Why Ari Aster Freaks People Out
The subject of Ari Aster’s new film, Beau Is Afraid, is a living doormat played with shuffling agitation by Joaquin Phoenix. Beau is a 40-something mama’s boy who shudders at the thought of making decisions, and his extreme emotional paralysis is part of the grand joke of the movie, a three-hour epic centered on the least courageous hero imaginable. But immature, anxious cowards are rarely the protagonists of big Hollywood films, and Beau is Aster’s biggest movie by far, as well as one of the most ambitious projects ever mounted by the indie distributor A24. Did Aster worry, I wondered, that audiences wouldn’t be able to identify with such an alienating character?
“That question, it’s never even occurred to me,” Aster told me when we met for lunch in Tribeca. “I just related so intensely to Beau.” His response, it turns out, is the key to understanding Aster’s oeuvre, which includes the horror films and . fits this genre too, blending surreal frights with arch comedy, antic action, and Freudian melodrama. But although Aster’s movies are often