Not bad, the film ends with the only happy ending possible, although it’s still stretched. I wouldn’t want to see it again, though. It sort of became a religious movie at some point, the only question was, ‘do you believe in life after death?’, and ‘it’s a matter of faith’.
I didn’t want it to be about religion. Everyone should have their own belief without trying to say that it’s the only one, or the right one. What one believes is what one believes, and that’s it.
Live and let live. Have faith or not, that’s your choice. If your atheist, that’s your own faith, don’t press it on others like you don’t want others to press theirs on you.
Thing is, they wanted to fool you. Some people liked this movie for the unexpected ending, so maybe they were right in doing so, but it didn’t work for me.
This movie was not about religion, life after death or all that, it was about the love of a mother!
But they did their best to make you forget that. We see at the beginning that she was very much pregnant, and yet not once they talked about the child. Throughout the movie it was always ‘he lost his wife’. Never a word about the fact that he also lost a child.
Why? So you’d forget, and at the end you’d be like “Ooooooh!”
In details:
Joe and Emily are the perfect couple, married, madly in love, best friends, soulmates, and both doctors. She’s pregnant but she left home anyway to join a mission in Venezuela, to help a small village hidden in the forest.
He didn’t want her to go, but she spoke of their ideals, and said she would go, with or without him. Clearly without him, of course. He stayed in America to be a doctor there.
She must have been away some months though, because the belly was barely visible when she left but when the accident occurred it was definitely visible, a big one.
We learn right at the beginning that something happened, and all foreigners were put on a bus and sent away, but there was an accident on the road and the bus went down onto the river and they all died.
We see Joe completed destroyed by it. He works to keep mind off things, but refuses to treat a girl who attempted suicide because he only wanted to help those that wanted to live.
Later on he gets scolded for that and goes to see how she’s doing, only so that we can hear him speaking of how there’s nothing after death and she’s stupid to want to die.
I hated this.
The poor girl probably had problems of her own, she wasn’t trying to reach some kind of heaven but to stop the sufferings of this life. The fact that until a little while ago he had a perfect life doesn’t make it the same for everyone. People are different, have different problems, different strength/weakness, and all that.
We never know what will happen to this girl after this talk.
A pregnant woman arrived dead at the ER so he delivered the six-months baby who lived.
Joe struggles to go on without his wife.
After something like three months he decides to fulfill the promise he made to her and start taking care of children in the oncology ward.
(Now, judging by her belly she had been away for months, and yet now they say that she was taking care of the children shortly before she died…)
Anyway, Joe hears voices calling his name, then he starts speaking with these children who have near-death experiences, poor little ones, and it’s hard to watch because although it can be understandable given what he’s going through, still Joe never really seems to care deeply inside for them, he cares for what they tell him, and he starts believing that Emily is trying to send him a message, that she wants him to go somewhere.
It goes on for a long while, even showing a corpse at the hospital moving and speaking to him in her voice.
Everyone thinks he’s crazy, of course, so he’s forced to take a vacation.
His neighbour takes care of his house and Emily’s very old parrot, and he starts planning to go rafting with his friends, when he finally notices a symbol on the maps.
It’s the same things the children kept drawing over and over, and he learns now that it means waterfall.
There was a picture of Emily in a village near a waterfall, so he decides he needs to go there.
He thinks she might be alive. He travels there and a local pilot takes him where he needs to go.
He listens to no reason, he jumps in the water finding the empty bus stuck in the river, and he almost drowns if not for the pilot saving his life (because apparently if he comes back without the American he will lose his license).
Joe still doesn’t listens to anybody and runs forward, despite the fact that it’s not permitted to reach the village. He goes there and shows a picture of his wife. Now all men lower their spikes and recognise the doctor that stayed with them.
They say that the river brought her body to them, but she died.
Still, they could save her baby. There’s a long scene where all the men and women slowly part ways as he approaches until he finally sees his little daughter, very much alive.
He brings her home, of course, but we don’t see how it goes, after he finds her the movie ends and we are only shown images of him playing with a little girl of maybe four years old.
A very, very beautiful child. The scene of them playing together is the best thing of the whole movie.
Joe-Kevin Costner
Emily-Susanna Thompson
Dickinson-Ron Rifkin
Joe’s neighbour-Kathy Bates
Girl that attempted suicide-Lisa Weil
ITA il segno della libellula
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