Not everyone agrees with me on this. I understand the film made a lot of people terribly, terribly, angry. Lots of movies get negative feedback of the "This really didn't work for me" type; but in this case criticism seemed to veer into the "How dare this film even exist!" category. Which it seemed in no way to deserve.
It felt to me very like one of those 1970s art-house movies. A little, in fact, like late 70s Woody Allen. Stuff keeps on happening but there is no particular narrative centre. It could have stopped much earlier if it had wanted to; but equally there is no reason that it shouldn't have gone on forever.
Beau Wassermann (Joaquin Phoenix) lives in a run-down apartment building in New York. Or perhaps he doesn't. There are notices on the doors warning tenants about poisonous spiders; psychotic naked men and clowns run around outside and a neighbour puts passive aggressive notices under his door telling him to be quiet, even though he's completely silent. He has Allen-esque meetings with a jolly psychotherapist who wants to talk about his mother, and who proscribes him anti-psychotic drugs. Or perhaps he doesn't. The pills will apparently kill you instantly if you take them without water, and Beau has no sooner put them in his mouth than the water in his apartment block is cut off. He runs out to buy some water from a store and finds his card has been stopped and he has no money. He's taking a trip to visit his mother; but on the morning of the flight he loses his keys, and then hears that she has been killed under unlikely circumstances. Or perhaps she hasn't. The psychopaths from the street take over his flat; and one of them is found clinging to the ceiling of his bathroom, about to be bitten by one of the poisonous spiders. Beau runs naked into the street and is hit by a car. Or perhaps he isn't.
What we have is a kind of surreal, picaresque road movie. Being Jewish, Beau's mother has to be buried as quickly as possible, and the funeral can't take place unless her son is present. So naturally, every possible obstacle, real and surreal, is placed between Beau and his mother's home. After his road accident, he is taken in by a kindly family who are mourning a soldier son who has been killed in action. Every single object in the house is a memorial to the dead boy; at one point the mother is seen assembling his face in a jig-saw puzzle. The straight-out-of-central-casting younger daughter (bad-tempered, mobile phone, calls everything crap) ends up inciting Beau to vandalise the dead son's bedroom shrine with bright pink and bright blue paint. Running away from the house and pursued by a Rambo-esque psychotic comrade of the dead boy, he finds himself in a moonlit forest watching a performance by a travelling theatre company whose play -- which rapidly turns into a visually inventive cartoon -- weirdly represents the details of his own life. Or perhaps it doesn't: the play which is actually being performed doesn't seem to be the same one which comes to life in the animation.
It's undoubtedly very odd. I enjoy a certain kind of narrative immersion; films and plays which take place in universes which function according to their own narrative rhythms and internal logic; slow acclimatisation of your consciousness to utter weirdness; writers who say "I am not going to tell you a story, but I invite you to spend some time inside my head." The individual episodes are almost all compelling or amusing even if it isn't at all clear what they are supposed to add up too.
Is the idea that the psychotic drugs are making Beau mix fantasy and reality, and we are seeing the world as it looks from his confused point of view? So the attic in which he was locked as a punishment as a child (or perhaps he wasn't) is to be taken his real; but what he finds there -- his insane father and gigantic person-eating penis -- is a fantasy or an hallucination? Or is the entire movie supposed to be one big anxiety dream? Beau is afraid of missing his flight, and unable to sleep, and dreams of every possible obstacle being placed between him and his trip to see his mother? The water in the flat failing is certainly the sort of thing which might happen in a nightmare.
But if that's true then the final, extended, confrontation with Mom becomes oddly pointless. It would mean that we are not seeing Beau's actual mother, or learning something real about their relationship, but merely observing how a stereotypically domineering Jewish mother is transformed in Beau's mind into a figure of gothic psychosis? The ludicrous final sequence is a kind of Matter of Life and Death judgement day. Beau's accuser points to minor childhood transgressions -- the sort of thing an adult might harbour guilt about -- but also refers to events in the film as if they had really happened.
The idea of symbolism-laden dreams (and there are clearly more meaningful images on screen than you can absorb in a single viewing) -- indeed the whole idea of psychoanalysis -- seems to belong more in the 1950s than the 2020s. Sigmund Freud may have provided Alfred and Woody with a lot of good material, but hasn't the world move on since then?
I don't think I could bear to sit through this movie again: which is a pity, because it would make more sense on a second viewing. Or perhaps it wouldn't.
I'm Andrew.
I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.
If you enjoy these reviews, please consider leaving a tip on the Ko-Fi platform.
If you can afford it, please consider becoming a Patreon, by pledging £1 or more each time I publish an essay on the main blog. (I don't charge for these little reviews.)
Please do not feed the troll.
No comments:
Post a Comment