Heaven Is For Real

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.

Todd Burpo (Greg Kinnear) shows his son Colton (Connor Corum) a photo of his grandfather