Ari Aster admits Beau Is Afraid struggled: “I would probably tighten that last hour”
After the success of Hereditary and Midsommar, Ari Aster struggled to find an audience with Beau Is Afraid. The film, which starred Joaquin Phoenix as the mild-mannered but paranoia-ridden main character, was a box-office bomb for A24. Now, two years later, Aster is reflecting on how the film was received and what he might have done differently.
“I was pretty sad that it was so maligned,” said Aster on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast. “It was a bummer. It lost money. Critically, I wouldn’t say it was reviled, there’s just no consensus whatsoever. I would say, now I hear about it more and more, it’s sort of being reassessed.“
Aster continued, “There are things that I would do differently if I did it now. While I was making it I was really excited about how exhausting the film was. It was supposed to be exhausting, and that last hour was a real gauntlet… I would probably tighten that last hour, in a certain way. I’m not sure if it was worth losing that much of the audience with that decision… I think I ejected a number of people from the theater with that [last hour], maybe I could have used them.“
In his review of Beau Is Afraid, our own Chris Bumbray pointed to the lengthy final act as the moment that derailed the story. “If the movie is so well cast and brilliantly made, why isn’t it a masterpiece?” Bumbray wrote. “Aster is trying to make his David Lynch movie here, and while it chugs along nicely for a good hour or two, the last act is deadly. It begins to overstay its welcome, but in many ways, this feels like a calculation by Aster, as I’m not sure he even wants you to like the last part of the movie. Choices are made that seem like a deliberate effort to send people storming out of the theater, and indeed this seems bound to be one of those movies that nabs an F-CinemaScore, although I think it’s a distinction all involved will wear proudly.“
Unfortunately, Aster’s latest, Eddington, is receiving a similarly mixed response. Once again, Bumbray points to that final act as the problem. “Ari Aster’s Eddington is half of a great film,” he wrote. “When focused on the rising madness that gripped much of the world during the pandemic’s early days, it’s sharp, uneasy satire. But the film goes so wildly off the rails in its final hour that it undoes nearly everything that made its riveting first half work, resulting in yet another alienating misfire.” You can check out the rest of his review right here.
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