After his flamboyant entry into the world of horror with Heredity, then its ice Midsommar, Ari Aster, from the height of his 36 years, very quickly managed to make a place in the world of cinema. In other words, Beautiful is afraid Attracts curiosity... But then, what really is it?
Third film: Discord
The third film seems to be that of discord for the current young generation of genre cinema. The The Northman of Robert Eggers has cleaved critical and spectators, and Beautiful is afraid – after the first returns – is about to do the same. Between the boredom peak described by some or the umpteenth masterpiece of the foal of A24, where is the film worn by Joaquin Phoenix?
We have to talk about the first half hour of the film. A grotesque loosening where everything aspires to distill the glauque within a universe that seems to be collapsing on itself, in the midst of which Beau Wassermann tries to fight. Poor guy embodied by Joaquin Phoenix, bountiful, depressive, certainly perclusive of shrinking disorders, against whom the whole world seems to sting: junkies drugged up to the bone, recalcitrant sellers, untrapped exhibitionist... Total! And Aster has fun with his staging to turn the audience's stomach.
The sound of horror
If the film opens with a subjective sight delivery, it is the sound design that will be immediately retained (like the strange gimmick sound of Midsommar (hou-ah!) or the tongue slammingHeredity). Immediately anxiogenic, it will be punctuated with resounding taloches, like the spanking with the newborn punctuating a rope mount, distilling this pure oppression in the viewer's mind. In parallel, Aster creates a constant shift between long musical pieces and what is played in the image. A desynchronization that obviously recalls Beau's very condition, lost in this world that seems to want his skin, and adds to the fainting malaise of the feature film.
Playing on the image of the mirror, the camera of Aster makes live the background, moves in wide movements, sticks to the character (makes us live the world of Beau), dazzling on details that yet fly. Each plan is nourished – sometimes wasted – with tinglings that it is impossible to capture in a single viewing, the characters are drowned in always subtly disproportionate sets (too big as his apartment or, on the contrary, too narrow), the multiple (and obvious) rifles of Chekov trigger one after another... And it must be noted that Aster, in his initial desire to create a « comedy nightmaredesque », misses the comic aspect but certainly touches in the mile at the glaucous delirium level.
From Man to Mother
Then the film will gradually introduce characters into Beau's (terrifying) life. His mother, of course, the central pillar of the film, but also Elaine (his vacation lover to whom he promises his virginity), a couple that turns him in the car and decides to take care of him, a very scary ex-soldier full of PTSD (Denis Ménochet)... Like a very recent Men d
Aster is going to do his smart, sometimes lose us, then give us clues through a theatrical part or a television segment swinging, looking like nothing, a good part of the plot at the head of the spectator. Disappearing, he still transpires from these radical choices a will of a total cinema, which would embrace all the arts, convoking animation, venturing on the boards, sometimes daring the most complete abstraction and a grotesquery decidedly daring (we will not say any more, but we were not decidedly ready for the face-to-face between Menochet and Zboub).
Oedipus on the Island of the Dead
Then Beautiful is afraid enter its last third, resolutely too long, and convoking the two pitfalls that these paranoid films would encounter: not delivering anything to the spectator (there would then remain only a pure madness, defeat of all senses and pretext to the only visual slippery) or say too much. The reflections put forward by the film are exciting, especially after Beau's entry into what is an obvious wink at Arnold Böcklin's paintings (and his series lIsland of the Dead). But the key to the film ends up being delivered to a plateau (materialized by an image-mosaic of her mother, well, not a more word traitor!), betraying a much clearer intrigue than what she looks like at first glance.
In short, Beautiful is afraid offers us real moments of sideration (the first third, the animated part, the sex scene to name but a few) and mobilizes an exciting array of themes that susurreures us in the ear that Aster would have some mummy issues... If the film is too long and provides keys to understanding sometimes too obvious, and if it was falsely sold to us as a comedy when it is rather a horrific drama, Beautiful is afraid We have some of the most striking cinema images of this year 2023 and once again prove to us the maestria of Ari Aster.
Super critic, I agree with you, too. It is impossible not to think of a variant of Böcklin but a pity to fall into a justification too agreed and already largely integrated the first two hours. I don't think we needed an explanation of the text and the real might have had to stop at sea. A slamming film that addresses all genres from the initiatory tale to the tragic comedy drama with brilliance but which is lost may be a little on the way.
On the other hand, I would be curious to see a study of the symbols that appear in the film. Like what you did on Men, there are some very interesting readings to come, just with the forest theater.
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