![]() This seems more plausible, practically speaking, when you consider that Beau, far from carving out an independent life in the city without support from his mother, lives in a recently opened MW Industries “rehabilitation neighborhood” depicted on a poster just behind Beau as he examines the collage. (I have no doubt that, had I been able to get AMC to pause the film for me, I’d have seen others from the cast.) In other words, Mona has marshaled the manpower of MW Industries to create a sort of “Synecdoche, New York” or “Truman Show” situation for Beau, in which she casts him as the central figure in a brutal odyssey to test his loyalty. Most persuasive is the collage of MW employees that adds up to Mona’s face, which contains not only Elaine (Parker Posey) but also the tattooed bum who chases Beau into his building in the film’s first minutes and Roger (Nathan Lane), who takes Beau in after his unfortunate car accident/stabbing. Two items, both from Beau’s brief survey of the MW Industries mini-museum Mona keeps in her home, would seem to support this theory. In just days, she has paid (or forced) a beloved employee to die on her behalf installed a ledger stone in the wall and a memorial to the grisly chandelier accident that took her life and arranged an opulent funeral for herself. Indeed, she so convincingly fakes her own death that Beau finds published obituaries online, in addition to an “MW Digital”-watermarked news clip reporting on her fate. But we have each seen the film twice in an effort to crack its code, and we have some thoughts. “I just cannot speak to what those things are, and shouldn’t.”Īster’s full intentions with “Beau Is Afraid” are known only to him - and maybe his mother and therapist. “I made something for an audience and I hope that it is exciting and fun and makes people feel things,” Aster said in a recent interview with the Associated Press. ![]() ![]() But he would rather not do the unpacking for you. Like, what was that?Īs with his previous films, 2018’s “Hereditary” and 2019’s “Midsommar,” Aster packs a lot into his surreal, alternately funny and nightmarish three-hour head trip through the mind of a middle-aged man named Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), whose attempt to return home to visit his mother turns into a hellish odyssey of anxiety, guilt and shame. If you’ve just watched Ari Aster’s new horror-comedy “Beau Is Afraid,” you probably have a few questions.
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