2023-04-21 21:43:00
The Jewish-American director Ari Aster In recent years has become one of the most interesting voices in contemporary cinema. He did this thanks to his first two masterful films, “hereditary“and”Midsummer“. Both are among the best films of the last decade, and both used the horror genre to create allegories about trauma and dealing with it. Their success gave the creator an open check to do whatever he wanted, and the result is his most pretentious and ambitious film,”Bo is afraid“, which comes out here this weekend.
Fittingly, since this is Aster’s third film, “Bo is afraid” lasts almost three hours. The creator himself defined it as the Jewish answer to “Lord of the Rings“, and you can also see it as a version of “the odyssey“. Joaquin Phoenix Plays Bo, a man living in an unnamed city, whose rampant violence in its streets is reminiscent of Gotham fromJokerHe is supposed to go visit his mother, one of the most domineering and demanding versions we have seen of one of the common stereotypes in American culture, the Jewish matriarch.
The visit turns into a hallucinatory nightmare, which includes some of the common motifs in Astaire’s films, for example, a bald head. As usual with the director, the external journey is an allegory for an internal experience: in this case, it is the therapy the hero goes through with his castrating mother: another recurring motif here is the man’s humbled organs. It is doubtful whether we will see another film this year that has so many images of testicles.
There is one interesting element in the film. Popular culture tends to present the nosy Jewish mother as a short, curvaceous, flashy and sexual housewife, Estelle Costanza In “Seinfeld” is a good example of this. Here, played by Patti LuPone, she meets the internal stereotypes of this character, but not the external ones. She is an impressive and attractive entrepreneur, while her son is a pot-bellied loser.
This concludes the interesting dimensions of the film. Beyond that, it’s hard to know where to start attacking him. Given its length, it goes without saying that it is exhausting, but that is not the only trouble. Perhaps the most noticeable flaw is the acting work, all the actors and actresses, without exception, display flashy, paper-laden and out-of-control performances. This is also true for Phoenix, one of the quality players of his generation. It turns out that even a craftsman like him needs a guiding hand.
In his portrayal, Bo is one of the most repulsive and unpleasant characters we’ve seen on screen recently. It is difficult to show even a modicum of empathy towards him. In general, “Bo is afraid” is a film that hates people, with a special hatred for women, and an even more special loathing for Jewish women. Ari Aster is revealed here as a modern incarnation of Philip Ruthit is amazing to prove that the American Jewish man has not been able to advance in the last 60 years.
Despite its name, “Bo is afraid” mainly tries to be funny, but it doesn’t come off well. I watched the movie in a full hall, Aster already has an audience of followers, and every new product of his arouses interest. We all came with expectations, but throughout the 179 minutes we could only giggle Embarrassed by the childish and poor jokes.
The division into chapters also complicates the experience. Each time, the hope is that the new episode will redeem the previous one and give it meaning, but the opposite happens: the film only deteriorates and collapses in on itself. There is no internal logic in his plot and in the behavior of the characters. Sometimes he criticizes his heroes for doing things that make perfect sense, and sometimes they do things that completely contradict what their essence should be. All of this happens with a bloated pathos that is only getting stronger, because after climbing every possible tall tree in his legacy, Aster must, of course, finish “Bo is afraid” in the spirit of Kafka.
The world of cinema inflated Aster to the status of a genius following his two previous films. For a change, these crowns were justified at the time, but “Be Afraid” illustrates once again how dangerous this status is, both for the creator and for his audience. After all, if a beginning creator had submitted this script to the producers, they would have rejected it outright, and if somehow he would roll into production, then some prophet of wrath would ring the warning bells during filming. At worst, someone resourceful would look at the finished product and rush it to the editing room, or, God forbid, even offer to shelve it.
But Aster is much more than a beginning creator, and in the world of culture in general and in Hollywood in particular there is a culture of total condescension to creators of his status, with the thought that the geniuses of a generation are once in a generation, therefore if anyone is wrong, it is us and not them. This is the other and no less bad side of the capitalist coin “the customer is always right”.
When creators in Aster’s position create such artistic catastrophes, they do not call the child by his name, but define him as “controversial”. In the American media, between one Instagram story and another, the film was promoted like this, “You’ll either love ‘Boo Scared’ or you’ll hate it, but you won’t be in the middle.” To me it sounds more like evasion than expressing an opinion, but let’s face it, we’ll accept that equation. Well, I watched Scared Boo and I really didn’t stay indifferent. I hated every minute of it.
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