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Made in Heaven #Afterlife #movie

1/23/2016

5 Comments

 

"How in Heaven did they meet? How on Earth will they find each other?"

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The 1987 film release of Made in Heaven is about two people, Mike and Annie (Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis), who fall in love in heaven, have a wedding ceremony (even though it isn’t required), but are abruptly torn apart when heaven-born, Annie has to leave for Earth.
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This is how I remember the cover release on Beta and VHS.
Mike Shea was a man on his way to California back in the 1940s. He is a good man who knows he will miss his parents, but must try and make it on his own. Along his route he comes across a car plunged into a lake. He jumps in to save a mom and her children, only to lose his own life.
 
He finds himself naked in a strange place. Disoriented, he is greeted by his Aunt Lisa (Maureen Stapleton) who introduces him to some of the ways of heaven. She tells him, all he has to do is think of a place or person and he will go there.

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Maureen Stapleton as Aunt Lisa with Timothy Hutton as Mike.
As he is practicing this teleportation technique, he finds himself in a stranger’s living room. There he meets Annie who tells him she is a guide for new souls and offers to help him.
 
Mike and Annie only need to think their thoughts to each other, and no matter where they are in heaven, they can hear one another. They soon fall deeply in love.
 
But Annie is a new soul, born in heaven. She still needs to do her time on earth. 

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Timothy Hutton and Kellie McGillis
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There were no good images of Emmett on the internet.
​The man in charge is a creepy little guy named Emmett. Strange thing about the actor who plays Emmett. He is billed in the cast credits as simply: Emmett as himself. But in truth he was played by Debra Winger who was Timothy Hutton’s real wife at the time. Winger is non-credited in the film. I saw this movie dozens of times over the years, but only learned this fact recently.
 
Mike gets Emmett to allow him to go back to earth and be reborn. He tells him he has thirty years to find her. Otherwise they would be lost to each other for good
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Mike is reborn as Elmo, who by the time he turns 29, is pretty much a lost soul. He ends up meeting his original parents while hitchhiking. They are kind to him and even purchase him a trumpet. This starts Elmo's musical career and he ends up writing a hit song that he was actually working on in Heaven. The song was We Never Danced, a very ‘80s sounding song and one of the last words Annie spoke to Mike in heaven.
 
Annie: You know what we've never done. We've never... danced. I'm going aren’t I?
Mike: Yes.
Annie: Don't be sad. Don't get sad, Mike.
Mike: Why does it have to be you?
Annie: It's not sad. I'm going to be somebody's baby.
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The film also has cameos by rockers, Tom Petty and Neil Young.
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OPINION: Besides the reincarnation aspect, I believe this film had things more theologically correct than the previous afterlife films I covered in my blog. At one point Annie tells Mike that there cannot be bad thoughts in heaven. He tells Aunt Lisa he thought heaven would be all clouds and angels. She tells him, “We have them.” Marriage was a concept of earth, not heaven. Mike asks Annie if she is God. The conversation went something like this:
 
Mike: Are you God?
Annie: No!
Mike: Is Emmett God?
Annie: No, he just runs things.
Mike: Is there a God?
Annie: (pauses) Of course there is.

SPOILER ALERT: But no surprise, Elmo ends up finding her on the street in the last moments of the film. It’s touching and heart lifting when their eyes lock on one another.
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​Pennies From Across the Veil. 
A love story about death and the afterlife.


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5 Comments
Ella Becker link
6/14/2022 11:54:50 am

Great readd thank you

Reply
Dennis Higgins
6/15/2022 05:41:04 am

Thank you, so much.

Reply
Theophilus
7/25/2022 12:51:34 am

Thanks for your comments. I have a further thought to contribute which is that I'm pretty certain Emmett is the devil. As you mentioned, Annie tells Mike that he cannot imagine anything bad in Heaven. To which Mike replies, "So if I could, I'd be some place else?" Mike is then transported to an eerie night scene where we first encounter the creepy Emmett character who appears gloomily smoking cigarettes around a group of children laughing. Emmett is clearly having some bad thoughts in Heaven with his disturbed energy and facial twitches. I'm convinced that, like the show "The Good Place," Heaven is actually Hell in this film. There is no eternal aspect to the peace and happiness of "Heaven" in the film; it's merely a temporary experience to keep souls content with existing in an endless cycle of reincarnation that involves suffering.

When Mike asks Annie, "Are you God?" She replies, "No, I just help Emmett." Mike then asks, "Is Emmett God?" To which Annie responds, "No, he just runs things." This whole deceptive, temporary dimension is "run" by the troubled Emmett, i.e., the devil (or perhaps a demon).

Also, when Mike visits his old house with Annie in Heaven, they both have some moments of sad, agitated emotions, which–according to Annie–can't exist in Heaven. Ironically, after this moment, when Mike desperately calls out to his parents in the house, Annie looks at him in a concerned way and then smilingly says, "Heaven." Something is clearly off in this realm.

Toward the end of the film, right before Mike/Elmo finds Annie/Ally on Earth, a street preacher approaches Mike/Elmo and tells him, "God's got a message for you: you're going to Hell. You're gonna die having a good time down here on this Earth." Mike/Elmo is about to start a successful music career and marry his soulmate, but he's lost sight of God. Both Mike and Annie have viewed each other as the source of their happiness and have consequently created a false idol out of their relationship, which has allowed Emmett/the devil to keep them in a state of perpetual bondage and reincarnation–forever separated from God and Eternal Paradise until perhaps they adjust their values.

Reply
Dennis Higgins Author
7/25/2022 05:54:09 am

Those are interesting insights. While I don't agree that Elmo's entire afterlife realm is Hell, I have never been happy with the character of Emmett. He creeped me out and felt he didn't belong in heaven, so you might be on to something. I'm not sure what the writers had in mind. They certainly didn't have aspects of heaven theologically correct. This place seemed more like the Catholic concept of Purgatory, a temporary place of waiting without the presence of God, therefore suffering. But reincarnation doesn't fit in any Christian theology. I liked the movie as a fantasy love story, but as you point out, it has its flaws.

Reply
Theophilus
7/30/2022 01:40:05 am

Elmo's afterlife is hell in that it isn't true, everlasting peace and happiness but rather a temporary realm (as in Buddhist and Hindu beliefs) which he eventually will have to leave. He remains deceived and trapped on the wheel of birth and rebirth instead of entering Eternal Heaven. I think he needs Jesus lol. Thanks for sharing further thoughts and creating this website.




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