Aster is not afraid | The Press

My own definition of auteur cinema is quite simple: it is this cinema that provokes such a shock, aesthetic or otherwise, that one wants to know the name of the director. Who is the artist who just did this to me? Whose fault is it ?

The first time it happened to me was with David Lynch. With him, I began to remember the names of filmmakers who awakened things in me that I didn’t even know existed. You know, those filmmakers you expect every movie from, regardless of synopsis and cast, because you’re willing to follow them anywhere, right down to their cul-de-sac, since even when they wander off, the journey remains interesting. Many names have been added to my list since Lynch, including, more recently, that of Ari Aster.

In just two films, Hereditary And MidsommarAri Aster has established himself as a staple of genre cinema, in the same way as Jordan Peele (get-out, Us), and M. Night Shyamalan before them (The Sixth Sense And signs). I put these three together because more or less the same thing happened to them: after a sensational entry into the planet of film lovers, they access the means of their ambitions and let loose loose in wanting to make the film of their dreams, which is not always what the public hoped for.

I will never forget how I was when I left the cinema after Hereditary And Midsommar. Traumatized, her heart pounding, but her smile ear-to-ear. It seemed to me that Aster, like Peele for that matter, was opening a new door in horror, a genre known for recycling its stuff to such an extent that Wes Craven made the Scream to make fun of it. Something closer to emotional terror that takes us to the heart of family trauma.

I saw again Hereditary And Midsommar several times without being able to exhaust the pleasure and meaning. Movies that it’s impossible to spoil in a trailer, because we can’t even explain the plot to our friends. Movie magic: you have to see it to believe it.

But coming out of Ari Aster’s third film, Beau Is Afraid, I couldn’t believe what I had just seen and I know that it will take me several viewings to unravel its mysteries. In truth, I was hilarious. With the sequel to Dunes by Denis Villeneuve, this is surely the film I was most looking forward to this year. THE buzz was great before the release, because of Aster fans like me who couldn’t stand it anymore, but the filmmaker chose to mislead his audience more than ever.

We say to ourselves that it is impossible for this film to become a success. Three hours of delirium overflowing with references to cinema and to his own themes, which the filmmaker presented as his ” Lord of the Rings Jew”, in which I had the impression that he settled accounts more with psychoanalysis than with his mother. Because if you want the ultimate film about the castrating Jewish mother, look no further, no one will go further, the shop just closed.

Beau Is Afraid is more of a comedy than a horror film, despite moments of pure horror (but also pure beauty), and Aster, master manipulator, gives us no choice but to laugh anyway.

Beautiful, played by a Joaquin Phoenix who gives everything he has, not far from the score of the pathetic loser of the Joker (but without any revenge, quite the contrary), embarks on a nightmarish odyssey simply by wanting to go to his mother’s house for the anniversary of the death of his father whom he did not know, since he died in its design. We are still in Beau’s point of view, and because he is neurotic and on medication, everything is possible, except going to his mother’s house, it seems, which evokes those painful dreams where you have all the misery in the world. to get to the destination.

There are few filmmakers who manage to make us feel the anxiety, unease, fear, paralysis and guilt the way Ari Aster does. Only in the first part of the film, when Beau is just trying to get out of his apartment, does it feel like one of the worst days in Émilie-Gamelin Park, to the power of a thousand (after all, the film was shot in Montreal) . As Aster likes wide shots, in which we look for messages and symbols, there is nothing better than seeing his films in theaters, because it is indeed a game that the filmmaker has invited us from the start. For example, are the violent and vulgar graffiti in Beau’s environment projections of his unconscious, which is incapable of defending itself in all circumstances? I understand better why there is an IMAX version of Beau Is Afraidbut I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to relive this hallucinatory three-hour epic a second time on a giant screen, knowing that seeing an Aster film again is like revisiting a trauma (the answer is: of course yes) .

All that to say that if Beau is afraid, Ari Aster is not afraid of anything as a filmmaker, and reminds us that we should not be afraid of experiments in cinema. Still, I have no idea how the public will receive this crazy ride and honestly, that’s what makes me laugh the most in this ambitious comedy.