‘You embrace the idea of people being alienated’: Ari Aster on his divisive comedy Beau Is Afraid

We shouldn’t pay too much attention to social-media chatter on movies, but, with a film like Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid (not that there are many films like it), it is hard to ignore the levels of ventilation out there. “An affront to film, both Ari Aster & A24 should face criminal charges for this indulgent disaster,” one much-quoted pundit mused. Such is the American obsession with brand, A24, the busy studio behind the movie, got much of the blame for the supposed criminal indulgence, but Aster, director of Hereditary and Midsommar, also found his jugular repeatedly drained. Though well reviewed and financially successful, those two earlier films had already annoyed the Campaign for Real Horror (my invention) with their apparent nods to Ingmar Bergman and Peter Greenaway. Plenty were waiting for him. I wonder if Aster saw the divisive response coming.

“It’s something I anticipated. It was almost by design,” he says. “It was not designed to alienate people. But you risk that and you embrace the idea of people being alienated – simply by maybe doing something decisively. It’s a film of extremes. It is a film that’s possessed of a nightmare logic. I think the fact that it’s a comedy draws a line in the sand. Because humour is such a subjective thing.”

“Divisive” is sometimes a euphemism for “despised”. But not here. Those who love Beau Is Afraid love it to death. Aster’s sprawling epic is, for this writer, close to a masterpiece. A lumpy, noisy, neurotic, indulgent masterpiece, but still worthy of that loaded noun. Joaquin Phoenix is on top jumpy form as a troubled middle-aged man living in a nightmare city with nothing for company bar a menagerie of neuroses. The traumas come to a head with the news that his wealthy mother has been decapitated by a plummeting chandelier. A wild picaresque journey across an often fantastic, usually appalling pseudo-America begins.

What most surprises in negative responses is the resistance to the film’s abundant humour. It is funny like Samuel Beckett is funny. But it is also funny in the manner of Mel Brooks. He wants laughter. Right?

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“Well, yeah. Because it is meant to be funny,” he says “But the film changes shape a lot. The nature of the jokes change. That can be very jarring for people – or it could be invigorating. Yeah. I wanted to make a film that wasn’t at all ingratiating. Most comedies are ingratiating. It’s sort of their business to ingratiate. Right?”

[ Jack Reynor: ‘It’s good to have a break from talking about my penis’ ]

If Aster will allow me to say so, he is not altogether unlike the sort of fellow you would expect to make a film like Hereditary or Beau Is Afraid. Clearly marinated in great cinema of all shades, he is analytical and allusive in his answers. He is funny in a manner that hints at recreational pessimism. And he is enormously cautious in finding the right word. Once or twice he leaves such enormous pauses in his sentences, I wonder if his batteries have run down.

What did people see in the first two films? Hereditary, a tale of grief and possession staring Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne, somehow managed to blend The Exorcist with Bergman’s Cries and Whispers. Midsommar felt like an epic revenge on toxic masculinity through the vehicle of a Wicker Man tribute. Odd beasts. Yet they captured something in the emotional zeitgeist.

“I can’t really speak to that,” he says. “I was gratified people respond to those films. But ... ”

The pause goes on for eight seconds. That doesn’t sound like much. But try it in conversation.

“Yeah. I don’t know.”

Well, was he surprised at the warring responses to Midsommar? There was delightful confusion as to whether Florence Pugh’s closing immolation of our own Jack Reynor was justifiable revenge or evidence of paranoid misogyny. It is clearly neither of those clear-cut things. Is it?

“Midsommar was always designed to function as a Rorschach test,” he says, back in his flow. “The way you read the film has a lot to do with where you are in your life – if you’re in a relationship or not. That ending could be read as either a triumph or the opposite of that. I was maybe sometimes surprised by where people landed. But also not surprised, because that was the game. [Beau Is Afraid] is the film that I had no idea how they would respond.”

I see this as a very, very Jewish film. The film feels like a big Jewish joke

—  Aster on Beau Is Afraid

One response has been to view the new film as an exercise in self-analysis – one that focuses on the creator’s issues with his mother. Aster was born in New York city to creative parents. His dad was a musician, his mother a poet. As a young person, he became absorbed with cinema that strayed from the mundane and he eventually processed that interest into studies at the American Film Institute.

“I loved horror films growing up,” he says. “I love all sorts of films. I think when I was really young what I responded to most was provocation and films of extremes.”

It is not for someone raised in the Church of Ireland to say, but critics from similar backgrounds to Aster’s have seen Beau Is Afraid as dealing in a very Jewish class of angst. David Ehrlich at IndieWire described the film as “a three-hour nightmare so queasy and personal that sitting through it feels like being a guest at your own bris (in a fun way!)”.

“Oh, no. I see this as a very, very Jewish film,” he says merrily.

Tell me why.

“The film feels like a big Jewish joke. And the first rule of any joke is that you shouldn’t explain it. Right? But even his name is very Jewish – Beau Wasserman. It feels very Jewish to me.”

Another longish Aster pause.

“Even just the idea of a mother as God. That’s not even so much a Jewish joke as it is a Jewish malady. Right?!”

We will have to say something more about the mother in Beau Is Afraid (and also in Hereditary for that matter). Played by a triumphantly domineering Patti LuPone, Mona Wasserman – whose husband died mid-orgasm, thus rendering her son pathologically fearful of sex – sweeps into the film on waves of Oedipal malignity. LuPone, as the synopsis above implies, is in only a few scenes, but maternal angst dominates every scene. Only a fool would read this as explicitly autobiographical, but one can’t help but wonder if his own mum enjoyed the movie.

“I can’t speak for her, but I can say that I have a very good relationship with her,” he says. “I am just interested in parents and children, because that is something you can never disentangle. I think that is just an interesting situation to begin with.”

LuPone, a Broadway legend who hasn’t made nearly enough movies, eats up the part and spits it back at the audience with indecent glee. It seems as if she required no great encouragement to come on board.

“She read the script and loved it,” says Aster. “There is so much build-up to the mother that, when this person shows up, it almost functions as a punchline. Patti is such a great performer and such a great sport. I had seen her before in a David Mamet play and thought she was amazing. I’ve obviously heard her sing. I just felt like she was so perfect for that part. Just the idea of her in that part made me laugh.”

Aster first thought of the project many years ago, but it is now impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. Aster agrees. Phoenix is Beau

The wildness in Beau Is Afraid can distract from the precision of the writing. For all the picaresque oddness – we spend a middle act among wandering Shakespearean players – it remains a thoroughly worked study of a particular psyche. Of course, Phoenix must also be allowed some credit for that. Aster first thought of the project many years ago, but it is now impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. Aster agrees. Phoenix is Beau.

“The character was very, very specific and clear on the page,” he says. “The question then became: about how do you embody that? It’s not that the character changed. It’s about the seriousness and intensity of investigation. It’s not that Joaquin changed the character. He committed himself to finding that character.”

Listening to him, I am reminded of Florence Pugh’s descriptions of life on Midsommar. “Ari would be our therapist and would be asking us questions. I find that stuff quite hard,” she told the New York Times. Whatever you think of his films (and people think plenty) he is getting his desired vision on to the screen. The word “perfectionist” seems apt. How does that manifest itself?

“In ... ”

A full 14 seconds pass.

“ ... in not being easily satisfied and having something that you’re always chasing. I think it’s good for an artist in that it functions as an engine to have an ideal you’re trying to get closer and closer to. But I think it’s bad for you as a person just getting through the day.”

Fascinating fellow. Tremendous film.

Beau is Afraid is in cinemas from May 19th