Beau Is Afraid Director Breaks Silence on Film's Polarizing Response
Ari Aster admits he knows Beau is Afraid was something of a gamble.
Ari Aster, fresh off the success of Hereditary and Midsommar, had a kind of creative blank check to make whatever kind of movie he wanted to. What he wanted to do, was Beau is Afraid. The movie, which released earlier this year, drew mixed reviews from both audiences and critics. Although those who liked it, tended to really love it, those who didn't...well, they were equally passionate. The movie's audience reviews on Google are made up almost exclusively of 1-star and 5-star reviews.
The movie also earned just $12 million at the box office in spite of a pretty aggressive promotional campaign, which all in all makes it feel like a frustrating disappointment for Aster, who still stands by the movie and hopes that it finds a broader audience as time goes on.
"I'm obviously feeling kind of cynical this year about things, but then at the same time, I'm prepping my next film as much as I can during the strikes, so I can't be that cynical," Aster told Vanity Fair. "I'm incredibly lucky that I was able to make this film in this climate. The fact that this film exists as it does with so few compromises is really a beautiful, exciting thing that I'm so grateful for. There were points in the making of the film, in the editing of the film, where there was a line in the ground — I cross this line, I'm making a decision to preserve the integrity of what this film is at the risk of losing a chunk of the audience."
Aster recognizes that line, but still seems to wish that people would have been more patient with it. In any case, he hopes that the movie will continue to find its audience, as cult classics have always done, by word of mouth and latter-day reevaluation.
"I fantasize about there having been a time during which a film like this might've come out and divided audiences, and it would've made people excited to go to the theater in order to determine how they felt themselves, as opposed to just people hearing, 'Oh, the response is all over the board, so I'm not going to bother,'" Aster said. "I knew this film was going to have people hating it or hopefully loving it, and I was hoping that the draw of a debate would be greater, as opposed to the response being something that would ultimately push people away from giving it a shot. So, the film will always be polarizing, but I just hope that people keep finding it."
The synopsis for Beau Is Afraid reads: "Following the sudden death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic, Kafkaesque odyssey back home."
