r/AriAster

I was looking at my Letterboxd and saw that my 3 most watched films are all Ari Aster and it made me wonder what your guys’ most watched films are and if any are Ari Aster

it's three things

Hey Aster fans 👋

I run a small movie tournament site called BingeBracket. We wanted to see how Ari Aster's films stack up against the other two directors who've defined modern horror this past decade — so I built a bracket: Aster vs. Jordan Peele vs. Robert Eggers.

8 films, 3 rounds, takes about a minute:

- Hereditary, Midsommar (Aster)

- Get Out, Us, Nope (Peele)

- The Witch, The Lighthouse, Nosferatu (Eggers)

Early voting has Hereditary tied with Get Out - curious to see whether enough Aster fans can swing it :)

Hope you enjoy the tournament!
Kate

(Mods approved this post, thanks to them)

Picture this. It’s 2023. You’ve been a fan of Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” and a moderate but cautious fan of “Midsommar”. You’ve heard about his next film which was previously called “Disappointment Blvd.”, changed this time to “Beau is Afraid”. You hear Aster describe this as a “Jewish Lord of the Rings”. You see the trailer, and you wish you didn’t because you think this is a film best enjoyed in a vacuum. The film costs $35 million, which is a blockbuster budget for an A24 film. And you know it won’t make its money back. Finally you make it to the theater with your friends, the theater is mostly empty. The first shot you see is a baby being born and his butt is spanked. Three hours later, you are emotionally distraught and you’ve never laughed harder at a film in your life. 

“Beau is Afraid” really polarized audiences when it came out. Since Aster was known primarily as a horror director, no one was expecting a dark comedy about a neurotic man going on a trip. People also criticized the film for being self-indulgent and way too long. That’s extremely valid, it is long and it is self indulgent, but good lord what a viewing experience it gives. If you don’t like this film, I completely understand. I didn't even know what to think of it at the end. 

Now I think it’s a masterpiece. Here’s why. Spoilers ahead. But really you should just watch the film before reading this review, because it should be enjoyed in a vacuum. 

The film is about Beau, a neurotic man living in the city who finds out his mother has recently died. He goes on an adventure to find her, resulting in him getting hit by a truck, spending time with a military family, witnessing a girl commit suicide by paint, seeing a play in the woods, finally having sex with Parker Posey and it kills her, finding out his mother is alive, that he has a twin brother, and his father is a giant penis, and he eventually finds himself at a trial organized by his mother where he drowns. 

Aster seems to have gone in a different direction after “Midsommar”, especially with “Beau” and “Eddington”. These films are comedies but they don’t have the same pace or timing as regular comedies. I joked that watching “Beau” is like laughter at a funeral, but you’re laughing at the corpse. I would say that the films are funny, but they are comedies which never tell you when to laugh. Sometimes in an Aster comedy it’s impossible to tell whether you should be stressed out or laugh, but it’s frequently both. 

And that’s another reason why I love the film, no other film has better depicted stress for me than this. Throughout the film, Beau’s attempts at communicating with others feels futile. He feels trapped in a world where people have their own motivations which don’t make sense. As someone who is moderately autistic, I’ve been in Beau’s shoes before, and chances are you have too. Who hasn’t been accosted by someone on the street because they want to antagonize someone, who hasn’t met someone you knew was trouble but no one around you seemed to acknowledge it, who hasn’t felt judgement at the hands of their own parents for reasons you can’t understand, and who hasn’t wanted to escape into the woods when the world gets too stressful. And if you’ve had to live with one parent, the film's silliest twist is really on the nose. To children like Beau, an absent father is little more than a penis that spawned him. 

One critic made a comparison that stuck with me, and that was comparing the film to Voltaire’s “Candide”. For those who don’t know, the novel is the story of a guy named Candide who is taught by a philosopher that we live in the best of all possible worlds. Then he goes on a series of misadventures where horrible things happen to him and the other main characters. By the end of the novel, Candide learns whatever God there is doesn’t care about the doings of man and that he has to tend to his own garden. This film is like that, but Beau never finds his garden, and the film finds time to laugh at him and with him. 

And I keep coming back to the ending. After Beau drowns, the credits roll of a long shot of the crowd watching the trial slowly leaving. That crowd is us. We watch this character go through a horrible journey and then leave. It’s also on the nose but I feel like it’s a great reminder to think about those we see on the screen and in real life whose suffering is a spectacle before we move onto the next thing. The ending does feel like a long-played out joke, but whether it’s at the expense of the audience or Beau is undeterminable. 

The performances are great. Of course there’s Phoenix who is giving the role of a lifetime, Patti Lupone is great and so is the underrated Stephen McKinley Hendersonb (his performance reminded me a bit of Sy Ableman from “A Serious Man”, and Richard Kind also makes a cameo), Parker Posey’s death scene had me and my friend laughing for a full minute, Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan are hilarious as an aw-gee-aw-shucks couple who don’t realize what’s going on with their daughter or the violent veteran they have in their house, Armen Nahapetian is great as little Beau, and Kylie Rogers gives an interesting performance as a teenager who feels like an antagonist you can sometimes feel sorry for. There is also this beautiful sequence halfway through incorporating animation and live-action which was done by the Chilean duo Cristobal Leon and Joaquin Cocina, who animated the horrifying film “The Wolf House” (which is also on Tubi, give it a watch). 

Often we talk about a movie which couldn’t be made in the past or made in the future. This a film which couldn’t have been made at any time or point in film history and it did. Aster thanked A24 for being “stupid” to greenlight the film, and I think we’re all the better for it. For every fun, dumb blockbuster, we need a big-budget auteur flop. Jaques Tati’s “Playtime” (which was also an influence on “Beau”) was a major flop at the box-office and is now considered a masterpiece in the Criterion Collection. Disney’s “Treasure Planet” was a major flop because of it’s 2D animation and unconventional narrative, and it’s now considered a Disney classic. I think “Beau” is in the same boat (pun intended) even if its reception is more controversial. We need these films, they’re our monuments to cinema, that even in the face of financial defeat life will find a way. And while critical response is understandably divisive now, I think it’s destined to become a classic. Maybe years from now so many people will annoyingly call it an “underrated classic” that it will become overrated. 

Or maybe I’m still on that Peyote trip I took when I watched “Baby Geniuses: The Space Baby”.

My oddly long ticket which matches the vibe of the movie. Couldn’t help but laugh when it came out of the machine.

New Ari movie from A24! With Scarjo! Called Scapegoat!