BEAU IS AFRAID Movie Review **SPOILER ALERT**

[Music] without you [Music] that's Nick and that's Joseph and today we're here to talk about Bo is afraid the highly anticipated third feature from Ari Astor that's being released courtesy of a24 on April 21st 2023. third feature yeah you've done more than three films feature-length films oh oh because you've watched some at least one of his shorts so I really liked hereditary and mid-summer I like them both as well and I've seen his first thing the strange thing about the Benjamins the Johnsons the Johnsons I don't know if that's the exact title he had several shorts uh including uh one called bow that I haven't seen so I'm not sure uh but a talented filmmaker oh more than talented nobody's making films like this or having the opportunity to make films like this you've seen this film twice yes and I I would say that you it's a film that should be seen more than once so uh I would describe this movie it's crazy as hell but I would say it's like a crazy dream how would you describe it a psychotic fever dream about guilt uh but also you know you can read into in many ways about being from in a parallel or alternate reality as the description of it is but also kind of like how Midsummer really gets into what it feels like to be on a bad trip this also feels like maybe what somebody on antipsychotics feels like you like this movie I did a lot I thought it was excellent um it's long as hell and crazy as hell but there is a basic story that's actually quite basic so Joaquin Phoenix plays the character Beau we meet him at a therapy session and we find out that he has plane tickets for the or a plane ticket for the following day to visit his mother and that's the source of a lot of anxiety but he ends up not only missing his flight the following day but he gets injured and the injury causes him to be unconscious for two days and when he wakes up he calls his mom and finds out she's dead so he makes his way to her house to go to the funeral and when he gets there he realizes that his mother faked her death basically as a test to see if she loves him as much as she loves him and he ends up going on trial mm-hmm and found guilty for being a shitty son and it would appear that he sentenced to death the end but it's so much more than that it is so much more than that I think I was so antsy watching the first time in my I was I think it's disturbing um disorienting uh like there are quite a few scenes I had emotional reactions to uh that that I was almost repelled by it a bit but watching it a second time I feel like there was a lot more that I caught albeit probably not everything but um his name is Beau Wasserman and wasser means water oh uh I had told myself I'm not going to take notes and I ended up still taking a page full of notes uh but since it's all over the place we should probably structure this so first can you talk about the beginning and the end of the film well the his so mother Mona is a name that's taken from the Madonna figure so the Virgin Mary and there's there's a lot of Illusions and symbolism going on but the beginning is a birth scene not unlike uh kind of how inaraches Bardo opened similarly with the birth scene last year uh where we see this from the baby's perspective bow coming into the world and what you hear is Mona basically moaning and screaming and having a lot of anxiety about her kid not I think like overreacting overreacting yes in the end the trial is set in like an aquatic Coliseum and Bo is in a boat we can get to how he gets there but he's in a boat and as he's being tried it's clear that it's it's obvious that he's a shitty son according to his mother and it's a kangaroo court for sure and the boat he's on like there's like an explosion in the boat capsizes so I guess I feel and but only because you had said this to me I don't know that I would have picked it up immediately but that it's kind of like him going back into the womb yes and and the water uh symbolism would have also fits with that to me and he's he's ended his life cycle kind of um in that scene it also reminded me a bit of the Powell press Burger film Powell and press Burger film a matter of life and death or something like Defending Your Life where he's literally this film felt like Franz Kafka writing the Odyssey well let's just go through these notes so his therapist is played by an actor I recognize oh uh Stephen McKinley Henderson yeah who I thought I would love for him to be my therapist but then we get to the end and then you realize we don't want his ass but anyway um his therapist seems to be handling bull very well and ultimately recommends a new like uh psych mode for him and it's made very clear like you have to take this medication with water so we put a pin in that but Bo lives in a city which was kind of depressing to watch because it all it's supposed to seem like how would you describe it like like a dystopia dystopia like it's utter chaos is going on in the streets but it doesn't actually feel too far from what parts of downtown L.A feeling yeah I was like it feels like downtown L.A like right now but Beau lives in a building and it's very clear that he has a lot of anxiety he's paranoid but what we're seeing is not reality it feels like we're an alternate universe or maybe it's all in his head but I I thought a few funny things when we get into his building the elevator that he has to get on is sparking is literally like oh a carriage to hell and then we're told that there there are notices on people's doors saying that a brown recluse spider is loose in the building he's losing the building and we get the spider a few times throughout the film which I thought was an interesting symbol but Beau is stressed out immediately because Kim having to walk to his building requires he passes this like crazy person who he's afraid of he gets in the building he takes this new medication but the water in the building is out so he's freaking out like I have to take water with this medication so he runs across the street gets water but he doesn't that that exchange is weird and while he's trying to manage that someone has stolen his house keys just as he's about to leave to the airport that he wakes up late for because of shenanigans the night before and probably the medication knocked his ass out but I thought a really good scene is because the the street is filled with like all kinds of characters and because Bo doesn't have his key he has to prop his building door open and then he's delayed at the convenience store because he doesn't have exact change for the water and all of the people on the streets enter his building I thought that was such a good it's so good because it's you you can really relate to how that probably feels um but there's like uh low-key Clockwork Orange level UltraViolets going on in the street at all times and the attention to detail is so great but Bo ends up uh spending the night like outside because he's afraid he's afraid to go into his apartment because all these people have entered his apartment and they're tearing it up but he goes into the apartment the next day he is taking a bath and I thought a really creepy scene is because we see him get in the bath and he's trying to decompress and he looks up and there's a man like dangling from the ceiling that drops down into the water and so then Bo is like freaking out he's naked and he runs out into the street and we're told something that I there are a lot of comedic moments in this film uh one of the ones that made me laugh out loud initially is the there's a news story about the birthday stab man and it described as a circumcised Caucasian male which is basically this circumcised Caucasian male who's in his birthday suit so he's nude and he's running around stabbing people so Bo runs out into the street naked because he's freaked out that this person fell into his tub and of course the police think he's the birthday stab man but then the birthday stat man is actually on the street in a tax bow after Bo's been hit by a car so the person who hits Bo Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane uh Grace and Roger we find out that Nathan Lane's character is a surgeon so they take his ass home instead of to the hospital kind of like a misery yes and they Nathan Lane's character like you know sews him up and they put him in a room and say we're going to take care of you until you're healed but when Bo wakes up and realizes two days have passed that's when he calls his mom and like a UPS driver picks up played by they you show him it's you see him in a news story Bill Hader I did not catch that but and he explains like I think your mom's dead because I see like a decapitated woman here and then Bill Hader checks her purse and confirms that it is his mother so of course Bose distraught but Nathan Lane is like I can take you home but you need to rest like you're still you can't get on a plane because your sutures will burst but then Beau gets a call from like a family lawyer he gets through he makes a phone call finally to Richard kind he who he calls the doctor and he's like I'm not your doctor I'm the family lawyer and the lawyer explains like because of their Jewish faith like we cannot bury your mom until your bum ass shows up so get yourself together and get to her house because literally her body is sitting on ice and we cannot bury her until you're there and it's so disrespectful but what's also notable about this family that he ends up kind of that end up kind of they're trying to adopt him because they are missing a son that died in action and Caracas then another creepy part of the film is the dead son who is like in the military his military buddy named Jeeves also lives with them do you recognize him no that was denim minoshay who you just saw as Peter Von Kant that was him oh funny he doesn't really have any dialogue you know what's funny about Peter Von Khan is I felt like that character it was bad casting because I feel like Peter Von Khan's supposed to be like undesirable but that actor is kind of handsome so it didn't work for me but anyway Jeeves is suffering from PTSD he's Ultra violent so they're trying to manage that but Nathan Lane and his wife have a daughter I think her name is Jody Tony Tony she made me so uncomfortable yes played by Kylie Rogers yes oh my God she may be so uncomfortable because this is this is not it's another fun mother-son relationship that's been disrupted and she's the daughter that's the outsider because it's clear they favored their dead son and so she's got all kinds of issues really yeah and it because they stick him in her bed yeah well like she still lives in the house and Bo is sleeping in her bed while she'll sleep on the couch so she's mad but meanwhile no one can use Nathan's room it must stay undisturbed but Nathan Nathan Lane's character um he's he agrees to take Bo's like I have to get to my mom's house and he's like well I guess I can take you tonight but it'd be better if I can take you in the morning and that's the important plot point and Bo's like okay take me in the morning but then he can't because he has to do surgery so the daughter agrees to take him but then she absconds with Bo with a girlfriend another teenage girl and they were so vile they make bow do drugs and record him and they ultimately never taken they just end up back at the house um and when he's the before they even get in the van to go on the drive Beau vomits on the daughter's laptop but he gets on her laptop and that's where we first see Parker Posey as Elaine who is the grown-up version of his childhood sweetheart who's he he's Tech he's a virgin he's because we get flashbacks in between this cruise that he went on with his mother who as a young woman is played by Zoe Lister Jones and him meeting the character of Elaine who'd asked him to save himself for her and he has so when he sees her his first reaction is to vomit is that in another good scene is uh getting a sense of who Elaine is as a as a young girl because they're on the cruise ship someone dies on the cruise and the way Bo meets her is that she's banging on everyone's door in the cruise ship like there's a dead man in the pool I thought that was such a good thing what's also creepy is the Polaroid that he's kept of her where she has it and he has it in writing he says that he'll he'd wait for her is a picture of her next to that dead man in the pool so every everything culminates at Nathan Lane's house because the daughter is crazy as hell everybody's on medication everyone's medicated and she convinces Bo to go into Nathan's room the dead son and then she starts defacing it she wants to paint the walls and then she wants to like do like a murder suicide so she's trying to convince Beau to drink paint but he won't so she drinks a bunch of like paint and dyes and when the mom shows up she thinks Nathan is responsible so then Nathan has to flee and this is like this movie is so out of control yes I loved it but it's out of control because then the middle portion of the film is bold leaving this house like the middle hour Bo leaves from the house and he ends up running into a woman who's part of this link a group called the Orphans of the forest yeah there are a traveling theater troupe that's Haley Squires who we reviewed in Ben wheatley's in the earth she's really good performance and I Daniel Blake uh but her name her character name is Penelope much which is of course an uh a reference to Homer's The Odyssey that's the wife that uh Odysseus is trying to go home to her character's pregnant in this film but in this middle hour we get a 20 I think it's like 25 minute sequence of like this play being put on so when you watch the trailer and you see like the weird like cartoonish visuals that's this play and basically what this play is is like Bose like dream life where he met a woman he fell in love with had three sons but then loses them in like a flood and spends the rest of his life finding them and I thought that was very powerful and it's very meta because the play that's being told we learned that it's all in his head he's projected himself into this scenario that's not actually the play that's going on and he we see him as an old man reuniting with his sons on the stage of this very same play the oldest son played by Michael Gandolfini and that was one of the moments where I felt it's very unsettling and yes um emotional in a way that is hard to calibrate yeah and it ends with a quote that really hit me hard because someone says you're so lost in your own selfishness no one could find you and I was like God damn and it it reminded me because it's fun film does have a lot of humor but it reminded me of um the TV show Ab Fab when Pat when Eddie's talking about her daughter staffy and she says when someone deliberately overeducated themselves out of the possibility of useful employment and that's kind of what I think this story is about like how Bo's Mom feels about him that he he's so delicate like she did the best she could to love him sacrifice so much and then he turns into this nibbling like he's useless he's having the epitome of a flaccid man yes uh if we're referencing Merrell and Death Becomes Her um that that see the sequence where with this really the the sound design is so good because it's very it's like a trance you're put in as we're watching and the visuals are great it reminded me of like Salvador Dali trying to tell the Christ story or the Book of Job kind of because it feels there's a this felt like what I wanted the last few versions of Pinocchio to feel like but Alice in Wonderland Wizard of Oz like it has that level of finesse I agree so at this point we realized that because I thought I had this movie figured out like the first two hours I'm like oh Bo is afraid it's about a guy who is crippled by his own anxiety and so we're seeing him go through life just in incapable of achieving anything but then I realized oh no it's about how his mother and and all her sort of manipulations and really created this nibbling example of like a human that we see in front of us and then Patty lupong so Patty LuPone is the adult Mona and in the flashbacks she's interchangeable often with Zoe Lister Jones I thought that was really well done because that's where we also learn she convinced her son that he was going to die as soon as he had sex kind of like but with spiders and praying man well not even sex I got the sense that if he ejaculated he ejaculated he will die because she tells him that that's how your father died like when you were conceived and your daughter and your dad ejaculated in me he died and that's how his dad died and his grandfather died so it would seem that Beau has never even ejaculated so that's when we get to his mom's house who we learned was created a super business she basically like Jeff Bezos it's really funny because they keep talking about this like like entrepreneur in the super business and she's super rich but we never really understand what she did we do see we get like a little scene where we see all of her accomplishments but it just sounds like she did everything real estate retail uh manufacturing but it looks like maybe her son was involved in at least the advertising maybe the experiment maybe testing out some of those well it's also not clear when he's sort of disconnected himself because his mom is super rich and super like obsessed with him but Beau lives in like squalor so something happened where it's like he tried to disconnect but we don't get the sense of how long it's been but this is when Parker Posey comes in because Bo shows up to the funeral late so it's already over but the funeral was recorded so that he we the audience and Bo can hear and see it and we're in the which castigates him like Bo refused but Bo couldn't be bothered to make it and the songs the song selections in this section of the film are great uh there's a song by Brett calls everything I own which I thought was perfect because it's all about taking someone's love for granted and losing them Shirley Bassey does a fantastic cover of that and then that's followed by Nina Simone's uh isn't it a pity which there's a line in that song like how we take each other's love uh without thinking well so both sort of like in the house despondent when all of a sudden someone walks in like hello hello and it's Parker Posey the grown-up Elaine the girl from the cruise ship and she's like oh [ __ ] I thought the funeral was at 8pm not 8 A.M so here's some flowers I guess I'll call an Uber and then Bo follows her outside and is like Elaine I'm Bo and she's like no way and immediately she wants to have sex with him so they go to Bo's mother's room she's an employee of Monas by the way and there are so many good scenes in this movie but Parker Posey in this movie and this sex scene is oh this is called status written all over yeah it's amazing because she straps a condom on his ass and starts riding him and of course he's never ejaculated before so he doesn't even last like 10 Strokes before it's all over and then she's like well I gotta keep going because I need to finish and then all of a sudden we realize that she has died from ejaculating yes she's froze she's become this she's become stiff and then who pops up Patty LuPone she's like you thought I was dead fool no I was testing your ass you ain't [ __ ] and then she lists off all the reasons why like look at you're having sex with some [ __ ] in my bed when you think I'm dead and then she just lists off everything like you yeah then Parker puts a song on while they're having sex which is also notable it's very important part and it's very funny because she puts on Mariah Carey's always be my baby and then right when she like lets him penetrate her she's like oh let me restart the song and he doesn't even last like the first verse and then you see a shot of his testicles yes that's important because in the beginning when Bo runs out of his apartment nude and they think he's the birthday stab man we do get a glimpse glimpse of his genitals and I was like oh God his testicles look so distended and Nathan Lane talking and then Nathan Lane the surgeon is like hey just so you know like your sack is abnormally large we should probably look into that and then we find so when he ejaculates Parker's like I think you busted through that bag but the other thing is there's such because the gag is that his scrotum is distended because he's never ejaculated but when she arrives the tone changes in a way that's also really kind of touching and they have a nice because you're not looking at this man in a sexual way at all in this film and then all of a sudden there's kind of this brief sweetness to it well yes because when he tells her I waited for you my little one feeling got a little tingly yeah he's like I have it in writing and she warmed up to right away but but I think the real star of this movie is Patty Lou Paul oh my God and if so we were going to talk about it but I feel like people would compare this to everything everywhere all at once and I do think it's comparable because we have like mother child relationship kind of like a fever dream um both are pretty dark but I think you know if everything everywhere is like a dream I think this is like a nightmare it's definitely more dark but it Jamie Lee can win for best supporting I feel like Patti LuPone should win for best support Patty LuPone I mean she's scary when her ass gets started and she starts letting her son know what's what I was like oh my gosh which I because I didn't mind all the kind of extended sequences if she's just stomping around this house and she explains to him well first she goes well he's like I know that like I knew you weren't dead and she's like how did you know he's like well I recognize the birthmark in the Cascade because we see the body and he's like that was our housekeeper when I was a kid Marta Patty LuPone paid her housekeeper to be decapitated and pretend to be her in the casket not only that she says she bought she never had to pay Marta she volunteered her service oh she's the volunteer of uh March volunteered and then both like well how much did you pay her enough so her entire family could quit working and never have to work again like this lady was very serious oh she's so mad and then I love this Daddy is very mad I love the scene where she count recounts where he gave her the same gift two years in a row oh my God Bette Midler soundtrack for for the boys and then when when Patty is talking about her mom and then we we uh the camera pans over to A A Portrait of Patty's mom beau's Grandma who looks like Betty Davis as the Virgin Queen yeah like like Betty Davis were on Gullah Gullah Island oh my God it's so ugly it's ugly um but then the real gag is all of a sudden guess who pops out of the bathroom Bo's therapist and then Patty LuPone starts playing over the like sound system in the house Bose therapy sessions so she's been in cahoots with the therapist she probably paid his ass and she's been listening to all of Bo's tapes and that's when we realized like Bo blames his mom for all of his issues well also it's notable that since he believes his father died upon ejaculation in his mother he's never known his father and that's something that's haunted him he's always wanted to know so then guess what his mom does she's like oh you want to know the truth bring your ass over here and we find out that Bo's recurring dream is that he's like in a bathtub and there are like two versions of himself and so he's watching his other version get dragged into an attic the brave version and also kind of the one time that he made a choice right and his mom goes oh that dream that's not a dream I used to lock your ass in the Attic get your ass up that guy wasn't a dream stupid there was a memory and then we find out that Bo's dad is locked in the Attic along with like a Monster version of his penis that has claws and teeth and he's screaming his name it is very much zulowski's possession and then Jeeves the veteran from Nathan Lane's house was instructed to kill Bo so he's been following him so then Jeeves shows up and attacks the giant penis but the penis kills Jeeves stabbing scrotum and then Bo is able to get back downstairs and then Patty LuPone starts railing into him again and he strangles her but he doesn't kill her he just leaves the house jumps on a boat and then rides off into like the lake or the river but then he ends up in like a cave which turns into that aquatic Coliseum and then we're and then we're at the end where he's being put on trial this movie is like I think if he if you're a child which we all are if you have a parent which we all do if you are a parent I feel like you can relate you just have to get over the fact that it's I mean it's not meant to be reality I feel like people who didn't like everything everywhere all at once were being you just like you just gotta let the [ __ ] wash over you you're being too literal this is this is our house Cinema should be challenging um innovative and you're supposed to when you leave a theater if something's if it's art you are contemplating it afterwards but I don't need I'm not a smartest person and I just think like you just gotta let it wash over you and then you can feel what's happening like this is a story about a man who has a lot of guilt over and a lot of trauma related to his mom and then his mom feeling like I gave up everything for you to raise you the best I can and now and you ain't [ __ ] that's basically what it's about and then you think when you think like as a human I think we all would agree that when we think about a loving relationship like if you look up loving relationship in the dictionary there would be a picture of a mother with her child that's like the epitome well that's the whole symbol of he had he for her the trip home he buys that little the little statue of uh the Virgin Mary what I've took to be the Virgin Marian or Mary Mags or his Christ's mother the Virgin Mary and the baby right which she also has is the same replica of outside her house yes but I think we can also many of us can relate to that that you know the the most loving relationship of all can be the most toxic relationship so I thought this film because it gets you like two-thirds of the way through without realizing that and then it's like oh my God so I was I feel very connected to the story it took me on a ride I we watched it yesterday and I was my allergies were terrible so I was miserable and I still was able to be very connected so I know it's a good movie and I don't know we we were talking and I felt like I know people are gonna be mad if I say this but I feel like I've known a lot of people who when I get to know them I think like God your parents must be so disappointed in you and that's a real thing like if I were a parent and I put my all into this kid and then they end end up just being like this disappointing and as she says just rejected me and is telling everyone like I'm the reason why they can't have a healthy relationship I'm the reason this and that I will be mad too of of course being selfish and not thinking that I could have contributed to any of it but that's the beauty of this story is the complexity of that sort of relationship I'm not trying to minimize that this person had legitimate mental health issues but I think that really that sort of relationship is very complicated and this film does a really good job of executing that balance and in the end so the I would give this film four out of five though the reason I wouldn't give it five is because I did feel like it felt a little long because Bo is a difficult character to sit with he is because it's so pathetic but I feel like that was necessary so that in the end when he's on trial and it would seem that his mother kind of has a valid point it's like well yeah because he's just pitiful like Beyond just any sort of emotional like like legitimate issues I mean and you know ariaster seems to really prize these family units these relationships that are perverted by dysfunction yeah like like considerable dysfunction and this is in keeping with that but this is also the first time we've seen him with a male lead that we're focusing on intensely and I don't know if that has a difference either but I think joaquin's performance is really good but yeah it's it's hard to stay with him so long because it's but that's part of the frustration is these things just keep happening to him and at one point he is not helping himself but some of these situations are really helpless it is that's true yes because we get when we get to the part where um he is not sure if the news of his mother's death is a memory or whatever and Amy Ryan's comforting him he's crying like I also had a reaction to everybody it reminded me at the end of Jacob's Ladder the original with Tim Robbins where he wakes up and is kind of uh I'm sure I don't know that I I just found that very resonant yeah uh and the bodies lying around there's just bodies in the streets in the city he's living in it's very much um Liliana cavani's debut of the year of the cannibals that movie does that too where we there's a world where there's just these bodies lying around in the street Parker Posey's great LuPone gives an amazing performance I think Joaquin Phoenix does a really really good job um I could see him being nominated yeah for an Academy Award Parker yeah I love Parker Posey uh she looks great she looks fantastic uh the name Elaine actually means Sun Ray or kind of like a ray of light what would you give this film four out of five I think yeah I thought it was excellent um it was shot by Pavel po rosalski who also shot hereditary Midsummer and it looks great all the little details uh the hacks and cloak who also did the score for mid-summer the score the sound design I mean it's just this is a diff typical film this definitely probably couldn't have been financed as his first film I think he had to have that trajectory that that ariaster has had to make this film but I would recommend you to be well rested have your snacks ready and just be ready to watch some crazy [ __ ] but I will definitely watch it again Sam anything else no hit the thanks button listen to our podcast bye foreign

Channel: Fish Jelly Film Reviews

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Id: IQ5nHRQ04zk

Length: 31min 40sec (1900 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023