3 Hour Nightmare with Joker star Joaquin Phoenix is ​​the worst and best movie marathon of the year

Following horror hits Hereditary and Midsommar, Ari Aster described his new film as an experience designed to make you feel like a loser while watching it. Before the theatrical release of Beau is Afraid, which can now be seen on the big screen, I was allowed to see the Joaquin Phoenix mindfuck in a preview.

I didn’t feel like a loser doing it. Instead, Beau is Afraid triggered a physical reaction in me that I can only describe as sickness. So get yourself one 3-hour nightmare of the most oppressive kind caught!

Beau is Afraid is a grueling horror trip that hardly fits into one genre

With his new film, Aster didn’t want to make another pure horror film. Only: The film, which he himself classified as a comedy, also has little to do with classic comedy. Unless you find it amusing to watch a neurotic, anxious human for three hours Walk through his personal hell to accompany.

In the end, Beau is Afraid ends up somewhere between psycho-mindfuck, horror trip, oppressive character study, gags with black humor and a surreal hell inferno. (Read more: Young Joaquin Phoenix from Beau is Afraid tries to prove he’s real and fails miserably)

When the director transforms the city surrounding Phoenix’ title character into an anarchic battlefield right from the start, where death could be lurking around every corner, the stress factor when watching the film rises to a maximum.

Within the first 45 minutes of Beau is Afraid, I felt like I’d walked through an entire feature film, which while it made me laugh every now and then, mostly made me laugh Nerves constantly strained has. And that was just the start of this 179-minute odyssey…

My unusually physical experience of the Joaquin Phoenix nightmare

The longer Aster’s new film ran, the more an exhausted malaise spread through me, which I usually only feel when a Illness like a cold or flu announces.

At some point I wasn’t sure anymore whether it was the film or whether I really happened to be getting sick at that moment. Simultaneously, the screen played images of Phoenix as Beau, who ends up as a patient/hostage in the home of a bizarrely cheerful family while a traumatized war veteran neighbor waits like a feral animal for the order to attack.

I could write an entire article just about the passage that leads Beau in the woods at night to a strange theater group where he is in a felt endless animation sequence suddenly becomes part of the following performance.

At some point halfway through Aster’s film, I had capitulated to the crushing effect of this cruel and strangely hypnotic film marathon. Beau’s ordeal became my own – although I can’t remember the last time I felt so physically overwhelmed at the cinema.

In Joker, Phoenix played a man who goes through hell, ends up at the bottom and becomes a psychopathic criminal (and legendary Batman villain) as a result of the cruel world around him. In the three hours of Beau is Afraid, on the other hand, I finally gave up the prospect of some kind of morally questionable catharsis.

This 3-hour inferno features little logic or tangible rationale for the surreal episodes in Beau’s life. Even fragments from flashbacks, which are supposed to deepen the broken relationship between the main character and his mother, hardly fit with the final resolution, which made me think I had finally lost my mind.

It was probably Beau’s agonizing ordeal, the often unbearably drawn out scenes, and the whopping 3 hour running time for a film of this nature that finally conquered my body.

In any case, with Beau is Afraid Ari Aster has delivered the most unusual, challenging and (in a positive way) most exhausting film of the cinema year so far. My opinion on the work is therefore a strong recommendation – and at the same time a clear warning. By the way, I was fine the next morning.

“Beau Is Afraid”: This paranoia epic explodes everything!

In the new edition of the FILMSTARTS podcast on the screen, moderator Sebastian and his guest Christoph talk about “Beau Is Afraid”, the new film by “Midsommar” maker Ari Aster. You can find out in the podcast whether the film lives up to the high expectations and what skills you have to be washed with to get through this epic.

The screen love is the weekly cinema and film podcast of our colleagues from FILMSTARTS.

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