COMMENTARY/REVIEW: `Just Like Heaven’ Raises Spiritual, Not Religious, Questions

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) When heaven (or something just like it) beats hell (or at least the apparent manifestations of that region’s administrator) at the box office, I have to take a look. “Just Like Heaven,” rated PG-13, opened in mid-September as the No. 1 movie, ahead of the “Exorcism of Emily Rose.” […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) When heaven (or something just like it) beats hell (or at least the apparent manifestations of that region’s administrator) at the box office, I have to take a look.

“Just Like Heaven,” rated PG-13, opened in mid-September as the No. 1 movie, ahead of the “Exorcism of Emily Rose.” Still in theaters, “Just Like Heaven” tells the story of hardworking resident Dr. Elizabeth Masterson (Reese Witherspoon) and despondent landscape architect David Abbott (Mark Ruffalo).


The pair gets off to a rocky start as Masterson takes Abbott for a mentally ill homeless person after he sets up residency in her San Francisco apartment. Not long after, Abbott finds himself informing Masterson that she is dead, a state she denies, but begins to consider after she discovers she can move through walls and furniture with ease.

During the course of this 95-minute metaphysical romp, there’s plenty to make audiences snort and sniffle into their popcorn.

But there’s more to it than that, if you’re willing to look.

“Just Like Heaven,” while not explicitly religious, can make viewers ask: What would it mean to take your spiritual life seriously? What if you couldn’t brush it aside until a certain day of the week, or time of day?

Short answer: More than having the cocktail of your choice knocked out of your hand by an unseen force.

In a film that’s part “It’s A Wonderful Life” and part “Ghost,” Witherspoon’s Masterson coaxes Ruffalo’s grieving Abbott back to life. Abbott, meanwhile, helps Masterson to gain wholeness by restoring her spirit to her body as she learns that a woman cannot live on work alone.

From the film’s first moments, in which a colleague tells Witherspoon’s Masterson that she’s “so lucky that all (she has) to worry about is work,” to her subsequent realization that she saved her life “for later” without questioning that later might not come, “Just Like Heaven” urges viewers to run _ not walk _ to live their lives.

There may be those who wish there would be a concrete discussion of faith and spirituality during the film, that there would be prayer vigils in which both characters vow to devote themselves to God.


Those moments do not come.

This is a light-hearted romantic comedy, after all, and viewers should not expect it to be something else.

Just the same, “Just Like Heaven” is arguably a spiritual film as it advances the notion that the only life worth living is one lived with spirit.

It just doesn’t box that “spirit” into any dogma.

But it illuminates some of the hot topics in contemporary discussions of practical theology as it addressees issues of work-life balance and pokes at Rene Descartes’ idea of mind-body dualism.

They’re subjects worthy of discussion in these days of clean-up and recovery. With so many having lost so much, all of us are forced to ask ourselves what really matters in our lives, and how we wish to live our days. Marveling at how some continue to muster such tremendous spiritual strength after so much physical loss, there are those of us who may question if we could do likewise.

We will answer one moment, one day at a time.

In the meantime, we can keep pondering the questions: What if we believed that our spiritual lives determined our physical lives? How then, shall we live?

MO/JM END RNS

(Kristen Campbell is the religion reporter for the Mobile Register. You can reach her at kcampbell(at)mobileregister.com)


Editors: To obtain a photo of Kristen Campbell, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.

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