MOVIES: The Films of Ari Aster
Welcome back to The Everything!
Tonight, I’ll be writing a midnight post about Ari Aster; writer and director of the A24 horror films Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019), and Beau Is Afraid (2023).
Like Robert Eggers, Aster’s aim is to scare but his vocabulary is Bergman, Kubrick, and Lynch. His work is a perfect example of what has been called, “elevated horror”. It is insightful, stylized, personal, and delivers on its promise to disturb and terrify.
My notes on Hereditary and Midsommar will be more general while my review of Beau Is Afraid will be more of a spoiler filled analysis.
Some Background on Hereditary and Midsommar:
Ari Aster’s debut feature, Hereditary, follows a family tormented by a demonic spirit after the death of their grandmother.
Aster’s sophomore feature, Midsommar follows a young couple as they are pulled into a violent Swedish cult.
Here are my thoughts:
With Hereditary, Ari Aster found a beautiful metaphor for the all too human and deterministic notion that the course of our lives is not ours to control… a fatalistic feeling and idea that he highlights through references to genetic mental illness, scenes of demonic possession, and brilliant lens choices which create a “dollhouse” effect in the master shots of the home; heightening the sense that the characters are mere puppets dangled by a larger force at work.
Midsommar is unique as it horrifies against the backdrop of heavenly daylight and it stands like Hereditary as an elegant metaphor.
There is order and harmony, unity and discipline in its framing, art direction, and choreography, but beneath this idyllic exterior is a demonic and perverse inner world scratching at the walls.
This is a film that explores the religious and familial instinct gone awry, expressing beautifully how in the waking life of broad daylight, angelic serenity in civilized people is often the mask of rage.
Beau Is Afraid
What happens when a nervous jewish boy sets out on a Homeric odyssey to get home to his mother?
You get one of the richest, wildest, most anxiety provoking, guilt driven adventures ever put to screen, or you get the darkest, zaniest, most horrifying Yiddish joke ever told.
You get Beau is Afraid… a film that is so dark and frightening, so rich, so full of life, so inspired, permanently surreal, and yet so silly, so ridiculous, that it’s just so damn fun.
My spoiler filled take on the film:
At the center of it all is Beau; our childish, wimpy, frail, fearful, guilt driven protagonist with the world’s worst mommy complex both driving him and paralyzing him all at once.
At its core, this film is a journey through different categories of latent fear and this grounds the chaos in a thematic order.
In the first chapter, it is the fear of getting physically hurt that plagues the scenes. There is violence and danger everywhere Beau turns and the only way to get away from the relentless fear is for Beau to just get hurt already! Once Beau blasts through broken glass, gets hit by a truck, and is stabbed by a raging homeless man he finally moves on to…
Chapter 2: the world of relationships and the constant fear of letting people down. Here Beau can never be enough or do enough for anyone and fails to be what people need him to be. The only way out of that hell is to just screw up, completely burn the bridge and run from the relationship.
In chapter 3, the fear is the fear of regret and Beau endures the torturous experience of watching a replay of the fulfilling life he did NOT live. It’s excruciating.
Following that is Beau’s fear of losing his mother. But with this fear met, and survived, a long suppressed opportunity emerges… that of romantic love actualized in the form of sexual pleasure. This proves to be the film’s climax both literally and figuratively as Beau finally experiences the profound relief of just letting it all go, and allowing himself a moment of pleasure and happiness. It’s incredible how poignant the scene is amidst such a chaotic world of story.
But all good things must come to an end, and following the irrational inner dream logic of a neurotic Jewish boy with an Oedipal complex…Every joy and forbidden wish fulfilled comes at a price.
And in walks his dead mother, who was never really dead, and she’s got Beau’s therapist with her ready to play back years of personal sessions caught on tape! Of course that’s what happens.
It’s the only thing that makes sense and when Beau dares to fight back against his mother, he soon finds himself on trial before everyone in his world, including us in the theater. (The final shot was most effective in theaters as it was perfectly framed to allow for the theater seating to feel connected to the stadium on screen.)
In the end, it’s about the fear of judgment and shame as Beau must pay for the greatest sin of all:
…being alive.
Shame on you Beau. I thought you were a good boy!
I guess not.
Alright I can’t keep my eyes open. Forgive me for typos… I’m glad I wrote about horror movies right before bed.
Here are the trailers to all 3 films:
And here is a video clip of Martin Scorsese calling Ari Aster one of the most extraordinary new voices in cinema. I completely agree.
Goodnight,
Irving