How many phobias can you name? Acrophobia, agoraphobia, aerophobia, aquaphobia, astraphobia, arachnophobia … damn, I’m still in the “a’s.” It doesn’t matter, Beau suffers from them all. In what seems to be a comprehensive look at human apprehension through the eyes of one mediocre man, writer/director Ari Astor has told in vivid detail all the things he might be afraid of … and the list is three hours long.
The weird starts early and never really stops. The film takes us straight from Beau’s initial vaginal canal emergence straight to the therapy couch where he is afraid to offer up his laundry list of fears. Beau Is Afraid? Oh, you have no idea. Every bit of stimulus seems to give Beau anxiety of some sort. After the couch, we see him race home, just beating a potential ne’er-do-well to his apartment door.
Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) lives in an inner city. It’s not just any inner city; his is the kind that Fox News has imagined, where crime, graffiti, and noise are omnipresent. At any given time, there are 40+ people in the street outside your apartment doing 40+ different things, several of which are illegal, at least one appears to be a murder attempt. Yup, this is the scene Fox News warns about. As night falls, Beau tries to find sleep. He is awakened when a note is slipped under his door to turn down the noise. There has been no noise. Beau has been asleep. Two more notes of increasing alarm and threat to visit him before the morning appear before dawn has broken.
The plan is for Beau to visit his mother (Patti LuPone). Beau is distracted as he exits his apartment; he goes back inside. When he returns, his keys and luggage have been stolen, of course. Rough night, huh? He reaches for his new anxiety medication. It should be taken with water, but the main is out in his apartment. The super doesn’t know who Beau his, nor seems to care. The bodega across the street sells water. But keyless Beau now has to keep his apartment unlocked and prop the building door open. The grocer threatens violence when Beau comes up a dime short of the $1.79 price tag for water and while the haggling goes on between them, all 40+ street denizens suddenly notice that the
door to Beau’s apartment is open. Within seconds, every single one of them is in Beau’s apartment and Beau is locked outside the building.
If you’re not laughing at that, I’m not sure you’re human. This is a lot of what Beau Is Afraid is all about – Beau mixed up in a series of absurd fish-out-of-water situations that escalate until Beau is required, reluctantly, to move on. Understand that through all of this, Beau is 100% a “don’t make waves” personality. He fears conflict as much as he fears anything else … which is just about everything. Beau Is Afraid is a catalog of human fear represented in one hesitant milquetoast. There is definitely humor to be found in the milieu while very little is to be found in Beau’s character.
Three full hours of Joaquin Phoenix is a tall ask. A very tall ask. I mean we’re not even talking Cate Blanchett here and Lydia Tar (sorry, “Tår”) which is a far more complex character than Beau Wassermann. And Târ was twenty minutes shorter than Beau Is Afraid … but not for lack of trying. Where was I? Oh, yes. THREE.FULL.HOURS of one-dimensional Joaquin. Ok, we get it. Anxiety over all things life has to offer. Yes, he’s a bit of metaphor for the entire human condition. Here’s the thing: nobody needs three hours of that metaphor. Ari Astor used sleight of hand to confuse the audience – whenever the character development approached “stale,” he added an element of weird so we wouldn’t notice. You can get away with that in a two-hour film, but three? Eventually the audience has to like your hero. I don’t care if Beau reflects exactly who I am; I don’t need three hours of him.
Many enjoy a woodsy stroll with light talking
But I tell youse the reason I am balking
Don’t matter watcha likes
Let me tell you about hikes:
Three hours is an eternity of Joaquin
Rated R, 179 Minutes
Director: Ari Astor
Writer: Ari Astor
Genre: Walkin’ with Joaquin
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Ari Astor homies
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “I didn’t even like Joker”
