‘Beau is afraid’: the new madness of the director of ‘Hereditary’ and ‘Midsommar’ with Joaquin Phoenix

Ari Aster seems to have a new bombshell on his hands. After directing ‘Hereditary’ and ‘Midsommar’, two of the best recent horror films, the director is preparing to release ‘Beau is afraid’ (‘Beau is Afraid’), his latest creation, by Joaquin Phoenix.

In PHOTOGRAMS we have been able to approach, exclusively, the making of of the film, in which (thanks to the words of its own creator) we have known, more thoroughly, what this contemporary odyssey will be. “It’s like a Jewish ‘Lord of the Rings’,” Aster says.

The curtain rises and we discover that the filmmaker has been planning this film for 10 years. A decade to design a complex framework, which will add up to a total of 3 hours of footage. “There’s a part of me that doesn’t believe we’re doing it, it’s epic. Colossal,Aster shares.Each detail contains another detail inside.“

In ‘Beau is afraid’, we will follow the story of a man who is about to visit his mother. With a simple premise, a surreal and crazy story is triggered. “I want you to feel that you have entered a life, or even a person,“says its director.

“If you fill a 10-year-old boy with antidepressants and send him shopping, that’s the movie.”

Although the film is not scheduled to premiere until April 28 (in Spain), On the occasion of the American “April Fool’s Day” (April 1), Aster decided to play with the public, and presented his new film by surprise. We put you in context:

Last Saturday, a screening of an extended version of ‘Midsommar’ was organized at the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn, guided by Ari Aster himself. In it, the lucky viewers could attend a never-released production and, incidentally, talk with the filmmaker about his film. However, when the screening began, the audience was met with ‘Beau is Afraid’, instead.

They unknowingly became the first viewers of the film, which was positively received. Emma Stonewho attended the special screening, told him bluntly: “Uncle, are you okay?“, to later catalog the tape as “a masterpiece“.”When I first saw it, it took me hours to process it,“he ended by saying.

“The funny thing about it is that Beau is worried about everything. So, I’m going to put you in a situation that could go wrong in 10 different ways,” Aster commented after the screening. In addition, his film raises the question: “What could be the eleventh?“

In this question and answer session, it was also discovered that Phoenix had an unbeatable commitment to bringing his character to life. “Everything that you see him do, Joaquin did,“said the director. He fell down the stairs, ran through the woods and even went through a glass window. The last of the adventures was quite expensive for him. Phoenix was so tired that he collapsed on the ground, “I knew it was serious because he let people touch him,Aster shared.

The round of questions closed with a new intervention by Stone, who told him: “You just want to punish Beau“. To which the filmmaker replied: “Yeah, fuck him.”

There is not much time left for the premiere of the film. We must prepare ourselves for this psychedelic journey inside a director who has shown that he knows how to play with his audience. We are already starting the countdown…