At the movies ...

Debbie and I went to see Hereafter yesterday. Caught the 4 PM show, so there were very few people besides ourselves there. I love watching movies in mostly empty theaters. Reminds me of when I was a very little kid and used to accompany my grandmother to her job cleaning the Century theater at Sixth & Erie. Mr. Hirsch, the manager, was always very nice to me and I have never forgotten him.
Anyway, about the movie. My former classmate Dick Corliss's review is pretty good: Hereafter: Clint Eastwood Goes Supernatural.
I don't agree with all that Dick says, but Dick and I never entirely agreed on much, which is why we had just great conversations. Anyway, I rather thought the pacing worked, and I thought Bryce Dallas Howard's giggling and tics conveyed well her fundamental flightiness. What I most liked about the film was that it did not connect the possibility of an afterlife to religion. There actually is no necessary connection between the two. It may well be that life involve some ongoing persistence of personality (in which case we are not talking about anything supernatural). It may also well be that life is a gift from God and the gift is strictly temporary. Which brings me to what I most liked about the film: That experience trumps all the ideas we may have about things. And I liked that this was most brought out by the kid, Marcus's story. He can tell a phony when he sees one, and meets several. But he also knows that what George tells him is the genuine article.
As a religious person myself, I think we have to learn to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because of some reward or punishment after we have shuffled off our mortal coil. I do think that life is a gift from from God and that, as John Hall Wheelock out put it, "to have lived, even if once only, once and no more, will have been -- oh, how truly -- worth it." If the gift-giver keeps on giving, so be it.