THE MAN WITH THE CHILD IN HIS EYES (BEAU IS AFRAID)

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Every so often a film director is let loose and comes up with a vision that is guaranteed to split audiences.

In 2023, it looks like 'Beau Is Afraid' may well be that film.

Some fans of Ari Aster will be entranced by what is an ambitious, sprawling cinematic fever dream.

Others will find the movie self indulgent and overblown.

Technically and narratively it undoubtedly pushes the boat out.

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But does it convince?

Joaquin Phoenix is Beau Wasserman, a man ravaged by middle age and crippled by anxiety.

Visiting his therapist, played by Stephen McKinley Henderson, we learn he is psyching himself up to travel to see his mother, Patti LuPone's successful businesswoman Mona Wasserman.

However his stress levels are raised during the session as she persistently rings him.

The therapist scribbles only one word into his jotter during the session "guilty" and prescribes him a new drug but insists he must consume it with water.

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Returning to his grubby downtown apartment, Beau appears to be living in the neighbourhood from Hell with a peep show next door, a dead body in the middle of the road, a mad knife wielding naked man, violent assaults in broad daylight and a threatening tattooed man.

Desperate to grab some sleep before his flight the following day, Beau is regularly interrupted by someone shoving notes under his door accusing him of playing loud music.

He eventually sleeps in and with two hours to make his flight, events take a nightmarish turn when the keys to his apartment are stolen along with his luggage and he has to face the disappointment of his mother on a phone call, telling her he is unable to visit because of what has happened.

Beau accidentally swallows his pills without taking water, has to run the gauntlet through the violent neighbourhood street to the local store to buy a bottle of still water and discovers his credit card won't work.

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As events spiral, he subsequently ends up discovering in another phone call that Mona has been decapitated by a chandelier and he ends up getting knocked down and stabbed.

This results in him being treated for his wounds in the home of Amy Ryan's charitable food truck driver Grace and Nathan Kane's surgeon Roger who are grieving the death of their son who was in the Army in Caracas and have a troubled daughter, Kylie Rogers' Toni who resents Beau recuperating in her bedroom.

Desperate to get to the family home for his mum's funeral, Beau soon embarks on a strange odyssey where he encounters a theatre community in a forest, three young men who may be his sons and a man who could be his dad who he was told had died.

He eventually makes it to his mother's house but there he encounters some disturbing home truths.

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With a running time just two minutes shy of three hours, few films this year will test audiences as much as 'Beau Is Afraid'.

A horror comedy, it keeps you on your toes as you try to decipher what the hell is going on?

Is it a surreal Fruedian three hour panic attack, an Oedipal odyssey, a Kafkaesque nightmare or every one of them, everywhere, all at once?

Probably the last but it's undeniably the work of a huge cinematic talent who has been given free rein, possibly too much, for his nightmarish rollercoaster ride.

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Aster has proven already with 'Hereditary' and 'Midsommar' he's a director with a keen sense of the power of cinema.

He knows how powerful images and shocking sounds can really shake up audiences. 

'Beau Is Afraid' undeniably has moments of great power where he puts that knowledge to mesmerising use.

The travelling forest theatre sequence inspires a breathtaking flight of fancy in which Beau imagines being reunited with his three sons - played by Michael Gandolfini, Theodore Pellerin and Mike Taylor.

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Aster stunningly deploys animation and live action in this sequence to stirring effect with the help of cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski and Jorge Canada Escorihuela and his team of animators.

However there are moments of self-indulgence - particularly during the last Act with a sequence in an attic featuring a Jabba the Hut style penis that just seems ridiculously outlandish.

Cinephiles will no doubt spot references to Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho' and 'Rear Window,' David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet,' Albert Brooks' Afterlife comedy 'Defending Your Life' and the French surrealist comedian Jacques Tati's 'Playtime'.

Others will be struck by the similarity in tone to Peter Weir's 'The Truman Show,' Adrian Lyne's 'Jacob's Ladder' and Charlie Kaufman's 'Syndeoche, New York'.

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They will also detect some of the themes from 'Hereditary' and 'Midsommar' in there too.

As for Phoenix, he turns in a very mumbly, childlike performance, playing Beau like a frightened boy trapped inside a middle aged man's body.

It's at times irritating and also strangely hypnotic.

However he undoubtedly owns the film as a performer.

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LuPone and particularly Zoe Lister-Jones as the younger version of Mona turn in stirring performances as his domineering mother.

Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan inject a David Lynch style creepiness into their performances as a perfect white picket fence couple who may not be what they seem.

Stephen McKinlay Henderson feels oddly detached in the scenes he appears in, while English actress Hayley Squires is good value as Penelope, a pregnant member of the forest theatre community who stumbles upon Beau.

Parker Posey participates in one of weirdest sex scenes you will ever see.

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Richard Kind pops up as a grouchy lawyer, while Armen Nahapetian and Julia Antonelli do a decent job playing the younger versions of Beau and his childhood cruise ship sweetheart Elaine.

Gandolfini, Pellerin and Taylor only briefly appear and therefore struggle to make much of an impression.

However Kylie Rogers is effective as Grace and Roger's raging, grieving daughter.

Denis Menochet is undoubtedly menacing as a haunted war veteran the couple have adopted who lives in a campervan in their garden.

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The film also boasts surprising cameos from Bill Hader as a UPS delivery guy and the playwright David Mamet as the voice of a rabbi.

Does it work?

It's hard to tell because so much is going on in Aster's film, you feel it demands more than one viewing.

As a comedy, there are undoubtedly moments where you find yourself laughing but those gags can be quite macabre.

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As a horror film, Aster delivers disturbing images in spades as you'd expect him to do.

Beau's neighbourhood is a weird Tucker Carlson style vision of a broken US city - landing somewhere between Martin Scorsese's New York in 'Taxi Driver' and the Trump supporting hordes running amok in the US Capitol.

And like David Lynch, moments of surreal serenity are suddenly punctured by shocking, grotesque acts of violence.

To his credit, you shouldn't be bored watching this film.

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I certainly found myself being sucked into trying to decipher the mystery of what is actually going on with Beau.

But did I actually like it?

I'm not sure because while I certainly admire the audacity of the narrative and the technical bravura, I found parts of the film over the top at times and alienating.

But that's maybe down to sensory overload.

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Ask me in December after I have seen Aster's film again because 'Beau Is Afraid' feels like a Chinese puzzle.

And it is one which, by the time the credits roll, I'm not sure I actually completed.

'Beau Is Afraid' may feel like a heavy handed Oedipal satire but you know what? 

I'd still take it over Darren Aronofsky's 'mother!' any day.

('Beau is Afraid' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on May 19, 2023)