"Beau is Afraid" starts brilliantly, proceeds intriguingly, and finally gets so weird it becomes annoying and overstays its welcome.
They say you only know how much is enough when you know how much is more than enough. I remember with Aster's previous movie "Midsommar", I actually considered turning it off early on, because it seemed massively overlong and moved very slowly. It seemed it might become boring. I persevered, though, and realised Aster knew exactly what he was doing with the length and slow pace, lulling us into a false sense of security, making us empathise with the characters and feel the complex emotions they'd be feeling.
A director hadn't held the audience in the palm of his hand since Kubrick.
With "Beau is Afraid", it feels like Aster loosens his grasp on us toward the end. The movie just gets so unaccountably bizarre that I lost interest a little bit. You know it's not going to answer its questions, and then it asks so many, you lose track of them and stop paying attention.
The end still has flashes of brilliance, mostly Kubrickian and Lynchian touches, like startling still shots, and a meeting with a strange man who knows more about the protagonist than he should, a la the indelible, nightmarish scene with Robert Blake in "Lost Highway".
Joaquin Phoenix also gives a great turn, similar to his triumph in "Joker". His work here is Oscar-worthy, but we know it won't get any attention from the Academy, because the movie's just too weird, as with Aubrey Plaza's brilliant work in the similarly inscrutable "Black Bear".
Aster looked on track to become one of the all time great directors. His first movie was very good, and his second was great. Kubrick, Scorsese and Spielberg all took longer than that to make their first great movie. "Beau is Afraid" is a small misstep. I'm hoping that now Aster knows where the limits lie, he'll continue to go up to them, but won't need to go over them again.
They say you only know how much is enough when you know how much is more than enough. I remember with Aster's previous movie "Midsommar", I actually considered turning it off early on, because it seemed massively overlong and moved very slowly. It seemed it might become boring. I persevered, though, and realised Aster knew exactly what he was doing with the length and slow pace, lulling us into a false sense of security, making us empathise with the characters and feel the complex emotions they'd be feeling.
A director hadn't held the audience in the palm of his hand since Kubrick.
With "Beau is Afraid", it feels like Aster loosens his grasp on us toward the end. The movie just gets so unaccountably bizarre that I lost interest a little bit. You know it's not going to answer its questions, and then it asks so many, you lose track of them and stop paying attention.
The end still has flashes of brilliance, mostly Kubrickian and Lynchian touches, like startling still shots, and a meeting with a strange man who knows more about the protagonist than he should, a la the indelible, nightmarish scene with Robert Blake in "Lost Highway".
Joaquin Phoenix also gives a great turn, similar to his triumph in "Joker". His work here is Oscar-worthy, but we know it won't get any attention from the Academy, because the movie's just too weird, as with Aubrey Plaza's brilliant work in the similarly inscrutable "Black Bear".
Aster looked on track to become one of the all time great directors. His first movie was very good, and his second was great. Kubrick, Scorsese and Spielberg all took longer than that to make their first great movie. "Beau is Afraid" is a small misstep. I'm hoping that now Aster knows where the limits lie, he'll continue to go up to them, but won't need to go over them again.