Warning: This article contains spoilers for Beau is Afraid.By the time Beau is Afraid comes to its final act, Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) learns that his entire life has been controlled, but there were clues in Ari Aster's surreal narrative all along. Beau has lived a sheltered life hyper fixating on the threats from the violent world he perceives outside his apartment, but when his mother passes away under mysterious circumstances, he prepares to confront his anxieties to make the journey home. Along the way, he encounters incredibly strange situations, and the characters in Beau is Afraid help shape him into someone who might be capable of standing up for himself.
When he arrives at his mother's home and finds that she's staged her death with the maid's body, his perception of reality is shattered even more. Not only that but she's been given the tapes of his private therapy sessions, just one more aspect of his life she's been controlling from afar. These revelations shock Beau as much as the audience, who can spot the threads connecting Beau's odyssey with his mother through a series of hints throughout her house. Once Beau puts the pieces together, he turns into someone who can defy her, though it comes too little too late for his emancipation from her manipulation.
6 Beau's Mother Owns His Apartment Building
Because Beau is Afraid is from Beau's perspective, and he's n unreliable narrator, it's difficult to determine if his apartment building is really as degraded as it seems. In that case, it's hard to imagine why he would continue to live in an apartment complex that's in such a dilapidated state, and so overrun with questionable tenants. To Beau, everything outside his apartment is a hellscape filled with criminals and serial killers, and the apartment is his safe space, a bastion to protect himself from the rest of the world, and it all makes sense once the audience realizes that Beau's mother owns it.
In his mother's office, there's a photo of his apartment complex after construction and her company slogan right next to it. Not only is it the perfect way to keep tabs on her son, but it's also the perfect place to make him feel dependent after a hard day spent out in the world. By being responsible for giving him a roof over his head, she can control every aspect of the place that's supposed to be his safe space, including making it not feel that way through cleverly deployed notes from nosy neighbors.
5 The Commercial For MW Toothpaste
When Roger and Grace take Beau in to convalesce at their house after accidentally hitting him with their car, he enjoys days filled with things that conform to a traditional familial archetype, including sharing family meals together and watching evening television. At one point, an advertisement for MW toothpaste flashes across the screen, and later a paper copy of the ad is framed in Beau's mother's office. MW stands for her initials, Mona Wassermann, and there's even a picture of a young Beau brushing his teeth with it, highlighting its importance to his mother and her company.
Beau doesn't react to the MW ad and neither does the audience, but the audience is shocked to see a picture of Beau brushing his teeth with MW toothpaste. It's sandwiched between other framed pictures of Beau using MW products, ranging from toothpaste to razors. Clearly, through the company, Beau has used something important to sustain his daily life without realizing how much it subliminally made his mother responsible for his very survival.
4 Channel 78
After the MW toothpaste commercial, when Beau is scrolling through the channels, Grace whispers to him to try Channel 78. When he eventually gets to it, he realizes that it's live footage of where he's standing in the living room and even somehow has the means to move forward and backward in time. He's able to watch himself and his movements, and it's clear that the live recording has been happening on Channel 78 ever since he arrived in the house.
Roger and Grace caused the accident that brought him to the house in the first place, and there's the possibility that it was never an accident at all. Channel 78, combined with Grace's secret note to Beau to "not incriminate" himself implies that whoever is carefully watching him on the other side of the camera is doing so for a reason. The only person who would want to monitor his behavior that much would be his mother, with whom it becomes clear Roger and Grace are connected.
3 Roger Is A Former Employee Of Beau's Mother
When Beau is looking at the photographs hanging on the walls of his mother's office, including the one that shows the construction of his apartment building, he sees a face that's instantly recognizable to him. In one of Beau is Afraid's wild twists. Roger is shown in a photograph of employees who work for his mother, which is surprising, considering Roger's supposedly a surgeon. It's possible that for Mona Wassermann, his duties consisted of something else that Beau couldn't have known about.
Even though it's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, it's still integral to Beau understanding that he could never guess the amount of control his mother had over him. Her reach and influence extended to asking Roger to hit her son and assume the responsibility of carrying for him while he recovered, which he doesn't do a good job of. Beau should have known when his wounds never healed and he always seemed to be doing worse.
2 The Tattooed Man Who Attacks Beau Is Working For His Mother
At the beginning of the movie, after fans learn that Beau is afraid of everything and is in regular therapy for his anxiety, he's chased down by a heavily tattooed man including black pupils. He makes it into his apartment complex before the man can attack him, but the salient sequence stands out because of the man's distinct appearance in a sea of quirky characters in Beau is Afraid. His picture is also on the employee wall in his mother's office along with Roger, implying that he worked for Mona in some capacity as well.
It's not outside the realm of possibility to think Beau's mother might have had him physically and emotionally harassed. She seemed to enjoy punishing him if she felt like he didn't give her enough attention. Perhaps for his entire adult life, anytime she felt like he should be a more dutiful son, she had certain employees attack him until he retreated into the apartment she owned and called her, unable to contend with the outside world she's made terrifying by design.
1 Beau's Maintenance Worker Is Cleaning At His Mother's Funeral
Something that could have tipped off the audience to the connection that Beau's mother has to Beau's living conditions was the maintenance man seen cleaning up after her funeral. He's the same maintenance man in Beau's building, often seen wiping away the remains of a very violent day. He never answers Beau's questions or really engages him in conversation, but seems to be dedicated to making sure that Mona's various commercial properties are well looked after (even if Beau's apartment building doesn't look like it).
Having an informant installed at Beau's place of residence is, like having his therapist on her payroll, invasive and Machiavellian. In the ending of Beau is Afraid, his mother explains that he only ever does what people tell him, and yet she's orchestrated a life in which he's so scared of the outside world that he's dependent on her love and support. She only gives it to him if she feels like he's earned it, and it remains conditional even if it's never good enough, something Beau finds out too late to make any changes.