I really enjoyed this movie featuring Kevin Bacon with a fabulous mullet. If you were home schooled, lived in a polygamist colony, or have been stranded on a deserted island for a long time and haven’t heard of this movie, the basic premise is that a group of med students who are really good at CPR decide to find out what’s beyond the grave by dying and being resuscitated.
As each of these students die, they encounter things on the other side from their lives that involve some form of reconciliation. I’ve read this movie criticized that all of the issues were basically the same and had the same reconciliation. I completely disagree with this critique. It was interesting as each one discovered what was amiss, in different fashions, and then how they each deal with it. The exception is that each process reminds me of Buddhist teachings regarding attachment.
One interesting feature of the show for me, having so recently moved to Boston, is seeing my new home around a lot. I’m not a hundred percent sure but, it looks like all the campus shots are a mingling from both Harvard and Boston University. Even though it is kind of cheesy, I liked the fact that most of the scenes that should have taken place in a sterile medical room took place in ancient churches filled with Medieval and Renaissance art.
The movie has pleasant bits of sadness, redemption, frustration, and scariness. I think it also has a handful of worthwhile moral messages. At the end of the day it conveniently fails to resolve the issue of God’s existence, which is fine.
