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Heaven on Film – the Lovely Bones

December 11, 2009 By Lisa Miller

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.

Filed Under: BeliefWatch: Lisa Miller, Newsweek Tagged With: heaven, Lisa Miller

Lisa Miller

Lisa Miller

Lisa Miller is a staff writer at New York magazine. She is a former columnist for the Washington Post, former senior editor of Newsweek magazine, and author of "Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife."

About Lisa Miller

Lisa-Miller-Headshot

Lisa Miller is a staff writer at New York magazine. She is the former religion columnist for the Washington Post, former senior editor of Newsweek magazine, and author of "Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife."

In 2014, Lisa Miller was nominated for the National Magazine Award and featured in Best Magazine Writing of 2014.

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NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE AWARD

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