Year: 2014
Filming: Color
Length: 155 minutes
Genre: Christian/Drama/Inspirational
Maturity: PG
(for intense thematic elements)
Cast: Greg Kinnear (Todd Burpo), Kelly Reilly
(Sonja Burpo), Connor Corum (Colton Burpo), Lane Styles (Cassie Burpo), Margo
Martindale (Nancy Rawling), Jacob Vargas (Michael), Nancy Sorel (Dr. Charlotte
Slater), Julia Arkos (Newspaper Reporter), Ursula Clark (Painting Girl), Mike
Mohrhardt (Jesus)
Director: Randall Wallace
Personal Rating: 2
Stars
***
Christian films these days have a very
unfortunate habit of not living up the billboard images and radio commercials.
For that matter, they often don’t even live up to the subject matter selected, which the individual plot
lines often tweak in given ways that make preachy and unconvincing. Heaven Is for Real was not as bad as
some I’ve seen, in either acting (such as Fireproof)
or message presentation (such as God’s
Not Dead). Still, it had some serious flaws based on the presumption that
Christians will believe any miracle story they hear…not to mention some
horrendous special effects which turned Heaven into a movie gourmet’s Purgatory!
Greg Kinnear stars
as Todd Burpo, the pastor of a small church in rural America who is
experiencing personal health challenges and a financial crisis while trying to
keep his small congregation together. He is comforted by his faith in God and
his loving family, including his supportive wife Sonja, played by Kelly Reilly,
his feisty daughter Cassie, played by Lane Styles, and his exuberant young son
Colton, played by Connor Corum. But things almost take a tragic turn when
Colton comes down with a life-threatening illness and has to be rushed to the
hospital for extensive surgery.
When Colton finally returns to consciousness
and begins his recovery process, he tells his parents an incredible story of
how he saw himself being operated on, and then ascended into Heaven and met
with Jesus. At first, his parents dismiss it as just an imaginative
flight-of-fancy, but Todd Burpo begins to consider that perhaps his son really
did have an encounter with the divine, and continues to question him about his
experiences. Soon, the news gets out about the encounter, and the Burpo Family
is swarmed with press agents seeking the latest human interest story.
Todd Burpo makes
an announcement to his church members explaining the story, and saying that he
believes his son’s account to be authentic. There are mixed emotions among the congregation
of Todd’s church, with some people embracing the experience enthusiastically,
and others viewing it as a sensationalist stunt that will attract all sorts of
unwanted attentions from ghost-chasers and miracle-makers. The leader of the
latter group is Nancy Rowling, a stalwart member of the church committee who
lost a son in the military.
As Colton reveals
more about his supposed Heavenly visit, Todd becomes more astonished by his son’s
ability to tell him things he does not believe he could not possibly know. But
the pressure begins to mount for Todd as his congregation considers getting a
new pastor, and even his wife begins to think he is becoming too obsessed with Colton’s
NDE. Nevertheless, he forges ahead with his insistence that it is their duty to
embrace it as a miraculous gift to them that they should be unafraid to share
the story with the world. Hence, he decides to confront his congregation again,
and make another effort to bring them around to his way of thinking.
I’m sorry to say this, but Heaven Is for Real didn’t really feel
for real. Like most small-budget Christian films, in its effort to get a
message across, it let realism go to the window. I will admit that some of the
acting towards the beginning was decent enough, and I did feel a heart tug when
the little boy almost died and his parents were crying out to God to spare him.
The whole thing was so human. But the way the father was so quick to believe
that a miracle had occurred made me suspicious. This just seemed rather
convenient to me. His church was in dire straits and he needed publicity badly
to give it a boost. He is the one who is the main spokesman for the whole
Heaven-tourism debut, with his son seemingly following along by rote.
The special
effects were terrible, with lots of cyber-glitter, laser-light angels, and a
Christmas pageant-style Jesus. I never understood why so much focus was being
placed on a private event among the whole congregation. It seems as if the
pastor himself didn’t really believe that Heaven was for real until after the
experience his son claimed to have. There was no solid case built about why
this kid should be believed. As in God’s
Not Dead, Atheists are purposely made to look bad, and it seem the reverend
doesn’t go to the psychiatrist to weigh out the pros and cons of a scientific
explanation, but rather to debunk even an attempt at such an explanation.
The Catholic
Church is very careful about approving miracles, and always looks at natural
possibilities first. But in independent congregational churches, there is no
magisterium and no such procedure. If the preacher of an individual congregation
want to make a claimed miracle into a big event, he can do just that. I
personally find NDEs quite fascination, and some of them certainly seem to defy
(or should I say transcend) the laws of nature.
The subject of
miracles, visions, and NDE’s is a complex one. As a Catholic, and an observer
of life and historical accounts, I have no doubt that miracles happen. That
having been said, a realistic view also indicates that at least 80% of claimed
miracles are either of natural causes, thought up by frauds, or imagined by mentally
unstable people. In that mix, there is also the possibility of demonic
possession. I love the way the Catholic Church takes a pragmatic view of
claimed miracles, and tests them vigorously before proclaiming them worthy of
belief. Even then, she leaves it up to personal discretion whether or not to
believe in them as authentic.
Reading some accounts
of NDEs, documented by those who experienced them and backed up by non-biased
secular science journals, I have no doubt that some of these experiences truly
defy (or should I say transcend) the laws of nature. However, others I would be
less likely to believe, including the one used as the subject in Heaven Is for Real. Also, I disliked the
way that the woman in the church who opposes making a big deal out of Colton’s
NDE at church in portrayed as being warped by anger because her own son died in
war. Personally, I thought her objections were perfectly reasonable, and should
not have been attributed to some inner antagonism.
That having been
said, there were some interesting parts. Colton says that he recognizes his
grandfather from a photo of him when he was in his 30’s, and that all the
people in heaven are young. He also says that he saw his sister in heaven who
“died in mommy’s tummy,” a fact which he had never been told about. He also can
describe where his parents were in the hospital, and saw himself on the
operating table. He is unafraid of things he feared before, such as spiders and
death, and goes out of his way to comfort other dying children and promise them
that everything will be alright. Whether or not the Burpo story is true, these
are common signs of those who have experienced similar phenomena, and do make a
fascinating study.
There is a
genuinely funny scene when different preachers come to fill in for Burpo,
including a petrified preacher from the prison ministry (one of the men in the
pews comments dryly, “He’s used to having a captive audience”) and an
over-the-top, hand-waving seminary student (a woman comments blandly, “If Burpo
doesn’t get back here soon, I’m gonna kill somebody”). Burpo recounts an
interesting fairy tale about a lion and his companions who are trapped by their
enemies. The trappers offer them life if they will merely hand over the lion,
but they say that if they could have chosen any death, this would have been the
one they would have chosen. This would have made a great motif for another
film, although it didn’t really tie in well here.
Interestingly, at
the beginning of the film, a news reel is run about a girl from Lithuania had
an NDE and began to paint strange and beautiful paintings describing her
experiences. At the end of the film, Colton is shown as recognizing her
painting of Jesus when his father pulls it up online. Naturally, the painting
has been spread around all over the internet and beyond now, and although I
first found it hard to relate to, I am now appreciating the depth of expression
in the face and eyes. I don’t know if that’s what Jesus looked like or not, but
it’s an interesting depiction nevertheless.
Heaven Is For Real has an interesting
enough topic, although perhaps the sensationalism around it is one of its
greatest flaws. Todd Burpo is portrayed as hinging his faith on his son’s
supposed experience. And yet are we not told “blessed are those who have not
seen and yet still believed”? I’m not saying I don’t like miracle stories as
much as the next person, nor that I disbelieve them just because they work
outside the box of the usual. But that doesn’t mean that we are supposed to be
swept up in the hype of “Heaven-tourism” which may or may not be the real deal.
Our faith is supposed to be deeper than that, “a confident assurance concerning
what we hope for, and conviction about things we do not see.” That is the real
lesson that should be extracted from this well-meaning but perhaps misleading
movie.
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| Todd Burpo (Greg Kinnear) shows his son Colton (Connor Corum) a photo of his grandfather |
