Reviews

SPOILER ALERT! I find it particularly disturbing that the unjust demise of Hypatia at the hands of an angry mob of Christians took place during Lent of 415 A.D.! As to the ungodly scoundrels who perpetrated this horrific crime against a defenseless woman in true cowardly fashion and who by their very actions rejected the timeless teachings of Jesus (especially that part about loving others), couldn't they at least have given up torture and murder during Lent the way later generations of their Lent-observing progeny give up candy and cake?

And to anyone who wants a crash course on the differences between the teachings OF Jesus and the teachings ABOUT Jesus, there is always the distant echo of Hypatia's screams to cut through the clouds of chaos as just one of many examples that emerges through the thread of time and the needle of space to remind us how differently Jesus would have reacted to Hypatia and the angry mob compared to the worst of what can happen when the name of Jesus becomes merely an outside thing worn like a fancy logo on a uniform for a local sports team.

Whether based on the 77 Urantia Papers devoted exclusively to the unabridged version of Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Jesus or the Bible's Gospel accounts, the Jesus I know would have undoubtedly rescued Hypatia from this dire situation had He been incarnated on the temporal stage of tragedy depicted in this film where all tangible traces of her slaughtered innocence slowly slipped away from her mutilated femininity with the final few breaths that passed across her fading lips into the winter darkness of a silent abyss. How quickly Hypatia would have embraced Jesus and become a true believer had His facial expression of unconditional love been the last image she saw at the very end of her mortal journey.

If the eyes are the windows to the Soul, then just imagine how Light from Paradise reflected through the eyes of Jesus could have reduced that crime scene to a tiny speck of cosmic dust.

Hereafter, a bland journey of meaningless chaos and supernatural silliness that will take you absolutely nowhere (and will take its good old time getting there too). All of your unanswered questions about life beyond death shall fade like fragile fragments of forgotten daydreams into the boring blackness of a bottomless oblivion as the screenwriter reveals (eventually) that there are no answers to be found here, no mysteries to be solved, no truths to boldly emerge from the cracked crevices of curiosity to conquer the countless crumbs of contrived content that keep spewing forth like random samplings of a plot-in-progress stuck in the sleepy sap of slow motion until all of the honest of heart witnessing such a dull display of lingering emptiness begin to hope and pray that in the real hereafter, for saints and sinners alike (and everyone in between these two spectral extremes of inner dimensionality), the Creator has perhaps seen fit to let it all beat to the pulse of a slightly less morbid tempo, one where the idea of Death potentially being a transitional modification of living instead of being the final curtain call doesn't come across as a dead-on-arrival script stripped of any substantive qualities (as in introducing any philosophically challenging propositions or explanations or presenting any culturally controversial suggestions or theories) leaving only the anorexic skeleton of an underdeveloped idea that was suffocated by constant exposure to chronic neglect until it morphed into an incomplete torn-package of a production unfulfilling in just about every aspect. It is as though it was an unfinished sketch of experimental improvisation one might expect to find posing as a film school project but never rising above the level of being a platform for mediocrity, a pointless portrayal of a serious subject that no amount of talent in front of or behind the camera could resuscitate.

For the record, the reason I categorized this review as containing spoilers is because unlike the traditional spoiler that tells how something ends (such as revealing that "the butler did it"), my comments deal with a slightly different scenario, one where I am revealing in my own way that I was unable to detect any type of what I would refer to as an ending, at least not any ending that conclusively and satisfactorily summarized or punctuated relevant themes and events that preceded it. But if you have not seen the movie yet, I think it is far better that you personally discover your own unique interpretation of this cinematic experience as opposed to gaining access to my views in advance.

Besides, since no personality on the planet is an exact duplicate of another one (unless there is a new iPad or Kindle app for cloning that I haven't heard about yet), I doubt that any two people can ever possess exactly the same thoughts and feelings about any movie they have just viewed. I am certainly not arrogant enough to believe that everyone should see things through my channels of perception. We each must march to the beat of the drummer within.

I found this movie to be an inspirational tribute to the "one God and Father of all, who is above all and in all" as well as being a good reminder that the sovereignty of God is unlimited. The universe was not inevitable. It is neither an accident nor some self-existent entity of ethereal proportions exploding upon the empty stage of nebular nothingness. The universe is a work of creation and is therefore wholly subject to the will of the Creator. So it is no mere poetic expression that exclaims: "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." "He removes kings and sets up kings." "The Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men." In the affairs of the hearts of men and women, the Universal Father (better known as GOD) may not always have His way but in the conduct and destiny of a planet, the divine plan prevails...the eternal purpose of wisdom and love triumphs! And unlike any documentary that may have attempted to encapsulate portions of these philosophical mysteries in a few condensed scenes featuring talking heads that move their lips in a rapid succession of lingual fireworks but who fail to say anything spiritually significant, this fun-filled flick was supremely entertaining in addition to being a cinematic fountain of intellectual fascination and cosmic enlightenment.

SPOILER ALERT! Although the plot defied logic to me, there was one scene in particular that I liked more than any other scene in the movie. I'm referring to the freeze-frame scene near the end of the movie when the camera slowly zooms out from "the kiss" to pan across the frozen-in-time faces of other passengers on the previously doomed train of death. Aside from my curiosity as to how technologically this shot was realized, there was a much deeper fascination that appealed to me. Here were the smiling faces of individual personalities rescued from an alternate reality where they smiled no more as the ashes from their fading faces fell to the floor. I immediately began to reflect on the many thousands of souls whose mortal bodies were unjustly destroyed on September 11, 2001 and then I began to forget about the total number reported (a cold statistic) and I began to imagine what it would be like to have really known each and every person prematurely released from this world on 9/11...appreciating the subtle intricacies of each man and woman and child (including future projections of the unborn ones from expectant mothers who were snuffed out before they even had a chance to see their babies take their first breath)...taking the time to clearly focus on each one of them as a unique (one-of-a-kind) child of God just as the glass lens in the scene from this film took its time to allow that same kind of visual perception of each person to slowly sink in. And it's worth mentioning here that there was also some dialogue about LIFE near this scene that helped lead this train of thought to wherever it was going. Life. Death. Life Again. I mentioned God already. He was in there somewhere...inside these thoughts of mine. I'm not sure what He was saying. But I think perhaps He wanted me to know that this is what their smiling faces look like to Him when He puts them all back together again on the other side. God is good at fixing things that are broken, you know.

My initial expectations of disappointment never fully came to fruition since this movie turned out to be better than some reviews suggested. In fact, my inclination to skip this one after the first few scenes quickly fizzled into an enjoyable excursion of dramatic intrigue. Even though this film delved deeply into how some people place their reliance about their mortal futures in the hands of either some ancient superstition (astrology) or on the outcome of some random occurrence dictated either by the arbitrary whims of chance or by the predetermined will of fate, I tended to focus more upon another theme that to me was just as prevalent and less controversial. What I am referring to here is the philosophical view as to how all of our lives are interconnected in ways we cannot quite fathom and might never fully comprehend...how no person can escape the benefits or the penalties that may come as a result of relationship to other persons. I will not give any specific examples from the movie since the journey it offers the viewer is one that involves slowly unfolding the connectedness of seemingly unconnected people and events. If I connected the dots about connectedness for you, where would be the fun (for you) in that? So I guess you could say that this movie validated some of my philosophical views: I believe that there is an organic unity in the universes of time and space which seems to underlie the whole fabric of cosmic events, inexplicably manifested ever and anon by what appears to be an amazingly fortuitous co-ordination of apparently unrelated universe happenings. I am also inclined to believe that it is this far-flung and generally unrecognizable control of the co-ordination and interassociation of all phases and forms of universe activity that causes such a variegated and apparently hopelessly confused medley of physical, mental, moral and spiritual phenomena so unerringly to work out to the glory of God and for the good of men and women and angels...but not always for the good of a bug (in this case, one who had a walk-on role but whose agent forgot to include a tiny clause in his contract that specified enabling this creepy-cute character-actor to walk off the set in the same healthy condition he was in when he crawled forth onto it to shoot his final scene...and to make matters worse, no listing in the opening credits, no "IN MEMORY OF" dedication at the end and worst of all, no favorable recognition from the Academy for opting to do all his own stunts).

SPOILER ALERT! Although fiction may use real people and real events along with or instead of imaginary characters, my view is that it crosses the line and becomes an egregious act of slanderous defamation and calumnious denigration when it deliberately distorts the reality of a historically prominent figure and maliciously misrepresents historical events surrounding that person. So although I was initially intrigued by the unfolding of events in this movie, I eventually felt only disgust when I realized the multi-faceted implications of what they were stupidly suggesting...not merely smearing the ancestral origins of Jesus but venturing way beyond that to attack His teachings. Whereas modern Christianity has shifted the emphasis from the religion OF Jesus to a religion ABOUT Jesus, that is still not the same thing as a denial of His identity or a rejection of His words. Upon first hearing the erroneous accusation that Jesus used the term "Master" but not "Father", the first thing that came to mind was the first two words of The Lord's Prayer that Jesus authored: "OUR FATHER". The character of John Oldman never really offers any contemporary evidence that he was who he claimed to be. In my final take on the film, I realized that the author leaves enough room for personal interpretation (despite some of the unexpected revelations near the end pertaining to John's alleged family connection to Dr. Will Gruber that could have been loosely based on data-mining research) to at least allow a serious consideration of the distinct possibility that John Oldman is indeed certifiably crazy and as a deeply pathological liar, has convinced both himself and his professional associates that these grandiose delusions of divinity-flavored lunacy that have faithfully blossomed with the passing of time in the forever-fragrant garden of his psychotically-fertilized mind are indeed just as verifiably true as a caveman's encounter with pain when he sets his toes on fire to keep them warm.