Movies

I watched a couple of movies over the weekend: An old black and white picture called, "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" and a much more recent color film called "The Last Inquiry." Both are very interesting movies.

"The Last Inquiry" starts out with Emperor Tiberius Caesar on the Isle of Capri, when suddenly there is an earthquake, and clouds form up, blocking the sunlight. Over the next few weeks, he gets reports from all over the Roman Empire of the same things happening. Only the report from Pontius Pilate gives any indication of a possible cause. He sends a trusted commander in the Roman army to Judea to investigate undercover. This man, Tauras, gets to Judea in time to witness the stoning of Stephen, he visits Jesus' tomb, and finds it empty, and also Lazarus' tomb (also empty), and meets Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene. He also meets with a Pharisee named Saul, and the High Priest, who tell him that this is a dangerous cult that needs to be eradicated--they even have a fairly plausible explanation as to how resurrections can be faked. Overall, I was impressed with how well this movie dovetailed with Scripture (although Tabitha was considerably younger than I had imagined--but the Bible doesn't really say how old she was). The biggest thing I didn't like about it was the way the stones bounced around during stonings--like the stones were made of rubber (but, what are you going to do? you can't very well film people getting stoned with real stones).

"Here Comes Mr. Jordan" I wanted to see because I knew that Warren Beatty's "Heaven Can Wait" was based on it, and the Chris Rock's "Down to Earth" was based on "Heaven Can Wait." I've seen the two more recent movies, so I wanted to see the original. Quite frankly, I was surprised; I didn't expect much from it, and it held together pretty well. The basic situation is implausible, to say the least: Joe Pendleton (Robert Montgomery), a prizefighter, is killed piloting his private plane from Pleasant Valley, New Jersey, to New York City, only he wasn't supposed to be. It turns out that an angel (or messenger) sees the plane going down, and decides to pull Joe's soul early, to prevent him the agony of death--only Joe would have found a way to at least live through the experience, had he been left to his own devices. But, while discussing what has happened, Joe's manager has the body cremated. So, Mr. Jordan (Claude Rains) sets out to find Joe a new body--someone about the same age who is dying, that Joe can take over this other person's life. This hinges on two erroneous ideas: One, that angels, like humans, occasionally make mistakes, and two, that time has meaning to angels--that is, having made a mistake, it is not possible to back to the moment of the mistake to fix it. But, getting past those ideas, the rest of the movie is pretty interesting: Joe fights Mr. Jordan on almost every detail, and yet, Mr. Jordan continue to insist that Joe won't get cheated. In the end, it becomes clear that, although Joe thought he knew what he wanted, Mr. Jordan made sure that Joe got what was best for him. Just a side note--I understand that when Warren Beatty decided to make "Heaven Can Wait," he tried to get Mohammed Ali to play the prizefighter. Ali wouldn't (or couldn't) do it. I don't think that there has ever been an official reason published as to why Ali wasn't in the movie, but I know that Ali is a deeply religious man, and, although he and I would probably disagree on a lot of things, I feel very confident that he and I agree that angels don't make mistakes, and that, if they did, that they could go back to the moment of the mistake to fix it. In any case, Warren Beatty rewrote the script so that he could play a football quarterback in the movie, since he couldn't get Ali to play a boxer. Chris Rock, in his version, changed the profession to stand-up comic, something he felt a little more comfortable with. From what I understand, Chris Rock didn't even know about "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" when he started his project.

BTW--side note, completely unrelated to this post: If you ever want to get a message to me, but don't want anyone else to see it, you can leave a comment and request that it not be published. I normally do publish comments unless the commenter requests that I not. I have been known to reject comments that I don't feel are suitable.