11/24/2023 0 Comments Joaquin phoenix to die forOnce again, it’s full of all the haunted attics, headless bodies, and ominous triangular houses that have already become its young auteur’s signature flourishes.” “Once again, ‘Beau Is Afraid’ delivers another morbidly hilarious - and fiercely skeptical - look at the unstable relationship between love and obligation, lineage and entrapment. “Aster’s delirious third feature clarifies his artistic obsessions even as it expands them into surreal new shapes,” writes IndieWire’s David Ehrlich in his review of the film, hitting theaters April 21. After winning Best Actor in 2020 for his sick spin on a supervillain in Todd Phillips’ “Joker,” the Academy Award winner appeared as a journalist taking care of his young nephew in Mike Mills’ A24 family drama “C’mon, C’mon.” Now, Phoenix is back at the indie studio with another project: Ari Aster’s third feature, “Beau Is Afraid.” The surreal horror comedy expands on an Aster short from 2011, and stars Phoenix as Beau - “a paranoid man on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother” - alongside Nathan Lane, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, and Parker Posey. In Kidman’s hands, Suzanne behaves as if she were constantly watching herself through the eyes of those around her, as if her point of view were indeed that projected performance.It’s another big year for Joaquin Phoenix. It is this strange psychological distance from ourselves in the social media era that To Die For captures so well. The inversion of POV makes sense if we think of the world (if only fleetingly) as a screen that holds us, so we do not look out, but rather back at ourselves on the screen, small and fleeting and exterior. Indeed, the TikTok trend of inverting the term POV to mean not “point of view” but almost its opposite - “you are watching” - captures something of Suzanne’s approach to her own world. In the years since, the allure of fame for its own sake has only grown more acute, and To Die For feels in many ways more apt for our time now than its own. To Die For brilliantly captures the rapidly increasing media saturation of the mid-'90s, as the rise of tabloid talk shows like The Jerry Springer Show offered the promise of fleeting notoriety, nevermind what for. Kidman manages all of this with the kind of very arch humor that marks so many of her great performances to follow the conspiratorial wink between her and the audience adds a spark of comedy and life to even her most serious or frightening performances. And indeed it is not the police, but the lure of Hollywood that eventually leads to Suzanne’s downfall. Kidman plays Suzanne like Elmira Gulch, riding her bike through the tornado in The Wizard of Oz, not only comfortable, but downright gleeful in the storm, apparently oblivious to what might happen when the storm ends, and the house falls. Related: Top 5 Gus Van Sant Films, Ranked Van Sant, too, expertly conveys Suzanne’s cold confidence and control in her dealings with other people and contrasts this with her blind, reckless obsession with fame. Suzanne is a master manipulator, and Kidman plays her as a character for whom everyone, including herself, is simply a tool within her grand design. Yet she plays this with a level of wit and calculation that is enthralling. Kidman is beautiful in the role, of course, but cold and remote, qualities that have doomed more than one career. Kidman’s portrayal of the charismatic and amoral Suzanne captured many of the qualities that would make her a superstar for the next three decades.
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