Heaven, according to polls, is a place nearly everyone wants to go to, so why don’t movies ever remotely capture that yearning? We all carry inchoate visions of heaven around in our heads, but we don’t realize how bruising another’s interpretation can be until we see it in celluloid. The most recent attempt—the heaven in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones—looks more like Barbie dropping acid and entering her playhouse. Our (deceased) teenage heroine, Susie Salmon, plays disco dress-up with her heavenly BFF. Platform shoes! Purple glitter! Meanwhile, the topography of her world is, in-explicably, constantly in flux—now it’s forest, now it’s ice. Spend two minutes in Jackson’s interpretation of Susie’s personal heaven and your teeth start to itch. I, for one, would rather be at the mall.
About The Author
Lisa Miller
Lisa Miller is a domestic correspondent for the New York Times. She is a former contributing editor to New York magazine, the former religion columnist for the Washington Post, and former senior editor of Newsweek magazine. She is the author of “Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife" and a co-author of "Take Up Space: The Unprecedented AOC."