‘Beau Is Afraid’ was more than a decade in the making, director reveals

Right now, director Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid is on a slow rollout across the country. The film led by Joaquin Phoenix is a bizarre adventure which goes to some surreal places, and, naturally for an idea like it, it took a long time to finally achieve its current, viewable form.

Aster reveals the fact in a new article published by the A.Frame digital magazine from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He says the first draft came about around 11 years ago, was very different and only revisited it after making the Midsommar folk horror film in 2019. It stuck with him, in lockdown he swan in it and he hopes those who see it do as well.

“Then I had a lot of new ideas. I took a lot of things out, changed a lot of things. It was a good time to just sit with the film because it was lockdown, and I took that time to swim around. I really do hope that it’s a film that viewers can swim in.”

Later in the report, Aster says the film became sadder upon rewriting portions of it. He also adds it has a relation to his far more violent Hereditary, as both pieces are about “parents and children” and even when an umbilical cord is snipped “you’re still always attached.” Aster says his mother loves the film (from what he can tell) and, perhaps appropriately given how audiences have described the work as something which molests the brain and is weird and surreal, cast and crew were shocked to even make it.

“Really, a common refrain on that set was, ‘I can’t believe we’re actually making this.’ So, it was very joyful in that sense. It really felt like we were given the opportunity to just make something with real freedom, and that’s a beautiful thing. I’m very grateful that we were able to make this film this way. Early on, I knew that this was one that I just couldn’t compromise on.”

Beau is Afraid has a 70 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of this story’s filing. It is studio A24’s most expensive film made to date, and something Aster has described as what you would get if “you pumped a 10-year-old full of Zoloft, and [had] him get your groceries,” a “nightmare comedy” and a Jewish version of Lord of the Rings but about a trip to one’s mother’s house.