Joaquin Phoenix’s horror nightmare, Adam Driver against the dinosaurs and 8 other films not to be missed at the cinema and in streaming

What is that good man Beau afraid of? Of himself, of the aggressive and ill-disposed neighbors? Or the menacing shadows that roam the neighborhood and seem to be angry with him? Are you afraid to leave the little room where you live isolated and without comfort, a prisoner of little domestic monsters? To go back to mom on the anniversary of his father’s death? Of Murphy’s law that torments him, of the Oedipus complex that dismays him, of a capital sense of guilt, of his natural inadequacy, of opening his eyes and finding the ghosts of a traumatic past?
Beau fell out of high chair as a toddler, hit his head and he never recovered. Plus, she had a stepmom and an invisible dad. Now a middle-aged man with no relationships, scared, displaced. Overwhelmed by a horror nightmare.
Ari Aster, the director of Midsummarcalls his film a Jewish version of The Lord of the Rings. For many, this is the work that will ruin his career. More simply, a three-hour psychoanalytic sessionin which Beau Alice in Wonderland (in reverse) and The Wizard of Oz, a bullied Pinocchio, a paranoid Mr. Bean at the center of a pessimistic and surreal parable, an odyssey that describes the illogicality of the world and the his hopeless drive to self-destruction.
Like the other authors of the new horrific course (but not only)namely Robert Eggers (The Wicht, The Lighthouse) and Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us, Nope), Aster an unscrupulous provocateur. He stretches the rope to the maximum, administers the suggestions of the story, sum of science fiction, humour, melodrama and psychodrama.Following Beau’s adventures, we find ourselves now in a fantastic dimension fueled by the Little Man’s turmoil consciousness, now in a dystopian reality that also wants to be a black prediction of the near future, a metaphor for a dysfunctional, hysterical, caricatured, asexual Americaupset and disturbed, invaded by weapons, pills and knives, victim of gog hallucinations, dominated by injustice, socially in shambles.
Beau the crazy needle of a scale out of control. No bullshit no masterpiece. With this baggage of meanings and perspectives, the film is already a case: the debate concerns the function of cinema and the relationship with the public, rather than the story itself. Aster avoids narration like the devil mainstream, trying to snatch, surprise, displace. Beau has no sex drive, he cries often, throws up his hands and gives up, covers his face and apologizesnever smiles. The therapist doesn’t help her: the care of him should be from horse. Instead, rose water and existential discomfort does not calm down. The setbacks that distance him from his mother they are a pretext for not getting to the point.
The agility with which Aster passes from tragic to comic register is the most important interpretation of a film that manages to be great only at times, more often held back by its ambiguity but also illuminating. The impression / suspicion / crazy idea that, in a narcissistic excess, the director is more interested in the emotional involvement of the viewer, whatever the costthan a true, noble experimentation through images.
Beau therefore prepares for the decisive journey, remains locked out of the house, ends up in a creepy clinic / home, where he is treated, fixed, adopted, terrorized, abused. He suffers accidents, assaults and a summary trial, he becomes one of us. He lives a life not his, a life he doesn’t want, recalling a lot of literature (and a lot of cinema) of estrangement. Aster takes up a 6-minute short from a few years ago entitled Beau, inserts a long animated sequence and a musical commentary, obviously atonal, by Bobby Krlic. brave, extreme, never insignificant. Thanks also to a cast that, around the magnificent Joaquin Phoenix, author of an expressionist brushstroke that owes much to the Joker’s folliesbrings together Patti LuPone, Parker Posey, Amy Ryan, Richard Kind, Kylie Rogers, Nathan Lane.

BEAU IS SCARED by Ari Aster
(USA-Canada-Finland, 2023, duration 179′)
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Parker Posey, Amy Ryan, Richard Kind, Kylie Rogers, Nathan Lane, Patti LuPone, Michael Gandolfini
Rating: *** out of 5
In the halls