Beau is Afraid (5/5 Stars)

 

Something that I have gleaned from watching a lot of movies is that human beings have nostalgia for the culture of their youth. It is an entirely normal thing to be convinced that the movies that came out, the music that was around, and the games that were played were some of the best. It has dawned on me that I am an exception to this rule. Indeed, looking back at American culture over a long period of time, I’m pretty sure my teenage years 1996-2006 were the nadir of American culture. It was a time of turnover in the culture, when the last taboos of obscenity and language were being violated in ever increasing numbers, when alternative music devolved into emo/grunge/nu metal, when pop music corporatized itself into boy bands. When my parents were teenagers, they had The Beatles. I had Eminem. (I suppose I could have felt different if I had HBO back then, but I didn’t). The worst part though is what happened to the horror genre in movies. The breakdown of standards concerning violence in movies (thx Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and Tarantino’s Kill Bill) led to a free for all that culminated in what was being called “torture porn.” It seemed like all the creativity in the genre was focused on finding new and excruciating ways to mutilate, dismember, and (hopefully) kill characters.

Enough time has passed that we can perhaps look back at that time as a time of puberty, when you drank way too much just so you could know what it was like, but now that you are older, and have already done it, you don’t need to do it again. The horror genre in the last decade has revitalized itself. Since all the taboos as to violence have been broken many times over, creators of good horror films have needed to become creative once again as to how to scare us. And step up they have, none more so than the writer/director Ari Aster. His previous movies include Hereditary and Midsommar. And now here is Beau is Afraid. It is a three hour long odyssey and I spent a majority of its time traumatized.

There is a fundamental difference between the films of Ari Aster and the awful horror movies of my youth. I am convinced that the only way one can watch Saw or its many sequels is to detach themselves from the movie and consider it without any empathy or sympathy, much like someone would watch a geek show at the circus (a thing where a homeless man would bite the heads off of chickens, or so I’m told). In contrast, although Ari Aster’s films have strong horror elements (there is some type of witch’s coven in Hereditary and a forest cult in Midsommar), it is impossible to not be drawn into the story and the characters. Watching Hereditary, the most memorable scene takes place at the dinner table and involves Toni Collete yelling at her son. Toni Collette isn’t possessed in this scene. It’s all raw earned emotion. In Midsommar, there is a scene that may well be placed in the dictionary as the ultimate example of catharsis. A young woman discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her. The other women in the community help her get it all out. The scene ends with them all screaming together in a barn.

The screening I attended of Beau if Afraid involved a question and answer session with Ari Aster. In this session, our writer/director described Beau is Afraid as a comedy. If it is a comedy, it is much like the “comedies” of Martin Scorsese. I'm thinking particularly of After Hours. Scorsese’s notion of humor was to fling as many terrible things as possible upon an entirely innocent man (it’s a great movie, I recommend it). Beau is Afraid is like that, but the things that happen to Beau are much worse.

Beau is played by Joaquin Phoenix. He lives in a nightmare city, on a block full of urban terror. The neighbors accuse him of playing loud music when he is not playing any music. Grotesque graffiti lines the walls. Crazy, half-deranged people, some of them presently being violent, inhabit his street. And they are not going away. They inhabit his street. When Beau ventures out of his home to the corner deli, this horde of deranged people take the opportunity to break into Beau’s apartment where they party all night long and destroy the place.

This is in the first twenty minutes of the movie. What is extraordinary about Beau is Afraid is that the preceding paragraph is not a dream. That is, at no point does Beau wake up and realize that some of the above did not happen. Nor does the above seem to be some sort of psychological condition within Beau, wherein the crazy people are the delusions of a schizophrenic or agoraphobic. There is no point in the story where someone shakes Beau and tells him that he’s imagining all of this crazy shit. It is happening. There really is a serial killer known as the naked stabber, a deranged man that runs around town naked stabbing people. He stabs Beau. He does. That is why Beau is walking around with bandages for the next two thirds of the movie. And the bathtub scene. Apparently that too is real.

Ari Aster brings a technical mastery to what is being shown. The movie is composed of long shots with incredible framing of background detail and extras. The sound design is doing funky things too. All of it combines into this phantasmagorical hellscape. The scary things aren’t vampires or zombies. They are things that are familiar to you: your mother, the police, drugs, sex, your therapist, teenage girls. In a flashback, Beau’s mother tells him that he inherited a particular thing from his father which is arguably the worst possible thing a mother could say to a son. Alfred Hitchcock would have loved this movie. Martin Scorsese wrote the forward for the Midsommar DVD box set. If nothing else can be said, Ari Aster is an excellent filmmaker.

It must take an extraordinary amount of confidence/resolve for a movie to show what it is showing and not blink. To not, at some point say, okay I’m drawing the line here, and that last part was just for fun. But as far as I can tell, this happens just once and it happens only to make things worse, not better, and that is in the last twenty minutes of the movie. If I had one qualm about the movie is that I would take away that one blink and see where the movie goes without it. This is a movie like Under the Silver Lake that I felt was within reach of being perfect if only it could have reworked some of its scenes.

At the screening I asked Ari Aster the following questions.

What did you mother think of this movie?

Did she think it was funny?

Once you see it, ask me how he responded.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (3/5 Stars)

 

"Oh, Boy, I have a really good feeling about Plan C." - Edgin, Bard

The traditional portrait of a participant in Dungeons & Dragons is a teenage boy, the type prone to non-contact sports and virginity. At least that was the popular portrayal on TV when I was growing up. I didn't really know anybody who played Dungeons & Dragons, and the very few times I came across someone who spoke of it, the stereotype would be confirmed: they would be bragging about being a level 20 dungeon master or something that seemed strange to be openly proud about. 

My first substantial exposure to the game came after school in my mid-twenties. Some of my roommates, all grown men, had a game with other locals. I wasn't involved and regarded my non-involvement with ambivalence. I was generally put off with the requirement to obtain a comprehensive knowledge about something entirely useless. Sure, I was a fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, had read the books and watched the movies, but I had never been a superfan. I tried but did not finish the Similarion once I realized that it wasn't so much a story as much as a history. I've never understood the point of a history, or any argument concerning canon, about a make-believe world. It is in fact possible to go to a bookstore and buy a history of real events. Some of them are quite good. There was something undeniable though about the game going on in the living room. It was a lot of fun. There would be laughter emanating from the room for hours on end.

That much garnered enough of my interest that I tried to become involved. Only then did I realize something rather ridiculous about Dungeons & Dragons. It turns out that this much ridiculed thing from our childhood is rather cliquish. It is almost impossible to join a campaign once it has started (indeed, usually someone in the game will have to leave first for anyone to join) and a campaign can go on for years. Then the campaign ends and this same group of people (say 4-6) will start a new campaign and so on and so forth until the same five people have been playing the game together for longer than you ever thought possible.

I had the pleasure of making it into a game of Dungeons & Dragons in 2019 as a player then turning that experience into starting my own groups as dungeon master with friends and family during the pandemic. I found out first hand what made it so fun. Sure, there was a lot of learned knowledge about useless things, but the role-playing portion of it worked a lot like improvisational comedy. As dungeon master, one of the more important tasks is to switch the game back and forth between story and strategy so that neither part of it becomes tiresome. Ultimately, the adventure books one buys and bases the game on are just guidelines. The experience is one created by the group, much like how jazz is created in a club.

I bring this up in this review of the movie, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, to point out what an uphill journey making a movie based on this game surely was. First, the expectations are enormous. The built-in audience doesn't have just have a experience reading a book (maybe 10-20 hours alone) or playing a video game (30-40 hours alone), they may have logged hundreds of hours in the company of others. These nerds will intuitively know whether what is being portrayed on the screen is "realistic" and will likely have qualms about whether or not certain things are possible or certain characters are acting the way they are "supposed to act." 

The expectations problem becomes even more apparent when one considers the improvisational nature of the game. Like hearing a recording of jazz or listening to someone rehash a scene of improvisational comedy, something is definitely lost when the spontaneity of the moment is past. If you have ever listened to a Dungeons and Dragons player gleefully recount the story of the last session, you will know what I mean.

So there it is, you have an audience of judgmental nerds who expect the movie to be a certain way, but the creators better not make it like an actual Dungeons and Dragons session because then it won't work at all. Having given themselves these impossible odds, I think this movie essentially pulls it off. The movie's story works as a movie, while placating the nerds by assuming an enormous amount of knowledge.

I bet a person lacking in any knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons would be entirely lost. The world and its history isn't explained. The players simply inhabit what is known as the Swordcoast. How magic works in this world isn't explained. There isn't a mention of the weave or any types of levels or spell slots. There is very little exposition on the different kinds of beings, classes, and monsters. It is assumed that the audience, or at least the audience that counts, already knows this. At one point, the characters venture into the Underdark. Again, there is little to no explanation as to what that is. They just do it. 

The plot is not improvisational. It actually relies on the most basic of movie tropes. It's a Heist Movie and before the Heist, we've got to Get the Band Back Together. This works quite well in a Dungeons and Dragons movie because we need a team and that team needs to go on a mission. The team will require the basic classes in Dungeons and Dragons: Bard, Barbarian, Sorcerer, Druid. The other classes not in the Team will be on the other side as enemies: Rogue, Wizard. Then there is the Paladin, who is on his own side (of justice and truth of course).

These characters act like these characters should act and the movie employs character actors that slot in quite well into the types. The dashing Chris Pine is our Bard. His best friend the Barbarian is played by Michelle Rodriguez. Hugh Grant plays the dastardly Rogue. Some young people I've never seen in movies before play the Sorcerer and Druid (Justice Smith and Sophia Lillis respectively). One of the writer/directors of this movie is John Francis Daley, one of the titular Geeks in the short lived TV Series Freaks and Geeks. 

The way the story is written and how the characters play off each other will remind you of spending time with old friends. Yes, the Bard and the Barbarian have a special relationship because they have very different skills that make their sum greater than their parts. Yes, the Sorcerer is prime for a good coming of age story arc since his power derives from his bloodline and develops during puberty. Yes, the Paladin will play a part, but only on his goody-two-shoes terms.

So, is this a good movie? Sure, but here is a better question: Is watching this movie more fun than playing Dungeons and Dragons? or an even better question: Is it worth watching this movie if you've never played Dungeons and Dragons? I think the first better question is a wash: If you've played Dungeons and Dragons, you will very likely find this movie entertaining, or more importantly, not annoying. Chris Pine and his weirdly symmetrical face continues to be a flattering avatar for nerds. The second better question is: only if you want to feel excluded. This may be a revelation to you but the nerds are not pining for your company. I recall watching the first episode of the first season of TV Series Stranger Things. The older sister of the main nerd wonders in disbelief: how do you spend all day, ten hours straight, playing a game and not finish it? For myself, it was easier to make friends on the football team. Once you've played Dungeons and Dragons, you will understand.