Watch Joaquin Phoenix Make a Run for It in ‘Beau Is Afraid’

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In this early sequence from the awful comedy “Beau Is Afraid,” the body is full of so many gags and references that’s it’s unattainable to take all of them in.

But for the movie’s author and director, Ari Aster, that’s the purpose.

This second, which has Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) strolling, then finally working, via his neighborhood, employs a method known as “rooster fats.” In an interview, Aster mentioned that he discovered of the time period whereas making the movie. Coined by the cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman in reference to the work of the illustrator Will Elder, it entails layering the background with as many visible jokes as potential. Here, that features indicators, graffiti, props and extra.

The philosophy behind the approach isn’t that the whole lot must be seen, however “that the viewers will get the sense of all of the element,” Aster mentioned. “And I believe that encourages a fair deeper engagement since you see the quantity of labor that’s gone into constructing this world.”

The scene can be full of background gamers. Aster mentioned that every one was “given very particular directives and really particular habits.” As they pop up in subsequent scenes, they proceed to exhibit the identical behaviors.

The sequence closes out with Beau sprinting down the road to make it to the entrance door of his constructing earlier than being caught by his tattooed nemesis.

Aster mentioned that Phoenix “was solely in a position to do that just a few occasions as a result of he harm his ankle fairly early on. And by the point we have been performed taking pictures, he was limping round.”

Read the “Beau Is Afraid” overview.

Read a narrative a few Mariah Carey tune that seems within the movie.

Read an interview with Ari Aster.