Decision to Leave (this screening)

The Cinematologists Newsetter #64 - May 30, 2023

I walked out of a screening of Ari Aster's Beau is Afraid this week. After an hour or so of an experience that was both anxiety-inducing and profoundly insufferable, a debate began in my mind: Should I leave? What would such an action mean? What would it say about me as an alleged "cinephile"? Maybe this was a defence mechanism against a film that seemed intentionally designed to imbue a kind of nihilistic spectatorial psychosis. I clearly have an allergic reaction to Aster's films because I couldn't make it through Midsommar either (but I put that down to streaming it at home, where it's much easier to anonymously bug out). I haven't seen Hereditary.

My decision to leave was not fuelled by some Cannes-esque gesture of ostentatious grandiosity—a political statement of objection to the filmmaker or the existence of their work. Yes, I thought the film was a piece of shit. Another in a seemingly en vogue cycle of "auteur" grand statements that combine self-reflexive malaise (behold my uncontainable genius), a lashing out at exterior conceptions (the world misunderstands me), and a narcissistic streak regarding their contribution to art (no one can do this except me). Enabled by the privilege of huge budgets and a seeming lack of editorial restraint, one could add Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (Iñárritu) and Babylon (Chazelle) to this list (Tarantino's forthcoming The Movie Critic could well be added to this pantheon). As Patreons will know, I'm not against a healthy dose of pretentiousness in the era of factory-farmed content. But Aster seems more like a well-funded cine-troll.