After watching the film, I decided to describe who is in it, and what parts they play, because honestly I have no idea what else to write (except what I wrote down below).
Joaquin Phoenix is Beau Wassermann. He just recently played a magnificent Napolean in 2023, and confused most fans with his brilliant role in Joker in 2019. One of my favorite movies was Gladiator in 2000 where he played opposite Russel Crowe as Commodus. Say what you will, he's a brilliant actor can make you absolutely love or hate a character with ease.
Patti Lupone is Mona Wassermann and she is most famous on broadway, with two tony awards, for Evita in 1979 and most recently Gypsy. It's for this reason many people might not recognize her, but she's a remarkable actress and this movie was written for her part.
Amy Ryan as Grace I think her most acclaimed role was as Helene McCready, in not exactly the best of movies, Gone baby Gone (Directed by Ben Afleck in 2007) where she received nominations for Academy Award, Golden Globe and Sag Award for best supporting actress. Most recently, she played Jan Bellows in one of my favorite series in the past few years Only Murders in the Building.
Nathan Lane as Roger. One of my all-time favorite actors, was in one of my favorite recent shows Only Murders in the Building. He was in Modern Family for a few episodes as Pepper Saltzman, but his most memorable role in my mind, and my favorite, was in the role of Albert opposite Robin Williams in The Birdcage 1996.
Kylie Rogers as Toni very recently was in Landscape with Invisible Hand 2023 opposite Asante Blackk.
Denis Menochet as Jeeves. You might remember him in Inglourious Basterds 2009 as the french dairy farmer interrogated by the Nazis. You might not, it wasn't a huge role, but certainly worth mentioning.
Parker Posey as Elaine Bray. You probably forgot this, but she spent about 5 minutes of screen time in Dazed and Confused as high school Queen Bee Darla.
Zoe Lister-Jones as young Mona, who's most known for writing, producing and starring in Lola Versus in 2012.
Armen Nahapetian as Teen Beau, he played Jason in aTypical Wednesday in 2020.
Julia Antonelli as Teen Elaine and she played Grace in Alex & Me in 2018.
Stephen McKinley Henderson as the Therapist Dr. Jeremy Friel. He was, most recently in Dune Part 1, 2021, Thufir Hawat.
Richard Kind as Dr. Cohen, whose most famous role was probably Andy in Curb Your Enthusiasm (2002-2021) but has been in a plethora of films and television shows.
The cast is a complete mixed bag, from Award winning to virtually unknown, so that just incentivized me to see it, to be honest. And after watching the entire three hour film with only breaks to pee and grab a snack, I have no idea what I watched.
This is what I would consider an "awkward" film. I see a lot of movies like this, mostly independent films like Focus Films etc, and they're all fun to watch at least once. This wasn't fun. It was awkward. I felt like I was in second grade and peed my pants in front of my class just watching this movie.
But all that aside, let's do a rundown of what I could kinda understand about the film. And before you go off arguing that there's all sorts of morals and societal issues built into the film, I would probably agree with all of it. If I had a single clue what I just watched.
Joaquin Phoenix plays a middle-aged balding man who is basically agoraphobic with a therapist who sounds awfully manipulative. Not sure if the therapist is legitimately trying to make Beau crazy or not, but it appears to be working rather well. I mean, not like there isn't a reason he doesn't want to go outside. His neighborhood is a fucking nuthouse. People jumping off buildings, gun shots, whack jobs, someone slipping notes under his door that miraculously make it all the way across his apartment to his bed telling him to shut off his music (which doesn't exist in his apartment). I think he's hallucinating almost everything, to be honest, but I can't tell).
So the story is, so far, that he's about to head out to visit his mother, when his keys and bag are stolen. He left his door open to run back and grab something and boom, gone. When he tries to explain this to his mother over the phone, who is extremely excited to talk to him at first, then turns into a manipulative bitch. He reverts into some child-like personality. Maybe I'm being sensitive, but that's what it sounds like.
Anyway, he takes new meds and has no water, and it specifically states to take meds with water, so, in a near-psychotic frenzy (which basically describes him throughout the entire film) he runs frantically, jumping over rapists and avoiding what can only be described as mental institution rejects, to get to the bodega across the street just to get some water because, for no reason whatsoever, there is no running water in his apartment. Then everyone on the street just wanders into his building like zombies while he tries to fish change for the water out of his pockets to pay. And by the time he gets to his apartment door, which he propped open and has now been rather un-propped, everyone is gone. With the exception of a mostly dead looking body in the middle of the intersection, there is no one on what was just a busy crazy street. He has to sleep outside his apartment on construction scaffolding while everyone in the neighborhood destroys his place. He wakes up to a construction worker drilling something and completely ignoring the fact he exists. Eventually he gets into his apartment, which is pretty much destroyed.
He finally calls his mom on the phone and the call is answered by a UPS guy who apparently found his mother dead without a head or face. The UPS guy is freaking out because he found her dead body smashed by a chandelier. And then the UPS guy said maybe he dialed the wrong number and to call back. Beau calls back but then the UPS guy is totally serious and asks him for permission to check for ID. He does and Beau learns that it's his mother.
So just to recap, we're 30 minutes into a 3 hour long movie about an agoraphobe who is quite possibly hallucinating most of the time, who's therapist is testing out a new drug on him while being super sketchy, and he finds out that his mother is probably dead after his apartment is ransacked by lunatics from his neighborhood.
Then he finds some guy in his apartment while he's trying to take a bath, up in his ceiling, like Spider Man without a costume. The guy falls on him in the bath. They try to both drown each other and escape the bathtub at the same time, which was weird. He runs out into the streets completely naked. And that's not the weird part. He encounters a cop who thinks he's the naked murderer guy (it'll make sense when you watch it) who scares him off with his gun out. As he runs back to his apartment, he gets hit with, what I can only assume, is a bread truck.
The folks that run him over take him to their house and say he was stabbed repeatedly, so they saved him. This is a couple days or so later. Roger (played by Nathan Lane) is apparently a surgeon who fixed Beau up and gave him a place to stay (along with what looks like an ankle monitor for good measure). He calls his mother's attorney and is given an even worse guilt trip because his mother's body is being watched (Jewish tradition of Shiva) and she wouldn't be put in the ground without Beau there. And he's apparently been out of it for about 3 days, but no matter what he explains (getting run over, stabbed, etc) the attorney just tells him in the most asinine way possible to get home.
The daughter of Roger, and her best friend, are druggies and psychopaths, another person living in the house is a homicidal maniac suffering from severe PTSD...
Ok, hold on a sec.
Do we really need to hear more about the plot at this point? I'm going to watch the whole thing because I want to see where this goes, but I don't need to describe anything else right now. He's going home to see his mother, apparently. I guess we'll see how things pan out.
* * *
Two hours and twenty four minutes later:
I have no idea what I just watched. I literally haven't the slightest clue as to what happened, or why, or if it was all in his head, or someone else's.
At this point, you are just going to have to see this just to get it out of your own system. Or not. Was it brilliant? I have no clue. Was there some moral? No idea. Was there really a plot or was it just a bunch of random shit that happened to happen while someone was randomly filming? Most likely.
Having absolutely no clue: 2
Incredible acting: 6
Watching Beau kill his childhood love by ejaculating in her, and thus killing her, because of some genetically screwed up massive testicle problem: 4
Tits and ass: 1
Which brings the totally awkward and useless rating to a 3.25, much like this movie. I cannot believe I sat through the entire thing.
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