Beau is Afraid Explained | Ending and Plot | Spoilers
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- Опубликовано: 2 июн 2024
- Beau is Afraid Explained -- This video explains the ending and plot of Beau is Afraid, the new Ari Aster film. There are spoilers for Beau is Afraid in this video. This is your spoiler warning.
Chapter Timestamps
0:00 Intro
1:41 Beau's Mother
2:31 Therapy and Emotional Trauma
3:16 Beau's Apartment
6:35 Grace and Roger
7:22 Deceased Disrespect
8:09 Traveling Theater Group
9:00 Childhood Trauma
9:41 Love Life
10:02 Ending Explained
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#BeauIsAfraid #Ending #EndingExplained 
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From the beggining the theme is WATER. As in Wasserman (Water in German). The bath tub when adult, the pills that have to be taken with water, the pool , the cruise, the bathtub he doesnt want to go when kid, the flooding of his town, the last scene in the boat, the bottle of water in the store...etc..you name it...But why WATER? because psychologically water has two main meanings:
1) The UNCONSCIOUS. This element has always depicted the deep and vast our unconscious mind is.
2) FEMININE ENERGY. The source of life, the nurturing liquid
If you think about it, too little water kills you from thirst. But too much water kills you too, from drowning.
Beau was overwhelmed from the kind of TOO MUCH "water" that is typical from a narcissitic mother, which ...SMOTHERS..
Mona says her mother didnt even touch her, meaning that she had "no water"..a typical response to trauma is to the opposite of what the trauma caused. So she, as mother of Beau, exhibits the other side of the coin, the other pole of the same trauma which is "too much water".
Finally, when confronted at the end with his inner voices, his inner Judge, his introyected mother, etc...The Ego, Beau, is swallowed by the waters of the unconscious, which is a way of saying he went crazier. He drowned in his mother´s excesive "love bomb".
A narcissistic mother does not let the child SEPARATE from her. So the child, and then the adult, have no sense of individuality. In the case of a boy, he grows with no sense of manhood, hence why his rebellious part was locked alongside with his virility n the form of a giant, repressed and angry penis.
We can keep going on the analysis. I loved the movie. It is not a linear, pop movie..my wife hated it. Me a psychologist, was in owe of such a magestic way to deliver what a pychologically castrated man can feel in the real world.
Wow, this is a great analysis of the movie. Thanks for sharing! 👍
Kudos to you, good sir. I also loved the movie and you were the one who magesticaly delivered to the conscious mind yet another layer of awesomeness (perhaps the most important one) in this beautiful intricate movie.
nah, movie is a load of shit i think.
That's what I've got as well. From one point I said to the guy I went to see this film with: 'If Beau dies, he MUST drown. There was no other option.
Because he is drowning all the time while being alive. I do like that particular concept, but still it only explains a small amount of the portrayed weirdness.
Legendary
I personally saw the film as not only a prolonged intense panic attack but also a portrayal of the effects of suffering from narcissistic abuse. That harm stays with you especially when it’s from a parental figure.
100% agree. On rewatch, I noticed how his mom's corporate logo is on his microwave and (disgusting Irish/Hawaiian) microwave meal. He's literally surrounded by her presence, and his fear of her and the world in general are playing at volume 11 around him.
EXACTLY...💯% SPOT-ON.
YES to all of this ❤️
That's what I was thinking. But wasn't sure. My first thought after seeing Hereditary was to wonder if Ari Aster had NPD or sociopathy in the family.
Exactly what I thought. No idea why it’s being described as a comedy. I thought it was brilliant but such a hard watch with all the affects of his abuse
I saw the final scene as a representation of the mind of someone who has suffered emotional abuse. The yelling between sides (his mother/the announcer vs the defense attorney) is his internal dialogue. On one side, the harsh, self-critical voice that is unrelenting, and then his true self who can forgive. He is on trial his entire life. Ultimately the past abuse was too much to overcome.
I think it was his twin brother. “It wasn’t a dream, it was a memory”.
I feel like this movie follows the line of a David Lynch film, where the symbolism is louder than what is literal. I feel like everything that happens in the film is actually happening (in the film), but the big takeaway from it all is that you need to feel and interpret what you’re seeing in a symbolic manner
like the Internal Family System therapy, or the sub-personalities theories of psychology: The inner Judge introyected by the narcissistic mother and the true Self. The Ego (Beau) cant handle the inner voices anymore thus it is swallowed by the water, which always represent the unconscious.
Interesting take, I saw the last moments as guilt for having killed his mother and literally being drowned by his guilty conscience. He begs and pleads for her to forgive him, thst he’ll do anything, but finally at the end he stops screaming and crying. I personally took this as an act of defiance. The look he has in his eye sort of reminds suggests to me that he’s done begging, and he allows this psrt of himself to die. Although it is obviously up for debate.
Pink Floyd's "The Trial".
The old man in the attic wasn't his dad. He said it was his braver self as a child being locked away by his mom.
I think it was an identical twin? The scene where his mother scolds him on telling him that it was a memory not a recurring dream - just what I made my conclusion.
The dick and balls was his dad. Before the camera turns to it, you can actually hear it wheeze "my boy".
The penis in the attic symbolizes his deadbeat Dad who was nothing more than an insemination tool
@@robertwhite4864 Didn’t he say that was him projecting what would happen if he asked his mother about his dad?
The GUY in the attic was his brother/braver self, but his dad was also in the attic... ya know.... the... the thing in the attic
The shot of Elaine applying makeup and looking at the mirror while sitting down before they hookup is parallel to a flashback Beau has of his mother when he's young.
That's a great point, it adds a whole new layer of darkness to the story!!
maybe cause Elaine is actually a representation of his mother from his perspective but with different body and face
Because Elaine is his mom and is the little girl. The virgin, the madonna and the crone. His mother is the Earth Goddess and he is God. He is fertility hence the giant penis that can not be destroyed. His mother is the sacred Feminine and the Earth and can not be destroyed either. The God the Goddess and the Holy Child make the the Gnostic trinity.
Ari Aster is playing a game with an ancient belief system and asking everyone "what would it be like if the Goddess was insane and she drove her son insane as well" well it was fun.
@@JohnGaltGurgi now that is just a bunch of nonsense. Don't get sudo-mystical here, this movie is pure psychoanalysis.
As someone who has extreme social anxiety, this was a great representation of what it feels like. The fear is illogical, but this is a good visual representation of what it feels like.
Get help creep
I agree on the depiction part. This exactly what it is, it mirrors a reality that is not being seen. It's a horror all the way through if you understand that the comedy is pointing to something much more sinister. A never ending horror show in which you the viewer a part of.
I agree with you. But when he said this wasn't a horror film I was like what are you talking about if he's just in his room and is just overthinking this whole situation in his head like for me this is exactly how far my mind goes when I over think things due to my ocd and paranoia
And having bad mental health like mine and other or like how beau is represented we literally live a horror/suspensful movie all the time cuz of the anxiety, trauma, and paranoia we deal with on a basis like we try to cope to the best but medication and living environment can do so little sometimes.
Such a cathartic film for Aster and audience. Making a mockery of anxiety is a great way to process it.
Bs
How I kind of made sense of the awfully looking giant penis in the attic is that the truth was kept away from him about his dad leaving his mom after Beau’s conception. The mother made up the story of the heart murmur to both explain his absence and prevent Beau from leaving her to be with a woman. The truth revealed in the attic is that his dad in reality was a “giant dick” that didn’t care to stick around. The attic being ones mind where they tuck things away.
i love this view so much
I see it as the dad only being connected to Beau in a biological way. His fathers dick is basically the only thing that makes him his father.
In reality outside of Beau's mind then what was his mother looking to show him in the attic? what could have been up there (in reality) which she hoped would let her schizophrenic son see the father just didn't care enough to stick around? when they pulled him back out later, she's saying "see! see!, that's why I lied to you" etc, I understand we're hearing these comments from Beau's perspective though, I wonder was that a more angry and unpleasant version of what she was really saying. This movie messes with your head.
I think the mom did not want to admit to herself and/or to the son that the dad left? Possibly shame and she fears that just by telling the son the truth he would abandon her too so she'd rather come up with an elaborate lie to keep him trap and dependant on her. If you think about it, one of the most consistent questions or themes through out his episodes were his questions about where his dad went, and the mystery of it and the lies made him kinder spiral out even more. I feel like his episodes would have probably been less intense had his mom maybe told him the truth? His whole life was a lie it seems and his mom made no efforts to set things right. In his case maybe the truth would have set him free.
it goes deeper than that for me. It's about the demonization of malehood itself, which is what Beau's mother inculcated into him. the "truth" about Beau's "father" was simply that he was a man, a man with a penis, something she refused to ever let Beau realize that he himself was. She raised him with the belief that him being a male was like a disease rather than something natural. That's why the penis in the attic that represents his father is a monster. Beau's mother was hiding and demonizing the reality of malehood from him until it became a monster in the attic.
I tend to interpret this movie as almost completely psychological. The amount of surrealist and symbolic elements in the movie makes me think that almost the entire plot is just a dream-like narrative exploring the psychological torment that comes with having an overbearing and abusive mother. I think to say “this part of the movie actually happened, while this part was his imagination” kind of misses the point. The narrative of this movie is dream-like, and I think it makes more sense to analyze it like one would a dream rather than try to separate reality from fiction.
I can agree with that, but why not analyze both ways?
@@TheNerdDoc I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong with analyzing it both ways, but I think the meaning of the movie is found in what the characters and situations represent. I think it’s interesting to figure out what was real and what wasn’t, but that doesn’t get us any closer to understanding the underlying meaning of the movie. To me, the only “real” thing in the movie is the relationship that Beau has with his mother, the rest is just a surrealist narrative that uses symbols to explore how this has impacted his life and the various ways in which he attempts to cope and adapt to his mother complex.
I enjoyed your analysis though and feel you brought up some great points. Thanks for taking the time to make the video and for being open to engaging in discussions here in the comments.
I completely agree. I don’t think he’s “hallucinating” at all, and it doesn’t really matter what’s real or not, it’s all just a psychological manifestation of his coddling mother and her abuse. I think the animated sequence of the play really showed what his life would be like if he just broke away from his mother. But he cannot break free and eventually it crushes him.
To me, the whole movie feels like a visual adaptation of “mother” by Pink Floyd
I completely agree. I think that interpreting things from this film in a literal sense is missing the point. To me, the purpose of the film is to depict the incredibly over exaggerated thoughts and events that occur within a deeply anxious person's mind. To show "How Beau is afraid".
Does he really live in a neighbourhood where a large tattooed man chases him to his door every day, or is it all just an exaggeration in his head? Does his therapist really work for his mother, or is it just a paranoid delusion resulting from his overbearing mother? Is his dad genuinely a giant penis monster, or is the truth that he's scared of hearing so much that his dad was "just a dick", a hookup, that he was a mistake? So much of the film is surrealist and impossible that I think you're doing it a disservice by choosing to minimize the metaphorical nature of it by writing it off as all true. Saying that this whole experience is just a long game planned by his rich mother is perhaps the lamest interpretation a person could have.
Mona, Beau’s Mother, controls every aspect of his life; Including Beau’s free will. Beau “incriminates” himself by simply having his own individual needs and boundaries outside his mother’s control. Mona, like all narcissist or psycho/sociopaths, view relationships as objects or tools to be used, including her own children. Abuse by people with these disorders happen in a cycle; which causes their victim’s personality to be eroded, their emotions disconnected, and doubts about their own reality. Mona, is a CEO of a mega corporation with her company’s logo on everything in Beau’s apartment; in which she is able to control Beau’s life in a “Truman Show” like way. Beau is constantly “incriminating” himself throughout the movie; by the end, he’s pleading with Mona to take him back. Essentially starting the cycle of malignant narcissistic abuse over and over again.
Agreed on all accounts, except I think the trial at the end is more about Beau not wanting to succumb to death. He's being judged for his actions after he has already "killed" his mother, so in essence a reset is no longer an option because he crossed that line of killing her. The movie starts with that premise (the shrink asked him directly), and ends with it actually happening (in Beau's head at least).
I think this is the most accurate depiction.
The reason it appears that way is because the whole thing is taking place in beaus head while hes dying. And beau is a serial killer and hes desperately still trying to prove hes innoncent. Beau still thinks himself the victim so his mind makes him the protagonist in his story even though hes really the antagonist.
This was spot on for real exactly what it is. Sad cause this happens everyday on real life but you gotta go through it to understand the movie fully
This is a great depiction, probably the best i've read so far
To me, Beau is a paranoid schizophrenic. The dead guy in the pool no one else could see, the flies in the chocolate fountain, grace whispering strange things to him, every phone call being misinterpreted & reaffirming his guilt & self hatred (which was always overpowered by confusion), endless hallucinations since he was a child- including his mother, father, therapist + so much more. Imagining the crazy people in the street, some of which resembled his mother’s past employees. He could sense that Toni didn’t like him, so he imagined her as being more evil/hateful than she really was. He was scared of Jeeves’ neurotic ptsd behavior, so hallucinated him chasing him through the forest with a machine gun. I think he killed his mother, Toni, and Elaine all while being too cuckoo to grasp the full weight/guilt of what he’s done. This film seemed like a terrifyingly unique perspective on what it is like to be truly insane.
He is absolutely a paranoid schizophrenic. Agreed 100%
Wait.. Elaine was the one that was running around banging on everyone's door that there was a dead guy in the pool. And there were many people trying to fish him out. Other people definitely saw that.
@@myles6235 there was no big scene made about it and everything carried on as normal. If a dead guy was found in a pool on a cruise ship there would be massive panic. & no one was trying to pull him out; there was like 2 guys on the side with a pool net not even attempting to pull him out. Beau interpreted/hallucinated every situation based on his paranoia & fear. Like when she said the chocolate fountain was shit and he literally hallucinated flies in it.
@@hahhah999 So was Elaine's fearmongering hallucinated? Even if the dead body was hallucinated it would have to have been hallucinated by both Elaine and Beau because they both make reference to it. The movie makes us believe that was the key incident that led to them becoming closer.
Elaine said the chocolate fountain was shit after he saw the bugs in it. She said it was shit because Beau had made a point to emphasize the minute dangers of every desert that was on the table. I agree it's strange that there wasn't a commotion over the dead body, but Elaine and Beau clearly know each other when they speak at the end and the dead body was how they became close (even though they were never really close) so the logical conclusion is that it was real. The fact that there wasn't a commotion speaks to the poor writing more than anything else.
@@myles6235 nah. Good writing. Every interaction he had with people was misinterpreted by Beau due to his fear/paranoia. Every phone call/real life conversation we saw was presented to us though Beau’s schizo perspective. She wasn’t actually banging on doors, I think she genuinely crushed on Beau & was coming to his room to set a hang out. He imagined her screaming and raving down the hall because he was terrified of speaking to her. It’s really beautiful writing once dissected
the writing is quite literally on the wall for me. beau is afraid = this is what it feels like to have anxiety and trauma specifically stemming from the family/maternal figure. at every turn in this film beau would have to take an action only to be hit with the worst case scenario (which to the audience seems surreal and unlikely, but to beau makes perfect sense to experience bc he’s anxious and learned to be afraid of the world bc of his mother) idk i feel like it is in his head but not in the sense that any of this is actually happening. its in his head as in he’s imagining and living through the worst his mind conjure up idk dnsjjaja
One thing that struck me, as someone who lives with mental illness that includes paranoia - There's a layer of judgement in almost every connection he makes, *including* leaving voicemails. Almost every voicemail has some snarky aside before the beep. This is so accurate to what it's like living with the internal paranoid monologue that comes with some mental illnesses. When I'm experiencing this, I have to make a reality check to see if what I perceive is really happening or just what I fear is happening. Throughout the movie, Beau runs into those asides - the note left by Grace about ingratiating himself, the conversation with his mom's lawyer. Probably a lot of the conversations happened, but were always shaded with the "what if" this is his paranoia creeping in.
Maybe the end of him “dying” was symbolic of what it’s like to never take control of things on your own, or help yourself. People can help you but only you can truly help yourself. He never did that
Yeahhhhh, that's what I got from the movie. Either he passes the test setup by his ‘mother’ or he dies from never breaking out of his pitty party mentality
His boat ride at end is the sperm going into the vagina. Also his soul getting judged on his death. The boat hits something in water and shakes and shakes like sperm hitting an egg. After his soul is judged the egg explodes with cell division. It is phallic explosion. He is both dead and new life at the same time. Ouroboros
I found it interesting that the French word for handsome, "beau," was the same name given to the protagnoist in the movie. This seems intentional, especially given his mother's possessive behavior towards him. Not every parents chooses a child's legal name based on a positive adjective, further suggesting the director's deliberate choice. Other character names like Mona and Elaine have translation and positive meanings but i don't know if they are reliable. But Toni, Roger and Martha are character names with no direct translational meaning showing that naming coud be specifically chosen in this movie. Furthermore, Beau's and Mona's last name, Wasserman, is the German translation of Aquarius, which means "waterman." The movie also includes several water elements, such as drinking water with the pills, the pool on the cruise ship, the bathtub, and the final scene. For me, it appears that the movie foreshadowed Beau's mother's overbearing love which caused his eventual drowning due to his fears, depicted literally.
I feel like a big key to the movie is the play. It's such a huge chunk of runtime for it to not have more purpose. There are some things that match up pretty well with Beau's story.
It could have numerous meanings, but this is what I got: the play gives Beau perspective on his life and his character flaws ('I'm a coward'). He recognises himself in the character and imagines a way he could change to move on from his parents, live a better life, and become the hero of his own story. He even first questions the story he was told about both his and his father's murmur due to events in the play. It is a very affirming experience for him, a powerful piece of art, and the longest respite from the constant trauma in the rest of the film. When we in the audience watch this happening to him, it gives us hope that he can become self-aware after this reflection. He will undertake the Hero's Journey in the play in his 'real' life, transforming himself and growing his character. This hope is soon cruelly shut down after the play. Beau has a moment (related to what he learned) with the strange man immediately after the play, but he completely forgets about it and reverts to his usual self the moment Jeeves appears. Here and there we get the odd moment of hope, like with Elaine just before we realise she's dead or when he appears to be sailing away, free of Mona. Then it's revealed that Beau is being controlled and monitored to such an extent he barely has agency, he never overcomes his character flaws, and he simply dies. It is a total subversion of the simple tale told in the story.
More bleakly, I will add: I've seen a lot of people (including me) come away from the film finding it very relatable and wishing to change so they don't end up wasting their life like Beau. Even though we watched a much more nonlinear narrative, we did exactly what Beau did while watching the play. It gave us perspective on our own life and struggles. But how many of us, after being inspired, will actually be able to go forward and change? And how many of us will forget about this art in a matter of weeks, or as soon as a Jeeveslike threat appears that makes us reflexively react the way we always do? Will we maintain the same habits until we die?
A strong theory is that it's all been engineered by Mona. We see that the tattooed bum that chases Beau in the beginning and who is used as evidence against Beau in the final scene is actually an employee of MW industries. As well as Dr. Cohen and Grace. We know that where he lives is a recently opened MW industries property as indicated on wall in the mansion. I believe that the therapist is an employee and is instructed to give him this medication with serious potential side effects to induce fear in him. It's reasonable to assume the internet search of side effects was influenced by Mona and that the party in his apartment actually did happen. The family including Toni were paid by Mona to keep Beau there as long as possible, which explains the coincidental delays, and the paint drinking gives the family an excuse to send Geeves after him. When he flees he hits his head and the entire theater arc is in his head. He hitchhikes to the funeral where Mona has faked her death. This theory isn't perfect. It can't explain Elaine's death, but I think it's pretty close. Maybe Elaine (who we know is an employee by the dialogue and the puke) was somehow killed by Mona when Beau climaxed?
Just about everything in the movie is MW, showcasing that he can never escape from his mother. I still think Grace and Roger represent something else beyond MW. Grace was driving a delivery vehicle of some sort, with what looked like the actual owner of the vehicle next to her. If she's on the board of some company, why would she be driving that vehicle at all? I don't know that we'll ever get the true meaning of everything in this film, but it's such an interesting movie to discuss
i do believe that at least dr. cohen is an employee, given in the pictures of employees in mona’s office forming a portrait of her, cohens picture is up there. i don’t think grace is an employee though because she told him to look at the channel to show that cohen was recording beau.
LOL I MEANT ROGER THAT WHOLE TIME INSTEAD OF DR COHEN
@@cicirose3903yeah but how do you explain the fact that the recordings literally went into the future? Beau was hitting fast forward nearly the entire time after rewinding just a bit
@@Pureblasphemy101 I think the events of the film didn’t exactly play out in the linear fashion it was presented.
I just rewatched this film tonight. Did anyone else notice that in the beginning of the film, In Beaus room, he has a picture of his dad?
He also says "hi dad" when they show it
It's also blurred at the face so you can't make out what he looks like.
Think all the imagery of Beau constantly being seen naked ties into the nightmarish feel. They say if you dream that you’re running around naked, it means you fear being vulnerable or feel that way. This whole movie is one massive nightmare.
The guy in the tub was the spider, it fell on Beau and he being afraid of spiders ran to the street naked, that's how I interpreted that part. Also the dick monster was his father, meaning that he either was a bad person, or just a penis that had participated in his conception and then left.
Exactly. Bc remember his testicles were gigantic.
The guy in the tub was the sun god being bit by the spider (usually told as a scorpion). God then falls till dec 21 then dies for three days and starts back up north on dec 25th. Beau is his father and himself. He is God and the sun. He is the masculine energy of the universe and his mother is the feminine. Elaine is just an avatar of his mother. The virgin, the madonna and the crone. Its basically Ouroboros. If you listen carefully the two people in the underworld who hit him with van say "we are just chasing our own tails"
This movie is incredibly fun to take at surface level to be honest. Just the thought that the world is the way it is in the movie is so W I L D
The scene where he is hospitalized at Roger and Graces 100% happened and was because of his mom you see Rogers face on the picture of all of her employees
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who noticed that small detail.
Beau’s experiences could be seen through the lenses of anxiety, ocd, psychosis, schizophrenia, dementia, or even as complete reality. Maybe he killed his mother, Elaine, and Toni. Maybe not. Maybe he died at this point in the film, or that point, or there. Maybe it was all a dream. But the point is clear. He is traumatised. He is afraid. He is broken. He is regretful. He is guilty of being abused by a narcissistic, controlling, manipulative mother, and is put on trial for every sign of cowardice and disobedience. He’s put on trial, for being afraid.
The film is clearly about a man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. It's a telling of his delusions, nightmares and psychological trauma. Some of his delusions are occurring in real time as he is living his life, others are his nightmares and dreams. I.E. he ends up in a hospital, probably a psych unit, after self inflicting wounds and getting hit by a car but his mind interprets the situation as staying in the home of people who rescued him. The surgeon is the father, the nurse is the wife, and the little girl is probably a hallucination. The big burly dude trying to kill him is a patient there too.
Anyone else notice the “MW” logo before the movie, on his apartment microwave, and on the frozen Tv dinner package? I’m sure it’s in many other subtle places too.
omg i noticed it so much!
I really don’t think he actually died/would die from ejaculating I feel like it’s just another fear instilled in him from his mother. I do think however it is possible he died from either his medication or just a stressed induced heart attack from the culmination of everything that “happened “ to him during the movie
I totally agree. There was no reason to conclude he died after ejaculating and that everything in the 45 mins that happened after was afterlife.
@@Bea_22 That's a disturbing theory as it implies he was punished and condemned despite being innocent and manipulated by his mother.
I saw the movie yesterday and loved it.
I saw most things that happened outside of his appartment as imagination/fanstasy of Beau, depicting his paranoia, his longing, his trauma & his feeling of guilt and shame towards his mother - climaxing in the ending scene with the kafkaesque tribunal in which he has to justify himself for all the things he's feeling guilt for, facing videos of particular moments he's ashamed of. To me, his mean fear seems to be that everything he does is monitored by his mother.
There's this picture of his mother in her house that consists of what I think are employees of his mother. In this picture, there were many characters we saw before (from outside his appartment and the family which houses him after the accident). That picture plus the video surveillance of his therapy sessions show the anxiety he has of being unable to have any privacy from his mother - every thought, every action is monitored by her.
Another thing I found interesting is that neither his mother nor Elaine seem consistent with his age to me. Both look much younger than they should be in relation to Beau. Elaine seems nearly 15-20 years younger than him and his mother seems to be roughly the same age as him. Because of that I thought about them as projections of his mind - Elaine just like he imagines her looking when grown up and the look of his mother might be his memory of the last time he saw her.
And what I really liked with the depiction of his trauma. The first and second time we see the room with the stairway to the attic, it seems to be surrounded by blackness, not being part of a real building. Later, when he revisits that room (it may be again in his mind, but not in his unconsciousness but instead consciously thinking about it?), it is coherent with the actual building of his mother's house. I think that's a way of a trauma manifesting itself - not being a true-to-reality memory but rather a distorted image of what happened.
I was thinking when i heard that his mom "died" did she really or is this a manipulation to get him home? Because it was right after his keys got taken so he couldn't go. Then when we saw her dead body i was like, "well, that settles that." Then she was alive. So yeah, in case you can't tell, i grew up an abused child.
In _The Truman Show_ Truman isn't abused, just exploited by a corporation.
In _Beau is Afraid_ Beau is abused, by a corporation created by his mother that exploited her son as the poster boy for ADHD, etc. all of which have been induced by the mother, as part of an inevitable cycle of perpetual abuse, so Mona has Munchasens by proxy and has driven her son insane by putting him in the attic whenever he stood up to him this exaggerates how things appear to us as they are presented as taking place from Beau's point of view.
Of all the explanations and theories I’ve seen, this is it. I got the same idea realizing “wait, his mom’s rich….. she literally owns the welfare housing building he lives in…..” the only piece I still REALLY don’t get is Nathan Lane’s daughter.
@@RustinChole Nathan Lane's son was the favourite, and it only got worse when he died as his memory was idealised and his blue bedroom became a shrine. Her pink bedroom has been given to Beau because Nathan Lane feels bad that his wife ran him over (but that was probably deliberate, on the instructions of his mother as they both work for her, if you look at the photos on the wall in Mona's house they are among the employees of MW). I don't think the daughter just started taking drugs when Beau turned up as it would mean it had escalated very, very, quickly, and it is more likely this is something that has slowly spiralled out of control since her older brother died in a war. This is likely attention seeking behaviour as she feels neglected by her parents, who probably went through a period of bereavement, and their favouritism for their son meant that they didn't parent their daughter through her bereavement of her brother, which she may well not have processed adequately and therefore be using drugs to numb the pain as she can't move on from denial. This is speculation on events not shown on screen based on how normal will usually act as a 'reference level'.
I mention this as everything has to be seen relative to some 'reference level' of normalcy as the film makes it quite difficult to determine what is normal. Normal to us? Normal in its dystopia? Normal in a black comedy? Normal in a black comedy set in a dystopia? Normal in a black comedy seen through the eyes of a man with multiple maladaptive personality disorders, as a result of anxiety, largely manifesting in paranoia, where he has every right to feel paranoid as his mother is the architect of his dystopia to as great extent as humanly possible without putting him inside of a giant prison like the dome in _The Truman Show._ It is up to audiences to determine their 'reference level' and judge the film accordingly. The director Ari Aster refused to say what the film was about as he didn't want to do the audiences job for them and didn't really know the answers himself, as that was why he made the film, to be open to multiple subjective interpretations, with some not apparent to him when he made it, which might become very credible interpretations later (so, kind of like a Rorshach blot test revealing the psyche of an observer), yet the ending (that I don't like), reframes everything in a 4th wall breaking acknowledgement of the audience watching the film of Beau's life, and invites the audience to sit and contemplate the evidence presented as to whether Beau loved his mother, sitting in judgement, like those in the amphitheatre which surrounds the lake with Beau's capsized boat as if to imply that the seats of this amphitheatre curve around out of frame, to encircle the waters and form the seating within the very cinema you are watching this in. I thought the idea was to make your mind up about Beau's guilt or innocence and then leave when you felt ready (to face normalcy), in the same manner that those sat in the amphitheatre on screen were eventually seen to be leaving their seats until there was no one left. I did not stay to see it to the very end, but I saw Ari Aster present it and then talk to Martin Scorsese on some RUclips video and it was still showing the capsized boat.
The daughter (and parents) taking lots of pills is supposed to be a social commentary on the excessive use of these mood altering medicines on Americans, which attacks Big Pharma, in the guise of one of Mona's businesses.
So, Mona could be symbolic of the overreach and "over mothering impulses" of the Welfare state, being counter productive towards the meritocratic impulses of entrepreneurial self sufficiency inherent in the pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness in the American Dream. Beau is killed, Beau is trapped in Nathan Lane's hospitality, then his daughter's bed, displacing the daughter, which seems to trigger worse behaviour from her for this parental neglect (as I hypothesise that the parents have yet to help her with her repressed grief over her brother's death), and before that he is trapped in a simple transaction for a bottle of water (i.e. he is not at liberty to pursue life as his meds have a memorial page on the internet for those who took them without water and his own apartment lacks water), during which the street people enter his apartment and leave him trapped outside sleeping on the fire escape, then you have the man trapped in the ceiling Ninja style again with the water motif (because of the deadly spider, which is symbolically representative of the webs being woven around Beau by his mother Mona Wasserman*)
@@____uncompetative did it make you laugh out loud like I did? No one was laughing in the theater. But some of it ….. pretty sure it’s intended to be funny.
@@RustinChole The first act was hilarious. It was a shame it didn't keep that tone.
I felt extremely seen when watching this movie. With extreme social anxiety, a lot of how Beaus thought processes work are identical to mine. I loved this movie and I hope to watch it again once it comes to streaming
My personal reading is this:
Most of the movie is in Beau's head. And I don't mean he's swapping between reality and fiction, I mean we're seeing him have a drug fuelled hallucination due to taking his new anxiety medication without water. I think he got to the water way too late, and he was already starting to die when shit really starts getting weird.
In retrospect, this movie reminds me the most of Bojack Horseman Season 6 Episode 15. We are seeing Beau's brain deal with his trauma, his life flashing before his eyes, having weird nonsensical dreams about all his insecurities; his mental illnesses, anxiety, sexual insecurity, adhd, etc. I don't think his mother even died in reality, or pretended to. I think he wanted his mother to die, and then felt guilty about it, and then his dying brain created this whole story in his head about it.
So yes, I'm going with "it was all a dream".
I don’t think that the medicine given to him would literally kill without him drinking water. Beau seeing the search result that says it will kill him may have been a visual representation of his anxieties which overplays things like the crazy people outside his apartment. I believe most of the stuff in the film is just visual representations of Beau’s mind. A good example could be the ending where he is judged. This could be a representation of guilt that Mona has gaslighted Beau into having because he wasn’t living completely under her control. It could also be Beau’s fear that his mother would actually set everything up after he “found out” that his father was alive.
I used to read word up magazine!
Here’s the problem. Him dying if he didn’t take water with his pills is impossible. There’s no pill on earth that does that
That would make this a very cheap knockoff of "jacob's ladder" tho. I hope it's not but sounds like it.
Wrrrroooonnnggg
The "Animated" Play Sequence
Was ACTUALLY The Story Of Job
(From TheBible, But with An
Odd Shakespearean Event POV).
This film was a crazy person's interpretation of an extremely anxious person's mindset. That's the best way I can describe it.
How deep
Good analysis, I love that this movie hasn't been explained by Ari Aster, it leaves the door open to so many different perspectives on it. It's so hard to tell what was real or not in this movie, and I think that makes it open for any interpretations. Your take on Grace and Roger actually being hospital staff is pretty interesting, I'm just not sure how Toni ties into that. But I think she represents a bully in Beau's past, especially the filming in the car scene and mainly the last thing she says to Beau before drinking the paint. I also think Elaine wasn't real (what are the chances of running into her again) but I think her death is symbolic of how any love or relationship that Beau has, it will eventually end or 'die'
This movie is crazy. I both love and hate that it's so ambiguous lol
I’m not sure if anyone caught this but when beau arrives to his mothers house and he sees the pictures of all the staff that worked for his mother roger is seen in one of the pictures which could lead into the theory that his mother basically watched beau’s every move
@@ipancxke I noticed Roger's picture on the wall of employees too, so I don't think he was a surgeon but instead was being paid off to watch Beau and keep him detained.
He has.
I love that everyone has a different take on this movie
Somebody make the theater section make sense please! Kinda felt like a budget flex for no reason...
I think Beau killed Elaine and in his own warped mind imagined her seducing him. After the, "post-nut clarity" he realizes he killed Elaine. I also believe Nathan Lane and his wife weren't doctors but actually good people who let this deranged man into their home. Since they have Jeeves, they wanted to play hero to all the people they obviously could tell they need help. Toni did those awful things to Beau and when she was trying to frame Beau for the painting of the room Beau had enough and strangled her too. When Toni's Mom opens the door Beau has his hands around her neck and immediately drops her saying he was trying to save her. Im still confused whether the mother was actually dead or not, but i believe the ending scene to be an actual trial and the jury unanimously saying Beau is Guilty. Whats interesting to see a correlation from the beginning to the end is that the Psychiatrist writes in his notepad "Guilty" when talking to Beau.
Not to mention Grace saying he needs to stop incriminating himself, the conversation with the lawyer (maybe Beau was on the run at that time). You could definitely view the film as Beau killing his mother at the beginning (maybe he never missed his flight at all), and then being on the run from the law the rest of the film, until he finally gives himself up (the funeral), and has the trial.
Did he kill his mother by simply missing his flight and not going to see her?
Like a “you’re killing your mother” thing?
How did he actually kill her in this interpretation?
My interpretation is that Beau is either imagining or truly perceiving a chain of events that gets him closer to his mom, who has orchestrated all of this to try to manipulate and gaslight him. Beau is an unreliable narrator in terms of whether what he is perceiving is real or not, but I think he simply has a toxic relationship with his mom and is not actually 'guilty' of said things. There's nothing alarming which would indicate he is morally responsible for the deaths of the daughter or Elaine, except for his mother's death (if we assume he successfully strangled her). But even there he withdraws from fully commiting to killing her and there's always a sense of confusion and panic while he is on this trip, not really any sense of guilt. This, to me, is indication of his deteriorating mental state and the constant anxiety brought up from the drug he accidentally ODd on in his apartment. I mean, his mom, the psychiatrist and the lawyer character are all trying to guilt trip him, but to me that's the point. Without having done anything actionably unjust, he is guilty for not having his own family and wasting his life. The guilt is projected onto him from his mother or vice versa. The sad part is that the odds were overwhelmingly against him from the beginning, having been cursed into a life with a batshit abusive mom.
I think his reality is hell and he is a disturbed observer to the modern hell he inhabits, perhaps having delusions of mass humiliation and his existence turning into a Truman Show situation. Either way, I don't buy the idea that he snapped early on and killed the daughter and even that Lane and the woman were good people. This can also be refuted by the fact that the girl swallowed a shitload of paint and didn't need Beau to strangle her to die of immanent lead poisioning! No one is 'good' per se, although I would say the mother is inherently evil [as its implied she's responsible for much or most of the societal decay through MW, not to mention using Beau as a guinea pig] and that everyone is basically deranged through Beau's perspective.
The movie is actually extremely sad and it feels strange considering the hilarious absurdist/Lynchian elements (PTSD guy around the house). During the play sequence, Beau has this transcendent moment where he imagines himself free from the the metaphorical chains preventing him from making progress in reality. He experiences what seems to be an eternity and rejoices with his 'sons' only to realize that he hasn't reproduced so how can he have kids? The fact that the play is also set in a traditional setting/world indicates to me that Beau is trying to replicate a comfortable fantasy that's far away from his current reality, where he feels guilty for the passivity projected on him from his mom and others.
@Sven Narula I agree that theater moment was him imagining a scenario free from what he is currently experiencing. I also took that as when people who need to have a better outlook on themselves latch onto a fictional character and are like, "That's so me." i.e. characters like Patrick Batman, Rob Patterson's Batman, etc"
My interpretation of this movie is that it is about trauma that leads to mental health disorders such as schizophrenia. This entire movie is a deep dive into someone who is suffering from a disease that so few people actually can comprehend.
I mean most people who have schizophrenia are born with it but aight
My take is that Beau has dementia after suffering a traumatic brain injury. We are seeing the last memories of his life before they completely decohere into oblivion. We can make some decent guesses about the chronology of his real experiences: his childhood up to his mother’s death. But since we are seeing his memories from the confused and incoherent perspective of a person dying with dementia, they are colored by the guilt, trauma, and fear instilled in him by an abusive, narcissistic mother. What we are left with is an incoherent and jumbled narrative, in the style of a tragic, Greek odyssey, of the last pieces of his life that he remembers.
I also thought that during the film, Beau seemed like a person with dementia, especially with how people treated him, like Grace and Roger (?) seemed very reminiscent of how nurses and doctors talk with confused and elderly demented patients. Also surrealism of some scenes, and the anxiety as well as the delusions.
It reminds me of the courage the cowardly dog theory . That the point of view of the world he lives in is from courage and how he sees the world.
Thanks for great explanation
The doctor’s (Roger) picture was one of the frames in the mosaic in his mother’s workspace. I just watched the film and need time to digest so many things. Still, it probably may imply that Roger and his family were the employees of his mother’s company, and all of the second act probably is an amalgamation of his dreams and fears and wounds. Again need so much time to digest all this, definitely need a second watch😂
everyone who says it’s a comedy has me shocked…. i guess that one scene could be funny but what.. bro on the ceiling on top of the tub, elaine’s death, the picture of his grandmother, the therapists smile, and literally the whole movie had me terrified
What was the significance of Dr. Cohen and Grace being revealed as employees of his mother? Why was he living in such a run down area if his mother was so wealthy? What was the point of Toni? What was the point of his potential father in the woods? What was the point of the security camera that revealed the future? What about the coaster that Grace gave him water on that read "stop incriminating yourself"? You kind of glossed over the spider with the man on the ceiling. Was that real or not? If it was real, wtf, and if it wasn't why did he run outside to get hit by the van? Just trying to wrap my head around what I just spent 3 hours of my life watching.
I think most of the character resemble different kind of fear of beau.
He living in a run down area and building that was owned by his mother(shown in her office), resemble his live is ruined by her.
Dr.Cohen and grace being employees maybe telling us those fears that the characters presented came from his mother.
The wood section I think is about Beau found temporary peace in his life but ruined by his own guilt and self-destructive thought(Jiff)
All of the above is just how I view the movie. I think this is the kind of movie that you can interpreted in different ways.
i put together that the note saying “stop incriminating yourself” is grace trying to tell beau to stop giving his mother reasons to be upset at him, at the end of the movie the mom’s attorney attacks beau for all of his “criminal offenses”
Take these with a grain of salt (as this entire film is pretty much dependant on your own perspective and take on it) but I see them as:
People being revealed as his mothers employees - I think this is meant to show that Beau has issues trusting anyone that is related to his mother. Being afraid of the world and everyone around him is the byproduct of how his mother abused him growing up, so anyone he doesn’t trust (think the scene where Grace yells at Beau) his explaination is that his mother must be involved.
Living in a run down area - I don’t think where Beau lives was actually THAT bad. The first scene where Beau walks down the street and there are guns, the bath from his flashbacks, people getting stabbed etc… is all symbolic of his fear of the world. Everything is exaggerated, and probably was quite normal to everyone else. But due to Beau’s fear and anxiety, everything he sees around him is the worst it can be.
Toni - to me, Toni seems like a symbol of a bully from Beau’s past. The scene where he is being filmed in the car, being peer pressured into smoking, being called the “f” word. All seem to tie in to him being bullied by someone. The paint drinking confused me a bit, but I think that is showing Beau always feels like he is the reason for destruction, almost that anyones life he comes into - he destroys (which also kinda explains Elaines death)
Security Camera - this one was a bit confusing too. The way I saw it, is just that Beau feels like he is being watched, surveyed and not safe with the cameras being around. And also symbolic of his life is being controlled by a higher power (most likely his mother)
The rest, I don’t know if I have an opinion on. This movie is very hard to tell what was real, and what wasn’t. The film is shown from Beau’s perspective, which obviously opens a door for almost anything to happen on screen, which is a bit of a cop out in my opinion.
But overall, I think this movie opens up very interesting conversations and takes on what people took away from it.
Security camera that showed the future: it is just one characteristic of Ari Aster's movie that everything is determined and we are justing following that fate. Same as Hereditary and Midsommar. What a unique scriptwriting.
@@user-yz9rl1eo8m I get that, but it’s yet again another instance of something completely supernatural that makes you think we’re in a dream sequence, and then the plot moves in a direction that necessitates that scene NOT being a dream sequence. Does that make sense? Like it’s fine to include that unique writing if it’s clear what we’re watching isn’t reality. But the movie strongly portrays it as such.
Maybe Beau really did imagine the loud music, losing his luggage and keys and missing his flight because he tucked away the grim reality that he already killed his mom recently. When he saw the casket and the birth mark, he realizes his real mother figure was Martha, the housekeeper. Mona would have become extremely jealous if she ever noticed or heard Beau describe her as that and maybe was offed by his mom which maybe triggered Beau to finally stand up to her and his fears. Another thing i noticed is there is a lot of glass in the movie and it could mean Beau is trying to shatter these illusions. He runs through the glass door after Toni dies in an attempt to escape the illusion. Jeeves breaks glass 2 or 3x i think. His mom collapses into a glass CAGE, shattering the small cage Beau has lived in his entire life in which she can't even fit inside. The phone call from the UPS delivery guy said a glass chandelier fell on her head. the door to his apartment complex is made of glass. the entire convenient stores front end is glass (he see's the water through his apartment window). Jeeves jumps through the attic window shattering it. He carries around his glass Mother Mary or Nun which breaks but he fixes. The guy hiding on his roof i think was hiding from the Brown Recluse Spider that killed that ultra tatted up guy thats dead at his door. There's a poster behind Beau that shows what the wound looks like and is identical to the one on the guys neck while trying to call 911. Super irrational and probably another hallucination, because the way that fat guy is hanging on the roof/walls looks kinda like a spider and really it was just the spider that fell in the bathtub, not both. He almost drowns himself but then runs out naked running across the broken glass door to his apartment complex and then shatters the window to the white van after getting hit by it. Constantly drowning while trying to break through the illusions that he's ill and losing it. I think his mom has Munchausen's syndrome and Beau never needed the pills but was forced to. Kinda makes sense he shares a german last name with him (Wasserman). And because his insane trip all starts after taking the pills without water.
The horror aspect is the dire situations beau is constantly in. Being eyes behind his anxiety. Your terrified whats gonna happen to beau next.
Absolutely, but from a traditional genre sense, if you tell someone it's a horror film, they would not be expecting something very different
What stood out to me the most, is the scenes when he is walking around his moms house looking at all of her accolades and pictures that tell more back story on his childhood. The picture of his mother made up of her employees really resonated with me. Especially the tatted man that kept trying to attack beau.
Because...he was..in the movie? Why the fuck would it resonate otherwise?
Was totally satisfied once I finally got to watch this crazy story.The scene of his dad really threw me for even more of a loop
I’m so very glad that I watched your video before I went to see this movie. I don’t have the emotional fortitude or patience to have gone on that fun house ride. I love a thought provoking film but not today, I’m doing low carb! 😂😂
It’s great when a movie can be interpreted on different levels. You can read this as a simple relationship between an overbearing mother and her psychologically crippled son and it can also be looked at as a metaphor for corporations that control our food, houses and media work to keep us psychologically dependent and afraid. I’ve also heard interpretations that are nothing like mine but they still make sense! That’s what a great piece of art is supposed to do in my opinion.
I watched a different theory where the over arching theme was generational trauma and everything that happened in the movie made sense💀 A lot of the stuff explained in this was just about his anxiety but the other video explains how every single one of these situations makes sense in relation to what his mother did to him.
Especially toward the end where they’re in his mothers house it started to hit me how deep the generational trauma was when she was talking. She clearly never received the kind of love she wanted growing up and was neglected by her mother. Which in turn meant when she had a child she was overbearing and smothered him. Which made him reject her and afraid of her. She was too much for him. Too controlling. Too involved. Too manipulative. Too possessive. Ultimately killing her either metaphorically or physically resulting in him experiencing a lot of guilt and shame. Trauma is cyclical and this was a perfect demonstration
The moral of this story is...
DON'T FLOSS
Any thoughts about the scene where beau sees his own future? I saw some people arguing that he'd already killed his mom when the movie starts, and in that case the «seeing his own future» could fit. Him having killed her before does seem like a stretch to me though.
I’m in the process of watching this movie currently. Because it’s almost 3 hours long I’m watching it one hour at a time. It’s weird and crazy and I’m really enjoying it! I absolutely love the brutal look of the city Beau lives in. To me it’s like what if everything you’re afraid of and everything you’re anxious about was actually real? But most likely it’s supposed to be a portrayal of his mental state-or maybe a glimpse inside his mind and all the fears and anxieties that reside there.
The part with the play is honestly really poignant and touching. I interpret it as Beau is either really engrossed in the play and is imagining himself as the main character or the play could be like showing what could have been. Like Beau could have had a family and he could have had a normal life if he wasn’t struggling so much with mental health issues. I love that part where the character in the play breaks the chains and then the character becomes Beau. To me that’s like what he can’t do in real life-break the chains that hold him back.
Anyway, this is a really crazy but good movie. Glad I found it. Also Joaquin Phoenix is amazing!
Another note, why do you assume his mother has died?
The scene he had with his therapist he even asked Beau “have you ever had thoughts of your mother dead.”
Having read some existentialist novels such kafka’s and camus’ led me to interpret the movie as a rebuild of these absurd situations free from a logical consequence. the core that leads to the understanding of the film is beau’s relationship with his mother, and how she abuses him. The fact that he couldn’t ask for help from the landlady to his therapist, but also the problem with the credit card, may be signs of his mother hijacking his plans to repair his errors. There’s too many details that led me to think it was all planned: how did the doctor know his name if he was hit while naked? How did he know where beau’s mom lived? Why do they have a pijama with beau written on? Why did the doctor want to delay the departure, even by organising a grill?
The scenes of him walking in his moms house and looking at the framed magazines, also seems like he was an experiment for his mom and given drugs that made him as crazy as he is
My interpretation was that he was a guinea pig and this contributed to his schizophrenic state. Initially, one would think that the 'genes' passed down from his father were the cause of his anxiety/paranoia but that wasn't the case. That scene confuses me more from a narrative standpoint because his mom is orchestrating a Truman Show situation to guilt trip and punish Beau, so the advertisements of him shown on the wall are kind of a pointless easter egg or plot device. I guess we can also just assume that he was hallucinating everything but also coming to terms with his wasted life and his mom's influence. That then ends up killing him, more or less.
I took from the opening scene that Beau was in fact dropped on his head at birth, and so there may have actually been something “wrong with his health”.
I wondered if this was partly responsible for his mental state (along with the abuse at the hands of his mother, obviously).
If his entire waking experience is a delusion, then that calls into question everything we think we know about his mom. And it makes the movie just the delusions of one scared, mentally unwell guy. Sure, maybe. But if we believe anything the movie tells us about his mom, then we have to entertain the possibility that 99% of what he experienced was real, but was just staged by his mother, whom we know is incredibly powerful. Personally I think the Mom as Puppet Master interpretation is more compelling and meaningful.
That last sentence put into words what I was struggling to say. His mom’s schemes are so over the top that using logic to figure out what’s real and what’s not would lead one to believe they have to be delusions which can easily lead to the conclusion that Beau really is the cause of all the horrific things happening around him and is just deluding himself into believing he’s the victim. But this movie was made with real passion and intent and I find it difficult to believe that there’s no greater point to it than just presenting an extremely exaggerated version of what paranoid schizophrenia can be like. Of course mental disorders are complex and meaningful things to explore but if that’s really the point of this movie, the only take away would be “schizophrenia is scary.” That doesn’t start any new conversations. Having his mom be genuinely guilty of AT LEAST some of the things she’s shown to have done does. It opens the door to look at the details of just how an overbearing parent can hurt a child, something that is generally known to be hurtful but of which the mechanics aren’t often explored in mainstream conversations. It something that gives the audience an opportunity to learn about themselves and their pain and if they look closer, the pain of their parents too. That can be a very powerful tool for healing. It’s this type of value that seems in line with a movie made with so much passion, dedication, and genuine emotion. Apologies if this is rambly or confusing, I just watched it tonight and I’ve been kept up until 4am from the fear
@@renemickel5325 Exactly. One interpretation is thought provoking, while the other tells us we don't have to think about anything. I just feel like there's no way a movie that gives us this much to talk about is actually just making an elaborate mental health PSA.
My god just got home for the theatre
It’s a
Mind fuck
🤝🤝
Just came back. I'm traumatized
Did He enjoy the movie?
“Jewish Lord of the Rings”
Is the best summary I’ve heard
He was was raised to be afraid of being judged so he lived his life never doing anything and in the end he was still judged as a bad person.
Reminded me A LOT of Pink Floyd’s The Wall movie. Overbearing mother and a trial amongst his “peers,” ending.
Great film!!!!!
The way I see it - Most was all a combination of his insanity , fictional and real characters all crazy in their own way . All leads back to his Mothers initial craziness abused upbringing that drove him there . Characters he meets up with and hangs for a bit ( Doctor and his wife and Daughter / they were all crazy too ) are all crazies in the same Asylum . In the end his mind implodes / either Dies or goes completely insane . He was clearly on the edge/line of total collapse or you can go one step further and say he snapped out of his insanity ?
Anyone else see the penguins in the trees after the second time beau fainted in the forest when the ankle moniter zapped him?
yeah i saw that lol
I also don’t think in “reality” taking the medication without water is assumed to be fine. Do you have experience with anti psychotics? Anti seizure meds? Anti anxiety meds? SNRI and SSRIs? Falling for thinking everything is gaslighting in is part of the movie, I imagine.
Not to be pedantic, but didn't the opening scene show the doctors dropping him as he was being born? I didn't take that as "wow, his mom's a control freak" as much as "anxiety and pain has been a part of his life since the first instant he was around"
I don't think his father is dead, probably he just left and his mom faked this story as she could handle being abandoned by his lover, as she never felt loved deeply by anyone (like her mother).
His father is God, His mother the earth goddess and he is god. Its a fertility tale that is ancient. Ouroboros
The person in the attic has to be real. When he enters his mothers home, and his hearing her eulogy, he is referred to as her only “surviving” son. If she only had one child, you would not refer to him as her only surviving child.
what about the huge penis
Has anyone seen one of Aris thesis films from 2011 called Beau? I was certain this character seemed familiar before from one of his shorts and I couldn’t place it until now.
When Beau is looking at his moms office and there’s a collage with all her employees that make up a photo of her, you can actually see Rodger is one of the employees.
It is literally the definition of horror as in the intense feeling of fear sock or disgust, which this movie covers.
The definition of horror is not necessary the same as the horror genre. But even if we say they're close enough (which I would not argue), I still wanted to clarify what this movie was so that people didn't go in expecting something different. I definitely went in not knowing how much of the film was traditional horror. Since I'm not really into traditional horror, had I not been covering the film here, I probably would have skipped it thinking it had traditional horror elements
I feel like Beau Is Afraid references different movies like Goodnight Mommy, The Truman Show, Bad Boy Bubby and from what I've read in an article: Playtime, Rear Window, Defending Your Life, A Matter of Life and Death.
I dsagree for the most part, it has elements of horror, it's psychological horror and its profund as well as intense because is the kind of terror we all can relate, it's very tangible and real. The apathy our word is experiencing, toxic relationships with our loved ones, a society sick by misleading leaders and ads, etc etc. The arawares of those global as well as personal dark archetypes is what takes this horror to a whole other level of scary.
I see the house as Beau`s head where there is a fight between the person he could be (hence the sexual relationship he tries to have with Elaine despite all his fears) and his dead mother and the guilt she has forced upon him. She is still in his head despite being actually dead. The theme of safety is the mother cutting him off from being his own self and infantizing him and guilt tripping him instead. She is victorious in that fight. Beau regresses to the womb (more infantilization) and his guilt towards his mother is so overpowering that, in my opinion, he kills himself (some say that the engine of the boat exploding is his heart giving out, I thought it could be a gun shot in a suicide when he can not take the guilt anymore. Both analysis are valid imo). The attic is the part of his brain where he has repressed his braver, more coherent self and all forms of male sexuality/father figures in his life, giving his mother complete liberty to roam through and rule in the rest of the house (beau`s mind).
I noticed that his apartment building is the old office building of his mothers company as well
Thanks so much, the movie is really bizzare... I really needed an explanation.
You're welcome! I think there are a lot of different possible explanations though. My explanation is just one of many.
You said the beginning isnt too important but that's a lie, Its super important because we don't see the world at all, until he is born. Which lets us know that the movie will only be from his point of view
I said his birth isn't what's important about the scene. Not the perspective of the film or the scene as a whole. Just the birth. But I agree with the rest of your statement.
There is a thing near the beginning that I kept wondering if it were part of the overall plot, we see a spider in beau's apartment and then flyers mentioning "brown recluse spiders" throughout the building.
It was part of the plot as an additional representation of Beau's fears.
The guy in the attic wasn't his dad, it was him. And the boat didn't blow up at the end, it seemed to implode or get crushed by something, which to me hints that it was actually Beau getting hit by the couples van, where he actually died, and everything after was the journey to the end of the white tunnel before going black.
The boat definitely didn't implode. Crushed perhaps, but it still seemed much more like an explosion.
It flipped upside down
Ouroboros
A gnostic tale. He is god and his mother is the earth goddess. He is the sun and she the earth. Ari Aster is just playing with an ancient belief system and thought it would be funny if the Goddess was a mentally ill Jewish mom who is shrill and shrewish and overbearing like the Jews like to joke their moms are like.
this reminds me of a “the shivering truth” episode 2 season 2 “new mom”
Lost 15 minutes? I lost 9 hours rewatching it
I definitely see this going on to be another rare horror movie to win an academy award.
I see this movie on par with silence of the lambs. But different in terms of tone. Silence was set from the detectives perspective as she uses lecter to track down the killer buffalo bill.
In "beau is afraid" beau is already in custody, and hes being processed as a mental patient they are building a case against and everything is from beaus twisted perspective created by his mothers cruel upbringing.
(I used to work in a state mental facility with forensic patients, and i can see hints of the techniques they use to draw information from unwilling or dillusional sources.) This movie is full of them btw.
The movie is shot and told very well to keep you guessing the whole way up until his death at the end in the electric chair. This is why he's in a boat in the middle of a stadium and ehat should be a gas engine is spitting out the same electric sparks we see coming from the elevator throughout the movie. Beau is in the electric chair receiving his punishment, and the whole movie is the experience he goes through in his mind while he's being electrocuted and descends further and further into hell.
The faces around the stadium at the end are the families of his victims and the society he terrorized. All throughout the movie as the setting constantly changes around beau, it is because hes being terfed from ward to ward and the delusions of the other patients are bleeding into his own as he struggles to make sense of whats happeneing to him on his way to the electric chair.
Thats why hes told to confess several times by different character randomly.
Its why he sees his defense attorney kill himself when he knows his case is over.
And the worst part of it all. Beau still sees himself as the victim in all of this.
The damning evidence is at the end of the movie when we see the wall of drugs replacing family photos representing all the behavioral drugs beaus mother has used on him as child.
It culminates in beau entering the attic he was imprisoned in most of his childhood because of his mothers penis envy over being raped but choosing to keep the baby, when beau fights the penis monster representing beaus father.
The reason beau as a serial killer even got caught in the first place, is because his mother died, and at her funeral, he finally conquered his own penis envy with parker poseys character 'Elaine' the girl from his childhood. Beaus mother forbid him against seeing her but still he has a photo of her after all these years.
So unfortunately beau is already a lost cause and strangles her mid coitus and kills her, then proceeds to sleep with her dead body until he gets caught which is why we see her carried out with rigor mortis.
And the naked man with the knife is beau, beau projects his own faults and failings onto his reality as a coping mechanism but in reality hes a serial killer sitting in the electric chair and the whole movie is beaus mind processing how he came to be there in the first place.
This is the best explanation I’ve seen thus far. I did not see the fact they beau was the naked killer, but looking back they did hint at that. Him “loosing the keys” to “his” apartment and the guy above the bathtub all point to him being a member of the crazy mob trying to get into the apartment building. It all makes sense😂 in a nonsensical way. But as I see it, this is another one of those extremely vague movies that is “up to your interpretation“. I feel like directors do this by stringing together a bunch of non sequiturs and our logic driven brains make sense out of nonsense. All that being said, I do like how this movie depicts how our brain misinterprets the world around us based on the lingering fears induced by childhood trauma.
your interpretation is the closest to how i interpreted that i have seen so far. what a wacky film that has so much going on and so many ways to interpret its ambiguity.
Wow. What an interpretation. I felt empathy for this man the entire film, like he couldn't catch a break but now, after reading this.. I dunno.. his mother pretty much messed him up
That was a great movie!!! 🎉❤
I enjoyed this film alot--the scenes with the couple does like redemptive justice to the mom in Joker. Is Ari Aster's fear supposed to have been presenting a video game using one of his movies? Jo is like completely innocent when it comes to killing in this one, even though they are bending over backwards to try and frame him, especially with that under age daughter who OD's on the paint.
When you hear someone talking about a fire escape while they were clearly scaffoldings, you just know that this isn't the right person to be explaining the movie.
Why do I keep hearing critics say this film is a comedy… I was in a constant state of discomfort and anxiety from start to finish
Thank you, for preventing me from wasting my time on this movie.
Definitely qualifies as an art film and this discussion reminds me of the attempts to explain the smile of Mona Lisa.
The film is about a death sentenced man who's suffers from schizophrenia who's retold his entire life and crimes as recorded by his therapist as he's waiting to be hanged, and gets hanged at the end. The movie is perceived from its schizophrenic perception but in reality he's in a glass room with a rope on his neck waiting to be hanged while the executor tells him the crimes and asks him to confess, but he can't remember doing anything because he didn't perceive himself doing it; the movie "doesn't make sense" because we perceive the criminal reliving the crimes as they are told to him. The hint at this is at the end when the boat suddenly turns and you hear the hanging sound of the bottom contraption as it opens to let the body hang. It's a very interesting way to portray that having an aggressive mental disorder doesn't null your capacity to be a criminal; whether the viewer sees value or not in pardon them because it could perceive how disconnected from reality the criminal can be is entirely subjective since the acts are still committed regardless of having a distorted perception, as exemplified by the scene were he tries to choke his mother.
There's another movie about this subject but I can't remember the name, where they have a subject in a glass room and they use sound frequencies to induce perceptions in order to get it to confess its crime; the movie also plays from the perception of the criminal which makes the entire movie also bizarre to watch... Sorry I can't remember the name of the movie 🤷
That doesn't make sense at all and you made that out
As far as the lines between what's real and what's not... I'm surprised nobody brings up the "fun new drug" he was prescribed at the begining of the movie
given that i am schizophrenia affected patient myself, i get episodes when i see far more creative imagery/story in my head.
schizophrenia can easily cause detachment from reality, and given a child like beau was not equipped with enough "know how" to deal everyday world. it can certainly worsen an already probable bad trip.
the worse thing is, it never ends or blacks out like this movie. still very positive note tho.
Very interesting insight. Thank you! I wonder if the director/writer consulted someone with schizophrenia while making the film?
I Perceived this as agoraphobia and anxiety caused by his mother through fear and guilt tripping, I believe he never left his apartment and everything that happened is played out in his head of what could happen if he goes to his mothers house for the anniversary of his dads death
I just left the theater after seeing it...
I just don't know what to think. I just... huh
When he's looking at the wall of accomplishment at his mom's house Nathan lane is in the picture made of many head shots.
I-idk what was going on, so yes
I think what beau is going through in the movie is actually him having a long vivid dream due to his mothers abuse. All the things that happened never really happened and that the events are memories turned into a surreal nightmare from his trauma. He's alive but is having a really bad nightmare. The ending where the boat flips over might be him waking up but either with more trauma or him realizing that what happened wasn't his fault and has a better life realizing that.
I think Beau died as a young boy by drowning in the tub. I think this movie is about his mother coming to grief with the loss of her son by visualizing that Beau was spared from a bad life. She imagines him in many bad situations to ease her pain. Beau going up into the attic was her mother pushing her thoughts of him into her subconscious.
The part about Elaine wanting money isn't established and ignores how she's just set up to be the love interest, which works as a motive.
Also, the part about Beau being culpable seems more like a guilt thing than an actual plot point
It is established. She says herself that she showed up at the funeral because she's owed money. It's also mentioned that she has money problems
@@TheNerdDoc was that enough though? Was that anything more to explain why she worked for the mom?
@@kylenielsen5083 She told him to wait, and worked for his mother for seemingly years without reaching out to him at all. She was even surprised he waited. I think when you combine all of that it's clear that her only motivation was the money. If she had a true romantic interest she would've reached out at some point over the 40 or so years since they met on the cruise, don't you think?
@@TheNerdDoc Maybe she couldn't get into contact. Maybe his mom stopped her, since the mom was planning everything else in the movie.
@@kylenielsen5083 Certainly possible, but does that make more sense than her just wanting money? She seemed quite forward in the flashbacks, it's hard to imagine Beau's mom stopping that from happening. And if she did, you'd think they would showcase that in the film
the running time is the real horror of it