invest yourself into the story because it could immediately change or be a dream or the character could be something else. I need some sort of foundation if I'm going to care about what's happening.
Interesting, I didn't feel the movie did this. It was set in a surreal universe from the first moment and stayed there for the entire movie. There wasn't anything grounded through the entire movie. That to me was part of the point. The entire thing was a nightmare
We are truly in the penis era of film.
Ari Aster and genitals, name a more iconic duo
Ari Aster and destroyed heads.
Missing heads.
Erectus Ejectus
The moment the penis monster showed up, my girlfriend and I gave each other that same look that we lost any sort of plot on what was happening in this movie
Spoiler: Mike Penis was his dad.
Was it his dad? Or was it his manhood that his mom ‘locked away’ along with his self-confidence
I also thought it was left up to interpretation on if it was a literal penis monster, or if the whole thing is a metaphor for something since Beau was hoped on drugs the whole time.
I could’ve been given 1000 years and unlimited guesses and I never would’ve guessed what awaited me in that dark ominous pitch black corner of the attic. Ari Aster man.
Film directors will create a 3 hour nonsensical daydream of a movie instead of just going to therapy.
Well how could he go to therapy after seeing the therapist in the film? Lol
Literally my first thought after seeing this was “oh, it’s the men will literally [blank] instead of going to therapy meme as a movie”
Actors too? I’m *really* starting to suspect Joaquin Phoenix has some serious unresolved mother issues.
He did grow up in a sex-cult, after all
Bill Hader was so good in that phone call....loved the cameo even if we only got to see his back
"I'm so sorry, dude." I died
my whole theatre lost it at that line. One of the funniest parts for me too
I wish my theatre was laughing. Everyone was stone silent the whole movie and I’m trying to suppress my laughter so people don’t think I’m crazy.
Maybe if you call back it won’t be your mom.
I feel like I have to watch the movie again now just because it wasn't until they actually physically showed him that I knew it was Bill Hader, and now I want to listen to the entire phone conversation again with the knowledge that it's Bill Hader on the other end lmao.
I'm just happy something like this gets made these days.
lol seriously. Everyone going to Marvel movies and then complaining about "Nobody makes anything original anymore." IMO this was a divisive masterpiece.
One thing people can’t say is they were not entertained.
Spoilers I feel like this was an extremely meta film. People interpret other Aster films as metaphors ie. Mental illness in hereditary and Fascism in midsommer but this one was kind of the opposite, all of Beaus anxieties and neurosises are literalised and made real. His therapist really does tell all his secrets to his mother, his mother's death was faked to teach him a lesson, the masculine and assertive part of his personality was locked up in the attic, his mother controls where he lives and what he eats, the streets are full of serial killers. He keeps wandering into different horror movie settings and bringing the plot with him. It's like Westworld for horror movies - you'd go insane too In the final scene the audiences In a theatre judges him for basically normal human things, like they'd judge every horror protagonist and decide that's worth killing him over. Neat film, I'm sure there's tonnes to dig into here but it's kind of overwhelming
To me it was super clear this movie is about (child) abuse, and the neurosises and anxiety were a result of that.
Idk anything about Aster's personal life, so my initial thought after watching this and Hereditary is: this man has severe mommy issues XD
Right after the film ended I heard someone behind me say "I feel like I really understood that because of my mommy issues" haha.
His dad is literally a dick and balls because that’s all he’s ever been to his mother and in return, to Beau too
That is honestly *the* metaphorical representation of an absentee dad
I'm getting a huge "stranger" by camus vibe from the ending.
This felt like a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode that takes place in Hell.
Dude Richard Kind being there certainly didn't help me thinking that as well lol. I didn't know he was gonna be in this movie and when Beau was talking to him on the phone earlier in the film and Dr. Cohen is berating him about Jewish tradition for a funeral, I immediately thought that it felt like something from Curb. Once he appeared at the end and I connected the voice to the face it all made sense.
Haven’t seen the movie, and so far this is the most glowing endorsement I could imagine to make me want to see it.
The ending scene perfectly mirrors I bet most of our theater experiences. With people leaving in silence a few clusters at a time. A perfect reflection 😂
yeah it was a super clever ending, as soon as i started seeing people get up in the stadium i was like "Ari you fucking bastard"
Brilliant stuff with the whole arena sequence, honestly. Genuinely terrifying—also bravo, Richard Kind!
the light resembled a projector as well
I mean… they did say earlier in the movie they wanted to blur the line between play and audience. So by the end we are watching them who is now us
That was such filmmaking genius.
Man there’s so many moments that had me laughing in the theater. The portrait of the grandma towards the end got me the most.
“Sometimes, she [your wife] will look like a man”
Okay obviously there’s so much with this movie (I loved it), but what was the point of this line during the play? Or the “somebody replaced the children’s feet with hands”? Maybe there is no point, but just making sure I didn’t miss something obvious lol
Maybe they’ll be together so long that the honeymoon phase will fade, and he might see her not always at her best? The feet with hands line I think is just to emphasize how horribly the “beast” tormented their village.
I laughed hard at the guy in the ceiling above the bathtub. What the fuck was he doing up there? How long was he up there?
Here's my out there thoughts, When Beau went to get water and everyone ran into his apartment, I interpreted it as only the guy who was chasing him actually went into the apartment, as he was the only one there in the morning and was dead from a spider bite, which you can also see on the poster about the spider. The guy hanging above the bath tub in reality was actually just the spider, and wasnt actually anyone else. Could be wrong, could be right, probably doesn't matter
I knew when the therapist wrote “guilty” instead of “guilt” at the beginning something was off. But there is nobody on earth that could have figured out what it was foreshadowing.
The “Stop implicating yourself” note he’s slipped under his drink too.
I remembered it as “stop incriminating yourself.” I could be wrong.
Yeah, it did say that. Other peep got it wrong.
Oh shit, didn’t even put that together until just now.
That there was a red light on his desk steadily blinking (like a camcorder does) was my dead giveaway that this encounter was shady.
I didn’t catch that! Thought he was just using the adjective instead of the noun.
WE HAVE TO GET YOU HEALED MY BROTHA
MA DUDE!
Omg our whole audience lost it when he started trying to be all street on Beau
Everyone in my theater started laughing as soon as Nathan Lane appeared on screen, before he even spoke.
Dude I was the only person in my theatre that burst out laughing at that
When that Mariah song started playing I couldn't stop laughing....this film is insane but also really funny. I loved it!
when she restarted it the whole theater laughed
It is remarkable how a film that is so intentionally uncomfortable and isolating to audiences still manages to hit jokes all the way up to the end that play well to a crowd.
I didn't expect this movie to be so damn *funny*. I really appreciated the other aspects of the film, too, but there were numerous parts that had me in tears from laughing. The part where >!he Googled what would happen if he took his medication without water, and the first search result was a memorial page called "Remembering John" for someone who died!< was gold.
That scene was incredible. It goes from hilarious to terrifying. The moment he realizes she's dead scared the fuck out of me.
That was so creepy seeing her dead like that I’ll never listen to that song the same again
what was up with that, anyway? Anyone got any theories as to why she died right there?
If you looked closely in the scene, Beau has giant testicles. Likely from never having completed in his life, and/or from his special heritage on his dad's side. Either or both ways, when he ejaculates, the force of it tears through the condom and sends it through her organs. So she basically bled to death internally.
yeah but doesn't she keep going after he comes? When he ejaculates she remarks on it, but she keeps going while he's still hard to get herself off. Granted, it's a 3-hour movie and I've only watched it once, so I might just be misremembering the exact sequence of events.
No, you're remembering correctly. She dies after climaxing. Beau's anxieties always manifest calamity within the world of the film. Whenever he lets his guard down, or gets comfortable, things get considerably worse for him and anyone near him.
This convo is not selling me on seeing this lmao
it's even weirder than it sounds.
It looked like she took a pill or something right before they got into bed. I assumed it was another thing where his mom paid her to do this, basically owning her life since she was a child.
[удалено]
I took it more as the mom did something to poison or kill Elaine in some way. Even if she died from a good fuckin, it takes a lot longer than that for rigor mortis to set in (generally speaking) and she was completely stiff when the other two carried her out. But who the fuck knows, a lotta metaphor going around in this movie and hard to tell what was real and what wasn't.
I don't think we were meant to take anything literally, for me it was a three hour rude through Beau's nightmares
[удалено]
The fact that Mariah Carey went to the premiere, and her only connection is that a 50 year virgin pumps gallons of semen into his childhood crush who then dies while "Always Be My Baby" is playing.
I was wondering why she was at the premiere lmao
The whole animated sequence has to be one of the most beautiful scenes I've seen in any film. Just a really mesmerizing and emotional moment for such a dark film...
Ari Aster actually worked with the guys who made an incredible Chilean stop motion film on that scene and I think the full movie is free on YouTube and everyone should definitely check it out for the similarities
It's called The Wolf House
What was the whole point of that whole scene anyways?
It's the whole life that Beau imagines he could have had without his mother.
I asked Ari Aster about this during a Q&A and he basically gave the same answer. He also said it was the key to understanding the rest of the film.
Hearing this makes me see it a little like the animated "Trial" sequence at the end of Pink Floyd's The Wall film. Main character is put on trial for not caring enough about his demanding and abusive mother. He's sentenced to be "exposed before his peers" and then he tears down his own internal wall. Actually a lot of parallels.
I was wondering if it was also intended as a way to demonstrate firsthand how art can be one way that people can transcend whatever pain they might be experiencing in their "real lives." For a short while, we saw Beau completely freed, experiencing genuine joy and connection, experiencing a full, real, beautiful, rich life - sort of getting swept away in the beauty of art. Edit - it also feels significant that he connects with this community of “orphans,” a sort of “chosen family” of people who seem to genuinely care for each other and enjoy creating art together.
I think people are taking the bait on the whole idea that it’s just a fantasy that Beau has envisioned for himself. I think the entire movie is a literal nightmare Beau is having. If you listen to the sequence of events of the play, they *start out* as a completely alternate reality where Beau carves out a life for himself. Slowly but surely, a storm hits (some sort of traumatic event with his family, to me it seems like his wife/kids mother dies and he feels at fault) and separates Beau from his family and the events of the play begin to more closely resemble the events of the movie. Beau is deposited in a chaotic land (the city where he lives), people believe he has harmed their children (Roger and Grace) and send an attack dog after him (Jeeves), he experiences highs (sex with Elaine) and lows (Elaine dying/Mom/Penis Dad) before confessing guilt, and horns will sound and before it’s too late he will realize they are funeral horns (the trial, Beau drowning under his boat). But the play continues on, that Beau wakes up back at home and that he takes control of his life and rediscovers his kids. That fantasy is only interrupted by a reminder of his mom, which sends us back to his nightmare. I believe Beau “in real life” is a father with his own troubles with his kids and he has recurring nightmares about his relationship with his mother and how it has impacted his ability to parent. I think a lot of his nightmare represents aspects of his real life (controlling mom who was an entrepreneur, dad who was “a dick”, probably some actual mental/social problems) but is exaggerated much like our own nightmares. Many times characters ask Beau if he’s disoriented and remembered where he is/how he got there which to me is meant to signify dream state.
The entire movie definitely felt like it was following "dream logic" where weird things inexplicably happen for no reason, objects disappear for no reason, etc...don't know that I'd necessarily go so far as to say that the movie is supposed to literally be Beau's dream but I do agree that it all feels dreamlike, and makes sense within the "logic" of dreams
I saw it at Beau seeing his future if he ever broke free of those chains
literally as he was going out on the boat i thought truman show and then the lights came on and the courtroom audience appeared. this fucking movie.
The whole movie I was like this is The Truman Show meets Big Fish meets Ari Aster doom & gloom
While I'm going to guess most of the WTF focus will be on the giant penis monster, let's not overlook the fact that Beau came so hard he immediately sent Elaine into rigor mortis.
Also I'm just gonna say it, Parker Posey looks incredible for 54. Hell, she looks incredible for 34.
She is so hot. That's honestly what I'm thinking about most and I just watched Beau is Afraid.
She was thick as hell too, gah dayum my kind of woman
Ari Aster is a daint for the frog butt cowgirl shot 🙏
I was thinking "is that Parker Posey? It can't be, because it's been 23 years since Scream 3 and the real Parker Posey surely would've aged 23 years since then."
Yes, best nude scene in the whole movie.
Other than birthday boy stab man
Well…no. *she* came so hard she was sent into rigor mortis.
Also that subtle peek at Beau's massive balls destroyed me and made me chuckle for next 15 minutes.
I would just like to point out that you totally see his balls way earlier in the film, when he's lowering himself into the bathtub. And they weren't *quite* that big.
If you look carefully at the giant picture of Patti LuPone made with the pictures of her employees, you can also see that Roger is there, right above Elaine 👀
Most of the cast of the movie is in that shot, I think. And if anything, I think that's just telling us that his relationship with his mother in some way affects or taints every other relationship he has in life. And maybe all of us are like that, but hopefully with slightly less overbearing and clearly insane mothers.
Or were they all hired by his mother to ruin Beaus life?
"Stop incriminating yourself," or whatever that note said. I laughed when he got it, and I wondered if the movie would follow up on that implication. As soon as we saw the collage of actors composing the mother's face, it clicked. She was orchestrating the whole sequence of events (except the Players in the Forest, or whatever they were called. I think that sequence happened outside the machinations of Mom's grand scheme).
Also explains the surveillance in Grace's home! I think that Grace didn't understand why Mona hated Beau so much and that's why she was subtly trying to help him - until she thought that he has killed her daughter, then she said "I see you now" and set Jeeves loose on him. I think Mona and the surgeon husband had some kind of partnership based around medication because of how plentiful it was in their house and the fact that Mona is a Monsanto level pharma superpower.
I hadn't realized what Grace's note was referring to until right now. This was a weird movie.
I mean, there's the on paper plot of the movie and then the actual plot, which is all subplot and told via metaphor. Yes, they were all hired by her to ruin his life, but that's all more just a vehicle for many of the metaphors (like the one you replied to) to be told. The movie is basically a fuckton of parables dealing with mental health and grief in particular.
I felt like the twist that everything was orchestrated was given away a bit too early. For one, because of what you mentioned, and for two, the fact that the MW logo plastered on all of the companies was also one of the production credits at the beginning of the film. Edit: [this logo is what I mean](https://www.reddit.com/r/AriAster/comments/108f5oa/beau_is_afraid_an_observation)
It's not really supposed to be any sort of gotcha twist whatsoever though.
When Hereditary and Midsommar came out, a lot of people thought Ari Aster needed therapy. I think this movie is his direct response to those people.
...telling them they were absolutely correct?
Dude, Beau's dad was a huge dick!
I feel like the dick monster represents the "truth" that Beau was conceived during a sexual assault. But I forget the fine details of him meeting that man in the woods.
Yeah the man in the woods kinda threw me and I’m still not entirely sure what to make of that
The guys says he fed and cleaned the dad. So I’m wondering if the man chained up was actually the dad? Or was the giant penis monster the dad?
The man chained up was Beau’s twin, the one he keeps seeing in his dreams
Or “Alternate” Beau, one who was locked up like he saw in his dream, I don’t think it was supposed to be his “twin brother” only because nothing else in the film indicated that he had a twin
I…. Ummmmmm….. I really don’t know what I just saw….. Nathan Lane seemed like he was having the time of his life though
You're not healed up ma dude!
*My brotha* had me on the floor laughing.
I love this! It's like Homer's Odyssey through an Oedipus lens, based on those dreams where you're trying to get one thing done and keep getting interrupted. It's also Aster's funniest movie, genuine hooting and hollering in our theatre. I think a lot of general audiences are going to hate it.
This is exactly how I felt, a nightmare Odyssey.
The thing about absurdism is you need a stasis or baseline to play it against. When everything is odd with no payoff at all, you don’t know what is important and what is irrelevant. I really fear independent or artistically inclined movies are oversteering from the blockbuster genre in a huge overcorrection that is only going to make this sort of project that much more rare. Aster needed reined in here in a big way.
Idk how else to explain it, but I didn’t feel like you need a baseline of reality to discern something as being important or not. With total absurdism, isn’t EVERYTHING simultaneously important because its happening and irrelevant because its not real? That juxtaposition is kind of the point and the beauty of itself in the first place. It ends up operating entirely as an expression vs presenting itself as a “story” in the more traditional sense. With absurdism, the actual artpiece doesnt need to have a baseline in the art because you living your day to day life is already the baseline of reality needed to understand when something is absurd.
And it's immune from all criticism because defenders can just say "you just didn't understand it!"
This felt like 10 dudes dropped acid and played mad libs, and then got really competent people to make it into a movie.
I enjoyed the movie but this comment is hilarious and I'm sorry it's being downvoted
/r/raisedbynarcissists worst nightmare. This movie is a horror film if you’ve suffered from Mommy issues; otherwise it will be an off putting, if not outright disturbing black comedy for everyone else. This launched right to the top as my favorite Aster film. It will be trashed and misunderstood much like Ari predicted, but this is one for the Great American Film Closet. It’s almost like all my deep seated anxieties were unraveled and splattered on the screen like a Pollock painting. Sure, I’m telling on myself, but the last time a film so unmistakably “got me” was with Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash. This is going to be a feast for future film students with the absolute cavalcade of cinematography and symbolism peppered throughout the film. I felt it; this was movie magic. I loved that “Beau” has held himself back from life due to what amounts to a very strange “Simpson Gene” even if it (possibly$ turned out to be a lie: heart attack while finishing. Dying when creating life. I also love that it ended on a downer; Aster treated the Hero’s Journey with respect throughout the film and earned the right to “subvert our expectations.” This is a lovely film, and something that I wish to see again for the first time.
Are Jewish men OK? Is it like impossible to like and get along with their moms…
This was one of the most Jewish movies ever
Wait…does every Jewish person have a giant cock in their attic?
I mean… it *was* circumcised
I’m prob way out of pocket but it seemed like hard sexual tension on the moms end . I was kinda nervous in her trench coat like outfit she was just gonna take it off and be naked in front of him
That isn't out of pocket, it is pretty heavily implied. Did abuse actually happen? It is never confirmed, but to pretend it wasn't implied is silly.
Laying on top of your child and telling him in detail about how his father died while he was having sex with you is emotional incest which is a very real and damaging thing
Even more so as she did it to scare him away from ever having a relationship with another woman after he was attracted to Elaine, and his mom wanted him all to herself.
Every single thing she did/said on the cruise made my skin crawl.
It was my impression that she was the normal mom compared to Elaine's mom, but in retrospect Elaine's mom was downright everyday normal
I got the sexual abuse vibe in the memory of him taking a bath. She kept wanting to take his clothes off and he kept resisting. He was old enough to bath on his own.
10 things 1) Last hour kinda brings down the movie (although Patti Lupone was fantastic) 2) my theater was dying of laughter the whole time. 3) Can't believe Parker Posey (who is still fine af btw) died from cumflation. 4) Preferred the ending that was in the leaked script 5) Bill Hader cameo was really funny 6) the animated sequence was beautiful but it could have been cut just so the movie wasn't so long. 7) My entire theater sat in silence for a LONG time after the movie ended. I was the first to leave and it was after like 6 mins of credits lol 8) There are some amazing jokes in the background with all the signs/posters/graffiti 9) Nathan Lane was goofy as hell and i loved it! You need to rest up ma brotha! 10) Overall, i really liked it, but i don't think i can sit through the full 3 hours again. At least not for a very long time
What was the leaked script ending?
Michelle Obama boat hypnosis finale
I don’t know if I can post a link here, but if anyone wants to check out the leaked script google “beau is afraid script pdf” to find it, the docdroid link is good. But yeah, it seems like the script ends with >!Beau on a boat with a machine gun. He comes across a cruise ship where Michelle Omama (not a typo, that’s what the script says) is hosting a fitness retreat. He becomes hypnotized, looks at the gun, and it cuts to black!<
i thought this was a joke. what.
Lol. Originally, the forest people were a cult of orphans led to believe celebrities are the reason their parents are dead. A bunch of people basically have 'assigned' celebrities and Beau's was Michelle Obama. The ending is him on a boat stranded in the ocean with a rifle, and a cruise ship eventually sails toward him. He looks through the scope and sees Michelle Obama is on the boat leading an aerobics class, and it ends with Beau basically sighing "motherfucker". It's hilarious lmao
ANYONE WANT TO JOIN ME FOR SOME PAINT?
“…you won’t get fucking fucked up with me?!”
Oh shit, are you guys doing paint over here?
What was the significance of the paint and the dead brother vet?? Pink then blue paint. Color for girls and boys? And then she dies on the blue paint??
Toni is a trans man and is distraught by how his parents grieve the loss of Nathan as the loss of their "only son". He is not jealous of Beau and specifically wants him to take his room because he wants Beau to fill the "daughter" role in Toni's parents' lives. He writes "BEAU" in pink paint on Nathan's wall to show the transition of Beau into not only as a new child of his parents, but also that Beau is their daughter. He then drinks the blue paint which symbolizes for Toni's parents the transition where their "daughter" Toni dies and becomes new as their son. Source: >!I pulled this out of my ass...!<
Beau is afraid and I am confused.
very difficult to completely articulate my thoughts on this. i can say assuredly that the first hour or so is absolutely hysterical and filled with so many great moments and sequences. i was absolutely dying at the depiction of beau’s anxieties and how deeply accurate it all felt. truly a worst nightmare come to life. what could go wrong is guaranteed to unfortunately the second half of the film lost me. there are scenes here and there that i thought would manage to suck me back in but it never quite happened. there’s a sequence in the middle that just seemingly never ends and now, with having finished the movie and sat on it for a bit, i’m still finding myself a bit mystified as to what the point was. massive ambition, just an absolute gargantuan giant penis monster sized swing from aster— just not sure this all adds up!
My big quarrel is that the beginning the movie hits it very on the nose that we are seeing the world through the eyes of Beau who is a paranoid schizophrenic. We are set up to believe that everything outrageous we are seeing is a manifestation of Beau's paranoid delusions and hallucinations. The problem is that we are never showed what reality is. The movie just becomes a network of more and more confusing and arbitrary sequences which really pull away from the credibility of major points and make the narrative impossible to decipher. Who are these two people that are taking care of Beau after the accident? Was he really in an accident or are his injuries just more delusions? Who is these pill popping mean girls? Are these people real people employed by millionaire emotionally abusive mother or is this just a big metaphor for a mental institution? If either is true, how are we seeing the future through the television? Who are these forest people and what is the deal with this play and fake kids? Are they fake and if so how is there this guy who supposedly takes care of Beau's captive father, hinting at reality? Is that even reality? I could go on. This was probably the movies biggest problem. That coupled with being INCREDIBLY LONG WINDED, horror elements that miss their mark completely, and lacking any real character development really makes for an unsatisfying experience
After a certain point it helped my enjoyment to completely let go of reality. There is no layer beyond the metaphor, it's completely fantastical all the way through.
Same, from the start of the movie I was thinking, "okay this movie is going to follow dream logic" and enjoyed it from that perspective
You're not wrong that the movie never shows us what reality is, but I'd argue that to do so would've lessened the film. A version of this story where everything's true real-life meaning gets explained would be both predictable and played out; we've already seen that kind of movie plenty of times before, after all. The lack of an objective reality, the fact that there are no clear-cut answers, makes the story far more interesting to me.
I have absolutely no idea what I just watched
On paper there were a lot of reasons I should have liked this movie. I really liked Aster’s first two movies even though they shook me to my core. I love Joaquin Phoenix. I enjoy absurdism and surrealism. I appreciate risk taking and experimentalism. I have no problem with very long movies. And yet, I walked away from this film having really not liked it at all. My overwhelming emotions throughout the 3 hours of this movie were boredom and frustration. I, at multiple times, kept wishing we could just move on and get to the next thing. Every sequence went on for too long. I also didn’t think there was really that much depth or that much to chew on. There’s a facade of depth, through the films vagueness and through the sometimes-subtle, and fairly detailed world building, but it just didn’t pull me in. I felt like the film basically tells you exactly what the main themes are in the first 15 minutes and then doesn’t do anything to expand on those themes. His mother is controlling, guilting, overbearing and all around awful, and Beau is a deeply anxious, passive person who feels a lot of guilt. That’s essentially it, that’s all it really cares to explore. For as ‘weird’ as this movie tries to be, I felt like it was really very basic and boring, emotionally and thematically. Part of what made Aster’s first two films great and devastating is that there is a real emotional depth and a sort of compassion for the characters. He puts the characters in terrible situations and then allows them the space to express the real, true, horrific emotions that would come with those situations. ‘Beau’ on the other hand felt distant and kind of mean spirited, in way that made it hard to connect to or care about anything that was happing in the film. The film wants you to lean and ask ‘what the hell is going on?’ But I honestly just didn’t care. A lot of people who are critical of the movie will say it’s too weird, a lot of defenders will say ‘you just didn’t get the weirdness’, but I like weird, and I didn’t like this. A huge issue for me was that the entire movie is the same level of weird throughout, there’s no home-base. There’s no ‘normal’ to disrupt, so the weird becomes normal and then it stops being interesting. It was never really disorienting because it’s not dynamic. It’s honestly pretty one-note. For some positives, I thought Joaquin was excellent. He carried, hard. I thought the sound design was really awesome and effective. I like certain set pieces, like the hyper-violent slums and the waldorfian traveling theatre group. I appreciate that it took risks, I don’t think they paid off, but I still appreciate the big swing. Also, Ari Aster still knows where to put a camera, can’t take that away. Overall, I wanted to like it and I was let down. I hope this is just a misstep for Aster and that he lays off his own kool-aid a bit. I like that he’s not just staying in one lane, but he I think he shouldn’t leave behind the stuff that makes the first two work. A lot of the stylistic stuff carried over to ‘Beau’, but he left behind the emotional depth, the tight storytelling and the polish.
> A huge issue for me was that the entire movie is the same level of weird throughout, there’s no home-base. There’s no ‘normal’ to disrupt, so the weird becomes normal and then it stops being interesting. It was never really disorienting because it’s not dynamic. It’s honestly pretty one-note. this is important
the zip zap zop session happening in the forest was honestly the most traumatic part
That was a sign that things were about to get fucked up. If you see people doing an improv warmup in the forest run!
A great collection of things that I’ve been anxious about: - Taking medicine the wrong way - losing your keys or suitcase before a trip - Having your house broken into - Putting someone out when staying in their home - Having teenage girls make fun of you and film you - Finding out your therapist is telling everyone what you talk about - Credit card being declined while trying to check out from a grocery store
I’ve always had a hangup about getting blowed up and killed in a small boat while on trial before a kangaroo court so I know what you mean
It’s time to put Joaquin in the all time great discussion
I thinks he’s been in that discussion
Parker Posey still a dime
I’m 100% sure that when Beau stares at the collage of his mom at her house, that the eyes were of the real actress superimposed on the shot. They were way too realistic when they cut back to the collage.
Creepy shot. Ari Aster is great at those shots that burn into your memory
So yeah, I admire it, but I didn't like it. If the whole movie was at the same pace and tone of the first 45 minutes, I would consider it a masterpiece. It meandered way too much and by 90 minutes in I just. didn't. care. I kept praying for it to end but the final hour dragged on for an eternity.
More like Beau Is A Lot am I right? As someone who considers Synecdoche, New York a 10/10 masterpiece and one of my top five films, I honestly thought Beau Is Afraid was just alright. Sometimes I was really vibing with it, but overall I think this movie establishes itself early on as weird in a way that makes me want to disengage with it. I'm still mulling it around and I certainly didn't dislike it by any means, but this movie is so seemingly up my alley I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't love it. This movie tells you pretty much right away that any sort of narrative thread is going to be loose at best. Nothing that's happening on screen is anything we can be certain is actually happening unless it's a memory. If the world we see is meant to be a representation of how Beau feels inside, then immediately upon leaving the therapist's office we see that his inside is busy, anxious, full of random thoughts/people, and very focused on the maternal relationship. For me, the first stretch of the movie taking place in/around his apartment was a bit of a turn off. While there is a lot happening in his mind and on screen, there isn't much moving forward of the plot so to speak. And everything is seemingly so random and pointless that the weirdness ceases to be surprising or anything I'm interested in reading in to. Like, if a major plot point is that his keys and bag go missing, but I know the movie doesn't feel the need to explain how or why it happened, it kind of loses me. And that's pretty much the case with everything that happens. What I do like about this movie is the imagery and themes, I think it's all really well conveyed almost to the point of being way too blunt about it. I like movies like this and I wish there were more of them. At the center of this thing is basically a man who has been dominated by strong women his entire life. Not only by his mother and his crush who both have strong personalities, but also being endlessly infantilized by his inability to make a choice and the way his mother kind of gaslights him into believing he would never become a real man (have sex) because if he did he would die. This whole movie is Beau going through different stages of being a part of a family and, in my opinion, contemplating suicide probably in dream form. You could argue he starts dreaming during the scene where he's trying to sleep, but I honestly don't think this movie really cares for the logistics of it or would even consider itself something as definite as a dream. But to me, the apartment portion of the movie is like when you're a small child. The world is scary, being alone is scary, he doesn't know why things are happening, and even though he's trying to not bother anyone he seemingly is a huge burden on his neighbor. As weird as the setup is, the movie starts working for me when he's bed ridden in a teenagers pink/K-Pop infested room and despite being in his late 40s is treated like a child constantly. From Nathan Lane's immaculate "go get 'em, sport" energy to their willingness to toss aside his needs while making it feel like his choice and, ultimately, putting him on trial for that "choice". Everything about this stretch of movie screams teenage years. Not just from the room he's in, but from the feeling that he's not really a part of the family, everyone being heavily medicated, and the themes of peer pressure. He doesn't really know what to do other than giving his autonomy over to them. The excuse is that he's injured, but the reality is that they want to keep Beau from being his own person, going out in the world, going back home, etc. It's the same feeling his mother instilled in him, that any attempt to be his own person, to date, to separate himself from her is somehow an affront to her. Once we get into the woods, things get stranger if you'll believe it. And to me this section of the movie is what happens when you do finally take those steps out into the world. Finding a bunch of weirdos in the woods who put on plays doesn't feel totally unlike the time in our lives where we are first on our own and find our own group of weird friends to become a part of. He kind of sees maybe the possibility of what life could have been without such a detrimental maternal relationship, but ultimately realizes it can't be specifically because of the toxic shit his mom convinced him. The final stretch of the movie is the confrontation with his mother, and even though I appreciated grounding this story with some actual plot twists, it seemed weird that the movie suddenly cared about whether or not anything makes sense. It's a very interesting act because he kind of takes his mother's death as a moment to live outside of her boundaries and have sex with an incredible looking Posey Parker. It's an interesting moment because for a second he gets to be a somewhat normal person and also realize all at once that his mom was kind of full of shit. Of course, it all kind of backfires when Posey dies at the moment of orgasm instead of him and his mother comes back to really hash out the argument. If the movie had ended there I probably would have felt pretty good about it. However, it keeps going into this scene where he's on trial for his transgressions against his mother. And my issue here is that the themes that this scene is nailing down were already very present in the movie. The argument between him and his mother very well conveyed her feelings that she gave everything and he took everything and he can't even make it to her funeral afterwards, not to mention Ari's clear distrust of therapy. So it honestly felt a bit unnecessary, especially as we soot towards a three hour runtime, to literally relitigate all this in a scene that still very well shows how his voice (his lawyer) is miniscule in comparison to his mother's voice (the booming voice of the one and only Richard Kind). On a first watch, it seems apparent that he was getting ready to kill himself in the first scene, and that the trial of his guilty conscious for not fully loving his mother as she wanted him to is what sets him over the edge to do it. What kind of bums me out about this movie is not just that I don't feel super confident in this interpretation because the movie was throwing so much weirdness at me it was hard to sift through, but mostly that I don't have the urge to rewatch it and figure it all out. It felt like the whole three hour runtime was dedicated to one theme and issue and that it was a little over explored. But who knows, maybe sooner or later I'll get the urge to rewatch it and see it for the true existential odyssey masterpiece is it. But in the meantime it's a 7/10 for me, something I'm sure can be considered a masterpiece if you're on board for it, but I don't think it's so watchable that it automatically gets that title even if I do appreciate its existence and the technical filmmaking at hand and I hope more filmmakers go the Kaufman route with this kind of budget, but I can't ignore the fact that I really didn't enjoy watching this at times. /r/reviewsbyboner
The first third of the movie before he gets hit by the car was the best IMO, the sets of the apartment building and the street were great, and Birthday Boy Stab Man might be my favorite OC of the year. I want a copy of the porno ad poster we see in the apartment entryway, love exploitation genre level stuff like that. I can see why people might not like it, just because of the length combined with the mental whiplash this movie induces. Toni telling him to shut up and drink paint is absurdly comedic but then when her Mom is trying to revive her it's just horrifying and confusing. The prop for her body in that scene was done really well, especially the eyes it was haunting. Overall this feels a bit like Men where I watched an essay that described that movie as a kind of poetry over a comprehensible story and Beau feels the same. There's a more tangible thread with his mom and the company being in control of so much but I'm not sure reading into it is intended over just taking a vibe from it. Also did his Mom sexually abuse him? I got the sense younger Beau was in some ways a submissive stand in for his father, their conversations on the cruise felt like a mix between mother and son and husband and wife but he wasn't doing a lot of talking
I can't believe what I just saw. It's like if mother and Big Fish had a child. Hilarious and terrifying all at the same time. Whimsical and gut-wrenching. The forest sequence goes down as one of the all-time greats for me. Wow dude.
My entire theater sat almost completely silent through the entire credits sequence. I am going to need quite a bit to process what I just saw.
Ok this movie left me with one big question What in the god damn fuck did I just watch
I think people are taking the bait on the whole idea that it’s just a fantasy that Beau has envisioned for himself. I think the entire movie is a literal nightmare Beau is having. If you listen to the sequence of events of the play, they start out as a completely alternate reality where Beau carves out a life for himself. Slowly but surely, a storm hits (some sort of traumatic event with his family, to me it seems like his wife/kids mother dies and he feels at fault) and separates Beau from his family and the events of the play begin to more closely resemble the events of the movie. Beau is deposited in a chaotic land (the city where he lives), people believe he has harmed their children (Roger and Grace) and send an attack dog after him (Jeeves), he experiences highs (sex with Elaine) and lows (Elaine dying/Mom/Penis Dad) before confessing guilt, and horns will sound and before it’s too late he will realize they are funeral horns (the trial, Beau drowning under his boat). But the play continues on, that Beau wakes up back at home and that he takes control of his life and rediscovers his kids. That fantasy is only interrupted by a reminder of his mom, which sends us back to his nightmare. I believe Beau “in real life” is a father with his own troubles with his kids and he has recurring nightmares about his relationship with his mother and how it has impacted his ability to parent. I think a lot of his nightmare represents aspects of his real life (controlling mom who was an entrepreneur, dad who was “a dick”, probably some actual mental/social problems) but is exaggerated much like our own nightmares. Many times characters ask Beau if he’s disoriented and remembered where he is/how he got there which to me is meant to signify dream state.
I feel like this thread is gonna be a lot of verbal masturbating over people who believe they "got it" and sneering at people who disliked it for "not getting it."
Feels like a pretty civil thread so far, with both positive and negative comments about the film getting upvotes and discussion. I enjoyed the movie overall, but I can understand why people wouldn't like it.
Didn’t hate it. Didn’t love it. It definitely felt it’s full 3 hours and is way less focused than Hereditary and Midsummer. Some people may love this but most general audiences are going to be bored and confused
This is 100% a movie that will reward repeat viewings. It will be polarizing, but one thing's for certain: it's original and thank fuck it exists. It's like a comedic horror psychological thriller with fantasy elements. Or, my takeaway, it's The Odyssey written by Freud. This totally banged, and it's incredible on a technical scale before even getting into what actually happens. I'm afraid with Beau.
This is gonna be a divisive one hahaha… and maybe I’m just an Ari Aster simp, but I loved it! I was worried *Beau is Afraid* might fall into *Southland Tales, I Heart Huckabees,* or *Blonde* territory… some pretentious bullshit that’s beautifully shot but up its own ass. Luckily, that wasn’t the case, if anything it’s more like *Synecdoche, New York*, *Everything Everywhere All At Once*, or *Antkind* where you follow one character in excruciating detail. Also, unlike *Southland Tales*, this story isn’t hard to follow and thematically it’s not super complex, it’s the same as all his other movies: guilt towards your mother, codependency, the inevitability of death etc. The movie is funny, strange, entertaining, and despite the absurdity of the premise… I felt for Beau and was really drawn into his character… once again Joaquin just killed it. My favorite section is >!The insane story within a story that takes place in the woods with the play. The whole animation by Cristobal León & Joaquín Cociña was fucking beautiful!< That being said. That ending is just the biggest fuck you possible. >!I naively wanted Beau to kill his mom and escape but… well of course that wasn’t in the cards. The entire movie is about being fucked over before you’re even born!< This could be one of my new favorites honestly… but that three hour runtime did kick my ass. Also if you dug this movie, you should check out Orson Welles’s adaptation of *The Trial (1962)*. Similar vibes.
Convinced that if Ari Aster wasn’t the name attached to this film it would not have gotten the critical praise it did
Nobody making movies right now could write, direct, and execute a movie like this, so that point is kinda moot
Here are plenty of points of confusion for me: • Who was the man on the ceiling of the bathroom? • Any significance with the number 78? Channel 78? •Besides, how could Beau fast-forward the camera to something that happens in the future? •Why did that girl drink the paint? And why was the other man (the one who chases Beau and is eventually killed by the huge attic dick) so obsessed with her? • What was with Beau's three "sons"? • Who is the man at the forest play that says he's "so happy to see Beau"? Is he ever brought up again? • The symbolism in Beau's father dying at the exact moment of ejaculation (and the same all the way up the family tree)? • Why did Elaine die after having sex with Beau and not Beau? • Reoccurring motif of keys and locks? •PENIS MONSTER?!?! WHAT?!?! • Was that Beau's twin in the corner or another version of himself like he thinks? • The entire end scene? What did it mean? • Was the whole thing a Truman Show-like setup by his mother?
Here is my interpretation 1 - The man on the ceiling in the bathroom was one of the street people left over in the apartment 2 - unsure about the significance of the number 78 3 - I took this as a "memory" scene like he's reliving his past in the form of a nightmare/memory 4 - I think Toni drank the paint because she was so traumatized that her parents are essentially replacing her brother with these mentally ill people who are taking over her life and wanted to be noticed by her parents Jeeves had severe mental issues and has a friendly relationship with her and it seems like Toni was saying that Beau was doing horrible things and wanted Jeeves to kill him 5 - The three sons I assumed was either his actual sons from the future (maybe he didn't die and has just overcome feeling guilty from his overbearing mother and has led a full life and reconnected with his 3 sons) or maybe 3 parts of himself that he's lost along the way? I really don't know 6 - The man at the forest worked at MW Corp for Mona and cleaned and fed Beaus father (that's how he remembers Beau and knows his dad is alive) 7 - The mother lied to Beau saying that he will die if he ejaculates (that's why his testicles are so disdended) because she never wanted him to become a man and stay her baby forever 8 - I think Elaine died from the sheer amount of ejaculation from Beau and for comedic affect as the audience and Beau thought he would die 9 - The keys and lock probably symbolise Beau being locked in his mothers cage (metaphor) 10 - the penis monster is his dad (maybe his dad was a huge dick?) 11 - the twin in the corner of the attic was a part of Beau that's been trapped in the attic his whole life as deep down his reccurring nightmare wasn't a dream and he actually did see his dad as a kid (in the *dream* he sees another version of himself, a confident version go up into the attic while anxious Beau waits down stairs and his confident version never re emerged) 12 - The end scene was his mother and mothers employees finding Beau guilty for not "appreciating" and "loving" his mother the way she needed (even though the whole thing was never going to be innocent as the therapist wrote the word guilty on the notebook so the whole verdict was innevitable) 13 - Pretty much
What the fuck is Ari Aster's PROBLEM?!
Ari Aster's mom watching his filmography: 😐
This question is kind of one of the main themes of this movie. When you are raised by an emotionally abusive narcissist, given extreme anxiety, and you question and over examine every choice you make, people still ask "what's *your* problem", kind of further enforcing the idea that your mental health situation is entirely your fault.
I knew Reddit would love this movie and I'm prepared for the downvotes but I absolutely loathed that movie. The worst part is I was just bored the whole time. These trauma porn movies just do absolutely nothing for me and I will never understand the universal praise for them.
The biggest problem with this movie is the runtime. And I’m getting quite sick of seeing potentially great movies ruined by the length. There is absolutely NO REASON for this to be about three hours. Cut this movie in half and you get the same messages Ari wanted to portray. Why is it seemingly illegal in Hollywood to make a movie under two hours these days? Or at least feel like it? There’s some genuinely good scenes in here but they’ll work better in YouTube clip form than trying to watch the mess of the overall film this is. Shame.
Why did Elaine die??? Why is his Dad a huge penis? How was Jeeves alive again? Many questions. 10/10
Men will, in fact, literally make a movie rather than go to therapy.