Beau is Afraid: Yay, we got the director’s cut!
May 7, 2023
When I got home from seeing Beau is Afraid last night my kids (aged 9 & 11) asked me if I liked my movie, and then asked: “What was it about?”
“I can’t really say.”
“You mean you don’t know, or you can’t tell us?” (i.e. because it was too graphic or scary).
“Both?”
The boys had just had their minds blown at home watching Speed, so thankfully the conversation moved swiftly to how cool Keanu is, and away from me having to say anything about Beau.
After sleeping on it, here is what I think Beau is Afraid is about: This film is what happens when your internal fears and guilt become real(-ish); When that fear and guilt doesn’t just mess with you in your head, but also messes with you in the real(?) world too.
There’s also (sort of) a plot which helps give the above an engine to run on: Beau is trying to get home.
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I don’t dwell on critical reviews of films by real filmmakers (“Best film ever!” “Worst film ever!” etc). But I was curious what others had to say about this one, so I took a brief scan of a few reviews this morning. Not surprisingly, they are mixed. I think I’m not alone in being unsure what to make of it.
On another metric, it looks like this big budget movie- or big budget for the world of independent cinema- is not going to be a commercial success. But the thing is, independent cinema shouldn’t have to perpetually dwell in scarcity, and it’s great to see Aster be able to go big here. I mean, how much did that final sequence cost?!? In my theatre, when the movie ended and the credits appeared on screen, not a single person moved. That’s a metric that matters.
Figure 1: Best movie ever/worst movie ever: This is what appeared when I Googled “beau is afraid” to check my claim that this movie was not a box office success. (It wasn’t, making 11.5M on a budget of 35M, as of 9/13/23, according to Wikipedia.)
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Beau is Afraid is long: 3 hours. And this is 3 hours of deliberate, weighty filmmaking, built on meticulous individual shots, put together into scenes and sequences, and ultimately into a monolith of a film.
Could the movie be tighter, shorter, more focused? No doubt. Should it be? I’m not so sure of that. Ultimately what we get with the theatrical release of Beau is the director’s cut. But because this is an A24 film, we don’t have to wait 20 years, some bitter public fights, and a re-release for it. And for that, I send a hardy “Thank you!” to the good folks at A24. And if you’re reading this (lol), please keep funding these expensive, sprawling, complicated films.