Hollywood versions of the afterlife

 

Hollywood has given us some very interesting versions of what may go on after death and how the living and the deceased interact. The  film Hereafter, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Matt Damon, explores patterns of connection between living people and those on the Other Side: the gift (or curse) of a natural psychic medium; a twin's abiding link with the brother who died; the familiarity of a near-death survivor with other realms.

Home base, in Hereafter, is this world rather than the Other Side. Depictions of the afterlife that intrigue me most are those that take us deeper into Otherworld geography, especially those in which the Otherworld is home base. Here are notes on a few of my favorite Hollywood visions of the afterlife in classic movies, and conversation themes they suggest. . 

1. Dreaming is the best and easiest way to talk to the departed. The vital importance of dream communication with the departed is brought home by the movie The Sixth Sense.  A psychic boy meets the Bruce Willis character, a man who had recently died but is foggy about his situation and distraught because he can no longer touch or talk to his wife. When he tries to speak to her she can’t hear him. The boy tells the dead guy how to proceed: "Speak to her in her dreams, only then will she hear you".
2. Why the departed stay earthbound or feel obliged to play tricks. The wonderful movie Ghost is quite instructive on how the Departed can stay earthbound through addictions and desires (witness the smoker on the subway, desperate for a last drag), and how and why the Departed may feel compelled to produce physical effects to get attention from survivors
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3. The afterlife journey (like this one) is all about love and courage. The hilarious Albert Brooks comedy Defending Your Life gives a quite plausible version of a process of afterlife review and assessment, and makes the vital point that our courage – or lack of it – and our ability to love, and express that love, may be central to our progression in any world.
4. In the reality we inhabit after death, thoughts are things. The movie What Dreams May Come dramatizes the fact that on the imaginal plane – which we enter in dreams and journeys, and where the Departed may find or build their homes, at least for a time – “thoughts are things”. This is a real world, but it is a world whose substance is ideoplastic; in other words, it will take on the shapes of our strongest thoughts and desires. To do well here, on either side of death, it is necessary to train the imagination

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Movie stars can get to know a few things about the afterlife from sources other than movie scripts. According to Dan Aykroyd (the star of Ghostbusters), John Belushi reached out to living people after his death, desperate for help to get to a better life situation than the one he found himself in after he checked out through a dug overdose. Aykroyd said on the Larry King Show back in 2004 that a mutual friend called Isaac had a dream encounter in which Belushi asked for help in order to go into the Light. The reality of this contact seemed to be confirmed by the fact that Belushi used a personal name for his grandmother (“Nana”) that the dreamer did not recognize, but was known to Belushi’s widow. “So Isaac did a meditation with this woman that he worked with her inLos Angeles, and they had a vision of John, you know, extricating himself from bad circumstance, call it Limbo or the Bardo region, Purgatory. And they were able to cross him over into the light.”

This is a very old note awaiting update. I am interested in seeing recommendations and mini-reviews from others.

 

The Afterlife in Fiction

 

I made this list with my short reviews a few years ago. Happy to hear more recommendations. 

YA Fiction

The Brothers Lionheart by beloved Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren, creator of  Pippi Longstocking. An unflinching look at death and the afterlife in which two young boys must take part in a war in a very unpeaceable kingdom on the Other Side before the way to a happier land of light is opened. There is a Swedish film version.

The Lovely Bones by Anne Sebold is the moving story of a teenage girl who watches her family trying to cope with her death after she has been raped and murdered. There is a good film version.

The Afterlife by Gary Soto describes a teen boy’s life and love as a ghost after he is murdered in a rest room while prepping for a date. We don’t get beyond the lower astral, but it’s worth reflecting on the scene where the protagonist and his new girlfriend literally give up the ghost.

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin presents an afterlife that is much like the regular world except that everyone ages backward until they are born into another life.

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman contains an extraordinary sequence where Lyra and her companions travel to a world of the dead because of a promise she made to a dead friend in a dream. The conditions for their entry and the deal they make with fierce guardians of this death realm make fascinating reading.

 

Adult Fiction

The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You by Dorothy Bryant, while not explicitly about death or dreaming, opens our minds to the possibility of living and learning in a realm beyond the physical body and being reborn to this life carrying soul gifts from that realm.

The Oversoul Seven Trilogy by Jane Roberts takes us with verve and deep insight into the interplay between personalities living in different times who are members of a multidimensional soul family and whose dramas – from the perspective of a guide on a higher level – are all being played out simultaneously, in a spacious Now

All Hallows Eve by Charles Williams is a supernatural thriller by a member of the Inklings (along with Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) that contains an indelible description of a dead person waking up to the fact that they are now in an astral, rather than physical, body.

What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson is well worth reading for its detailed accounts of transitions in the afterlife, the central role of imagination in shaping the realities the deceased inhabit, and the brave and ultimately successful attempt of the protagonist to rescue his wife from the mind-generated hell of a suicide. It was turned into a popular film starring Robin Williams.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. A young woman whose body is near extinction after an overdose is allowed to experience some of the parallel lives she is living in worlds where she made different choices, and determine whether she can make a firm commitment to any of them.

Drawing "Swan on a Black Sea" (c) Robert Moss. Ink and watercolor