By Robert Scucci
| Published
I finally got around to watching Beau Is Afraid after months of mental preparation because who has time for a three-hour movie? I’ve always been an advocate of the 90-minute runtime because why mess with the three-act structure? Why would I watch something double the length of what I’m willing to endure when I know it’s possible to make cuts without sacrificing the storytelling?
Well, I wish I had answers, but after watching Beau Is Afraid, I can assure you that the juice is worth the squeeze. Is the juice good for you or bad for you, you ask? I’m not entirely sure, but it’s definitely a juice that will make you sit in quiet contemplation after consumption because there’s a lot to unpack here.
Pink Freud: Dark Side Of Your Mom
Beau Is Afraid is – at least I think it is – a linear story following its titular character, Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix). A middle-aged man with a debilitating anxiety disorder, Beau experiences a series of unfortunate events that prevent him from visiting his mother, Mona (Patti LuPone), in a timely fashion. After calling his mother’s cell phone to apologize, Beau is horrified when a UPS man picks up on the other end, explaining how he just dropped off a package, and that the person he believes to be Mona has had her head crushed in a freak chandelier accident.
Racing the clock to travel to his mother’s funeral, Beau, who just started taking new medication prescribed to him by his therapist, Jeremy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), frantically dashes out the door of this apartment, wholly unaware of the series of disasters that await him.
From run ins with the violent homeless community in his neighborhood, to the dysfunctional family that takes him in after getting hit by a truck (and also stabbed), Beau’s journey in Beau Is Afraid is fraught with adult anxiety and hallucinogenic revelations that won’t make sense to you as a viewer, but feel all too real when you consider our hero’s fragile perspective as he wanders into an enchanted forest occupied by traveling actors who want him to watch a play that is in no uncertain terms a fantastical version of his own life story.
Style And Substance Intersect
What makes Beau Is Afraid work so well is just how jarring yet unrevealing each transition from scene to scene actually is. Are we witnessing a man on the verge of a psychotic break having an adverse reaction to his medication? Or is his anxiety justified because the world he lives in is absolutely insane and full of certified lunatics who are either trying to help or harm him, depending on the encounter?
I honestly don’t have the answer to these questions, but can assure you that watching Beau Is Afraid is a totally visceral, challenging, and cathartic experience that doesn’t seem to be concerned with giving you an easy answer. However, as heavy and burdensome Beau’s harrowing journey through the city, wilderness, and his own psyche may be, its sense of humor will leave you laughing at the most unexpected moments.
Streaming Beau Is Afraid On Max
At least for me, watching Joaquin Phoenix get attacked by a homeless man in his bathtub and running out of his apartment completely naked, only for the cops to throw their hands up as if to say, “not another one,” had me rolling for a hot minute because of how earnestly he depicts a man who’s held prisoner by his own anxiety having what I would consider to be a very reasonable reaction to his insane surroundings.
That is all to say, watching Beau Is Afraid is an exhausting endeavor, but it’s so amusing along the way that it barely feels like a three-hour flick.
As of this writing, you can stream Beau is Afraid on Max.
