If I tell you about a post along a road at night, and you see exactly what post I am talking about, then you are one of those people of taste who have seen Heredity by Ari Aster. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, well, I’m sorry to tell you that your life lacks flavor. Good news though, it also means that a good movie night awaits you and then maybe your life will find the colors it was missing. It is possible that you will come out of it slightly traumatized, it’s a risk to take, well, you can’t have everything in life!
Beau is afraid, currently in theaters, made us want to present the man behind this film trip. Make yourself comfortable, and dive into a universe where horror rubs shoulders with the grotesque.
Ari Aster was born in New York in the summer of 1986, some time before the release of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, a horror movie as bad as the first is great. Should we see a sign in the fact that the pope of modern horror is born from the ashes of a monolith of horror? Probably not. This anecdote is nothing more than filler, to fill the abyssal void of this article because its author is sorely lacking in inspiration. It’s a little trick to entertain the reader, so smile you motherfuckers. Sorry I digress. Where were we ? Ah yes, New York. 1986. Daniel Balavoine leaves us. Coluche leaves us. The Chernobyl reactor explodes. Schwarzy is getting married. Definitely a happy mess.
The young Ari is passionate about genre cinema and spends his days in the local video club. It is quite naturally that he then goes to study at the American Film Institute. So far nothing abnormal, nothing more than the journey of any good apprentice filmmaker. As interesting as a medicine leaflet, which you will end up regretting not having read the day when a green pustule grows on your balls. What relationship with Ari Aster will you tell me? I would answer you that this filmmaker respected by critics, with complex and demanding works, shares above all a touching passion for the external male genital organ, more commonly called: the dick.
His first penisic feat will be the false publicity around penis farts, TDF Really Works. A short absurd video that explains the operation of the object put forward. My intellectual honesty pushes me to warn you: in this film, no finesse, very little elegance, zero reflection. It’s not bad, but it’s (very) far from good. The film has the merit of laying the foundations of what will be his cinema thereafter. A pronounced taste for comedy that he can’t help perverting with the help of the “excess” image, the one that tilts humor into horror. It’s funny, both words start and end with the same letters. Should we see a sign there? No.
Aster did not stop there and released, a few months later, its first success: the short film The Strange Thing About The Johnsons (available here), which quickly went viral on the internet. The film begins with a seemingly banal sequence, a father surprises his son masturbating, then sinks into perversion when we discover what the son was crushing the radish on: a photo of his father. This will be the starting point of a deeply unhealthy story, where the seemingly classic family hides a heavy secret and rotten roots. A theme that he will continue to explore throughout his career, particularly in Heredity. But if you remember, the movie with the pole.
We find in this short all the characteristic elements of his cinema, virtuoso sequence shots, wide-angle top shots, precise dialogues, an increased sense of editing and visual narration. The real tour de force is to succeed in tackling such complex themes without falling into unhealthy voyeurism. Ari Aster is a brat who takes malicious pleasure in provoking (this is his graduation film…) but always with cinematic elegance.
It is in 2014 that the genital apotheosis will take place with the short film The Turtle’s Head (ici), a kind of hybrid between film noir and grotesque horror. A private detective lives his life as an investigator, against a background of jazzy music and indulges in thoughts that are all about sex. Our detective is a moustachioed rascal, never satisfied, an Apollo with a beer belly and round cheeks, who goes from woman to woman, from his secretary to any client. All of them give in to his dark sausage-eating charm. Until everything changes when he notices that his penis is shrinking. Under cover of a seemingly silly story, Aster once again manages to show off his cinematic mastery. Each shot is intelligently constructed, the staging is rich, fluid.
Ari Aster is proof that form is sometimes more important than substance. This endless debate, which animates all film students, seems to finally find a definitive answer: a filmmaker is at the service of the form. But never neglect the bottom. Write it down in your notebooks children, my word has gospel value. You think I’m talking nonsense and testifying, once again, to an oversized and toxic ego? You are right.
The icing on the cake is in Beau is afraid, the story of this anxious man, played by a Joaquin Phoenix at the top of his game, who wants to go to his mother and has to bear the weight of two testicles as big as melons. Once again, sex and more specifically the penis, the cock, in short the salami, are among the main elements of the story. Until pushing vice during a horror vision that will delight all those who have not yet gone to see the film. Even in other projects a priori remote from the flaccid organ concerned, the director finds a way to slip a penis in here and there. This is the case of the short film Basically (ici), released in 2013 and a real lesson in directing. A young actress, born into luxury and idleness, tells us about her life in a 15-minute monologue. Aster uses very wide, admirably constructed static shots, and paints the detestable portrait of a surprisingly endearing woman. Although the key word is the sketch, each sequence is rich in ideas. Emptiness is omnipresent in this display of wealth, accentuating the emptiness of the character, and his terrible loneliness.
Like a dark pendant to BasicallyAster directed in 2016 the film That’s life. The main character, a drug addict on the street, delivers an incriminating discourse on society, debunks consumerism and the American way of life, denounces our digital stupefaction and the intrinsic violence of our world… While being himself deeply immoral . Aster’s comic touch is omnipresent, as black and irreverent as usual.
Which allows a nice transition to approach the short film Munchausen (ici). Yeah it’s a thoughtful article, there’s a bit of thought behind it, I’m not content just to list movies and the number of penises that appear there. Well yes, but it’s not for me, it’s for a friend. How’s the interrogation? Can we go back to our topic of the day? THANKS.
Munchausen SO. In 2013, Ari Aster tackled the production of a silent tale directly inspired by Pixar productions. You probably remember the introduction of the film up there ? Here it is the same thing but a bit more sordid. The interest of the project does not lie in its history, frankly banal and hardly surprising, but in its design. As always, the framing is neat, the horror progressive and the humor omnipresent. We feel a filmmaker in full control!
It is impressive to see how far he has come when you watch his first short film, Herman’s cure all-tonic released in 2008.
A creepily polite young pharmacist must deal with a particularly unpleasant customer while tending to his own father, vegetating in the back shop, sweating and cursing. In spite of a certain imbalance in the construction, it does not prevent that the setting in scene wants to be already inventive, in perpetual change. We feel a real genius at the helm, a genius who does not yet know what to do with all this genius but who over the years will learn to channel his ideas, to succeed 15 years later in organizing a big bazaar in Beau is afraid. Doing anything is not done just anyhow. Ooh she’s beautiful there! It’s a gift, if you want to shine in society I leave it to you. Sorry, I got carried away.
Aster really made itself known to the general public in 2018 with the release of Heredity distributed by A24, the new Mecca of inventive, demanding and audacious cinema. To give you an idea, these studios are at the origin of The Lobster, Moonlight, 90’s, Uncut Gems, Pearl/X, Everything Everywhere All At Once… For the promotion of the film, they had measured the pulse of the spectators during the sessions, sure of their effect. Heredity is quite simply the most intense horror experience in recent years. Operating a real setting up of terror, the director constructs a slow, almost lethargic film, shot through with explosions of traumatic violence.
Crowned with his success, the director tackles a more ambitious project around a young woman who leaves to mourn her parents in a Swedish community, in the middle of a neo-pagan festival. Horror at Aster is never buried in the dark or hidden in the thickets. It adorns itself with spring flowers, reads in dazzling smiles, interferes in our homes. It reveals itself in all its light, and one almost comes to regret the darkness. In Midsummertime is dilated to its climax, the scenes stretch out one after the other until a dazzling finale where blood, guts and intestines mingle with festive songs.
In 2023 therefore, Beau is afraid, the director’s third film, and by far his most obscure, arrives on our screens. Far from being unanimous, this film is worth for its experience. Whether you like it or not, the fact is that you are going to experience something, sometimes unpleasant, often funny, completely crazy.
Here is what the director himself says:This movie is like sending a 10 year old boy drunk on Zoloft (an antidepressant) go shopping.”
Who wouldn’t be tempted?
2023-05-16 16:13:33
#Ari #Aster #story #horror #pecker
