A great
romance/
drama movie that made me cry. I believe based on the book of the same title by
Richard Matheson. Starring
Robin Williams,
Cuba Gooding Jr., and
Annabella Sciorra.
Robin Williams is a doctor, with a wife and kids. His kids are killed in a car accident, and a year goes by, the husband and wife together.
Suddenly, Robin Williams is hit by a car and dies. He goes to the afterlife, Heaven. It's beautiful, a paradise of his imagination, but it feels empty and lonely without his wife, who is still alive on Earth. It turns out they are soul mates, they share each other's emotions and feelings, like their souls are together. When she is unhappy on Earth, heaven changes for him.
He meets his children in heaven, and they both relive memories together, and see the beauty of each others' paradise as he waits for his wife to join him one day.
It's a very beautiful story, and one that shows me the power of love. The imagery, seeing each person's idea of heaven, is amazing, the daughter has one of flying people and a beach. Williams has a world inside one of his paintings. Each one is mostly CGI, but they look good. It illustrates the story, and I fell into the idea of the Heaven the director showed me. If I was compiling a top 100 movies list, I think this would make it somewhere, it's quite an underrated movie.
Spoiler:
His wife, torn by loneliness of losing her family piece by piece, commits suicide. Suicide is a mortal sin, but it's a dementia, where suicides go to hell, they don't know how to get into heaven.
Robin Williams decides to leave Heaven, and not return until he brings her to heaven with him. He passes through strange places, it almost resembles The Cell in imagery. Finally, he sees her, she's in her own world, it looks like their home, but ravaged, and her a sobbing hulk in the center. He tries to take her back, but her soul is too insane, tortured by feelings to go. She doesn't even recognize him. If he stays long enough, he won't be able to leave. Since he can't save her from hell, he decides to join her.
This itself is the one and only possible thing he could have done to save her. They both magically return to heaven, where they are reunited as a family, in a perfect heaven where anything they imagine happens in front of them.
They are soul mates, and decide to return to heaven together, be reincarnated, and meet up again on earth.
Directed by Vincent Ward, rated PG-13 for themes of death, some disturbing images of hell, and language. I still think it's a good movie, it "tugs at your heartstrings" (said by an IMDB reviewer).