Cold Heaven

After reading the other tepid reviews and comments, I felt I had to come to bat for this movie.

Roeg's films tend to have little to do with one another, and expecting this one to be like one of his you liked is probably off the mark.

What this film is is a thoughtful and unabashed look at religious faith. The only other film like it-in terms of its religious message-would have to be Tolkin's `The Rapture.'

I am astonished that anyone could say the story is muddled or supernatural. It is a simple movie about Catholic faith, miracles, and redemption--though you would never guess it till the end. It is also the only movie I can think of whose resolution turns, literally, on a pun.

As a (happily) fallen Catholic myself, I know what the movie is about, and I find a sort of fondness in its ultimate innocence about the relation between God and man. But if you are not familiar with the kind of theology on which the film is based, then it will go right over you head.

As a film-as opposed to a story-`Cold Heaven' it is not ground-breaking. While `The Rapture' is heavy with pictorial significance and cinematic imagery, `Cold Heaven' downplays its own cinematic qualities. There are no striking shots, no edgy effects, no attempts to fit the content to the form. It is workmanlike shooting, but subdued. Nor does it have dialogue or acting to put it in a class of high drama. It is a simple story that unfolds simply. It may seem odd; but at the end the mystery is revealed. It looks ambiguous; but with a single line the ambiguity vanishes in a puff of Catholic dogma.

In this regard, `Cold Heaven' has at its heart exactly the same sort of thing that drives a movie like `The Sting,' or `The Sixth Sense,' or `Final Descent,' or Polanski's `A Pure Formality.' All of these are films with a trick up their sleeves. They may frustrate you along the way, but they have a point-an obvious one, indeed--but the fun is, at least in part, in having been taken in.

Still, even if it seems like little more than a shaggy dog story with a punch line, it is worth watching for way it directs-and misdirects-you. Try it-especially if you are, or have ever been, a Catholic.

Marie Davenport is an unfaithful wife who plans to tell her surgeon husband Alex that she is going to leave him for her lover Dr. Daniel Corvin. However strangely enough, her husband is conveniently killed in a boating accident. Then his body disappears from the morgue, and this is when plenty of unusual occurrences start to interrupt Marie's life.

Every time I watch a Nicolas Roeg, I always find it hard to put it into words. "Cold Heaven" falls somewhere in the latter end of his work, but still it manages to hold your attention because of its unusually haunting and broad ambiance. The unique handling of the metaphoric premise (lifted off Brian Moore's novel) seems to shift back and forth amongst many different moody fields (thriller, supernatural) to eventually play out like a spiritual journey of religious faith, guilt, fate, and redemption. Everything about it works off one's emotions and seldom thoughts, which go on to feel like a ponderously obsessive dream full of miracles. What starts off like torment due to infidelity can suddenly turn into relief, and it shows love doesn't have any boundaries. What seems like an enigmatic and fractured structure to begin with eventually is answered. But I was less impressed and satisfied with the revelation, and the final 10 minutes or so.

Roeg's sensual visual style and steady pace has a sterile, but brooding air that seductively pulls you in. His filming techniques like crosscutting editing of the surreal flashbacks and visions can get jaded, but only adds the blurry nature of what to believe. Even the monologues of Russell's character's inner thoughts are well done and at times can really alienate. Dim composition, shading and lighting is pulled of admirably well in displaying a darkly stark atmosphere. The set pieces provide symbolic traits and within the beautiful images are also eerie currents. The exquisite and ever-changing backdrop that's on show is handsomely framed by Francis Kenny's glossy photography. Stanley Myers' bold music score is a oddly lingering mixture of spicy and light n' breezy cues. The performances are strikingly inspired. Theresa Russell is amazing in a very demanding multi-facet role. Mark Harmon and James are equally fine with complex portrayals. There's also highly capable support in the likes of Will Patton, Julie Carmen, Talia Shire and Seymour Cassel.

Not one of his greatest, but an interestingly flawed piece nonetheless.

I fear that with this movie and the stultifying Two Deaths, that Roeg has slipped semi-comatose into semi-retirement.I just hope that he can produce one final great classic that will sit alongside, Bad Timing, Performance, Eureka,Walkabout and The Man Who Fell To Earth in his mighty cannon.

I wanted to like this movie, but couldn't follow it. It flashes back and forth and provides real time dialogue intermixed with whispers, which are the main characters thoughts. She thinks she is going crazy, and after listening to all the whispering, you will think you are, too. The husband, a role phoned-in by Mark Harmon, is either dead or alive or brought back to life, or never really got hurt. I can't figure it out. Seeing Talia Shire play an overzealous nun was just bad casting. And seeing the monsignor's face transform several times in a few seconds just made me queasy. I think it was supposed to be a metaphor for her new faith being tested. The premise of the story is impressive, too bad it didn't get the screenplay it deserved.

Its cinematic treatment of the dead coming to life is the most interesting take I've seen on the genre. He is like coming apart at the seams. Its job is to cast a spell around the rest of the movie. This is the stuff of high theater. It is both literal and symbolic at once, a very Japanese treatment. Every time I remembered it from my first viewing it was just that guy's portrayal of the undead.

Somebody said it's like a soap opera performance, but this is exactly it. He is performing a soap opera character except vomiting blood, hurling, and having Frankenstein meltdowns. Instead of using soap as a pejorative, we can say it is a high art treatment of a soap. But the average viewer might not realize it, somehow this might play straight to them.

There is something about the contrast of the cable TV movie, with a Nic Roeg film, that is both jarring and weird, but never operating outside the viewer and the screen.

The climax of the movie is a cross being burned into the hill by God, then she runs in his arms, the saxophone plays. The film is about her thoughts of infidelity haunting her, and her returning to live in service to God.

I was not sure if she would run into the lovers arm because that would be a valid reading of the film as well. To forget her husband, he was dead all along, to move on. It would be a tale of sexual healing and grief. But Roeg had made that film several times by that point. Instead, to elevate such a small human dilemma to the grandest stage is the power of melodrama, the power of art.

Some of the early Peter Weir films dealt with white guilt and aboriginal spirituality with some of these tones. Another review said with auteurs we don't watch their filmography expecting them to top themselves, we go for the small pleasure of how they have twisted the dial slightly differently. All that is interesting in his films are here, although it does a disservice to put them into words. So a Christian work is unexpected, but using his avant-garde eye becomes a spontaneous combustion; it is impossible to go wrong dealing with the very symbols of reality, life, death, love, morality.

The lightning bolt awakening becomes something in films; that enlightenment isn't just about that, but about the inverse, a complete intolerance toward immorality. This is why her awakening is triumphant. It brought him back, finally, for real. Roeg was the rarest thing, a western auteur, uncompromising and without commercial interests. But this, his most obscure work is somehow his most directly meaningful, but at the same time you sense that having such direct answers is kind of a problem for him.