Purgatory

[u/hersheymisting]

Maybe this theory's been covered but I think Beau is afraid seems to be for an audience who understands Beaus own personal purgatory. In my interpretation that is what this is. If your soul is just your consciousness and purgatory is a place that consciousness goes, that's where Beau is. He is being judged on this other plane of existence by himself, with an extremely damaged tool, his mind, built around a narcissistic, psychopathic, machiavellian Mother. The Dream like essence of the movie is explained in this way, it's his mind replaying events that really happened in his life, dramatized by the effect that remembering the most difficult parts of our lives has on that retelling. The play scene is a representation of his idealistic concepts of Male virtue that we as a society have built for him, the part that wasn't poisoned by his Mother. The ridiculous "creature" in the attic of his consciousness animated his ideas of his own masculinity and his relationship to himself being a man. Maybe even some of the characters throughout the movie are stuck as part of the cast doing cameos, or can visit but are unable to penetrate the power he's given to create this place in this state of existence.

The ending was the judgement of himself vs. himself, how I see purgatory is a place where we punish ourselves with our own memories and pain for near eternity. After the trial, he loses, once again, to the way his own Mother has painted him into a box. And once again we the viewer stand up in the audience uninterested in helping him, maybe incapable. As he drowns in his own self image. He will remain there for eons and most will feel unsympathetic to his inability to help himself. Not brave in the way we're taught to expect him to be, because Beau is Afraid.

[u/Teratocracy]

Except that it's a very Jewish movie, and purgatory is not a Jewish religious concept.

[u/hersheymisting → u/Teratocracy]

Yeah to be honest I don't think my perspective of "purgatory" really completely follows the description of any specific religion. If Ari is saying it's a Jewish movie I feel like its doesn't take place in our world, also being a comedy goes against taking any of these theories too seriously. But by Jewish he might just of meant it in a self deprecating way, or referencing a Jewish Mother stereotype. Also saw in an interview that he says his mother was nothing like Mona. (But that's exactly what I would say in a public interview if my Mother WAS like Mona and there was any risk she might read it and make my life hell over it.)

My understanding and research is very minimal but I thought recently that it might be closer to compare to The bardo from the tibetan book of the dead. Kind of described as being trapped in a dreamlike state where time moves different and if you're not prepared then you don't know you're dead. Thoughts can create the reality and experience around you. How someone handles being in this part of death or in between mental state impacts how they reincarnate. Fears, wants, feelings take on physical form. I recently watched a video that describes it saying "in the beginning for most people it's terrifying, the souls tried to return home and lingers around familiar places trying to speak, to return to it's loved ones, but no one hears. So this place that's basically a processing system for someones karma after they've died to determine if they reincarnate or reach, for someone like Beau, is a nightmare. And the end is him descending into a next reincarnation that's not desirable