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<\/a><\/p>\n1More Film Blog is giving away a free DVD copy of Heaven is For Real<\/em>. Readers can enter in one of two ways: check out the 1More Film Blog page on Facebook<\/a> and \u201clike\u201d the page \u00a0to receive updates on new reviews, or leave a comment with below with your favorite film depiction of the afterlife. (If you do both, you will be entered twice.) Winner will be selected at random from eligible entries on Tuesday, July 22, 2014. DVD will only ship to United States or Canada (Region 1).<\/p>\n While you wait, check out my review of the film, which originally appeared at Christianity Today<\/em>.<\/p>\n *******<\/p>\n I believe heaven is for real. Allow me to get that out of the way up front. About the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting I am as confident as I can be regarding any doctrine that is ultimately an article of faith. About Heaven is for Real<\/em>, Todd Burpo\u2019s book chronicling his son Colton\u2019s emergency appendectomy and subsequent claim that he had visited heaven, I am a skeptic. That is an awkward but necessary admission to preface the ways in which I thought Randall Wallace\u2019s adaptation of Burpo\u2019s book improves upon its source material and where, perhaps, it may frustrate readers expecting less ambiguity and more vindication.<\/p>\n The film depicts many events from Burpo\u2019s book, though it obscures the timeline between when Colton is operated upon and when he first mentions to his father that he visited heaven. Gradually, under increasingly leading interrogations from his father, Colton reports having sat on Jesus\u2019s lap, seen many animals, having angels sing to him, seeing his deceased, and, finally, meeting his own unborn sister of whom he purportedly had no previous knowledge. This compression is important because irrespective of the content of Colton\u2019s memory, his level of recall seems contrary to the way most current research has demonstrated human memory actually operates. (For a good summary of social-science research on memory, see Chapter Three of Chabris\u2019s and Simon\u2019s The Invisible Gorilla<\/em>).<\/p>\n Once Colton begins sharing his experience, the film deviates from the book more in tone than in substance. In his book, any doubts Todd has about the authenticity of Colton\u2019s experience are minimized. \u201cBy the time we rolled across the South Dakota state line,\u201d he says of the family trip where Colton first reports hearing angels sing to him, Todd was already asking \u201cCould this be real?\u201d The film portrays Todd\u2019s doubts as extending beyond Colton\u2019s experience; he appears to question the existence of heaven itself. In a basement argument with Sonja, Todd comments that they ask kids to believe \u201cthis stuff\u201d but that he doesn\u2019t know if \u201cI believe it myself.\u201d Sonja argues that everything Colton has reported is an echo of every story he has been told his whole life. In another scene, conflating a fantasy book\u2019s depiction of heaven with the Biblical account, Todd cries out wondering why does heaven \u201c[have] to be a myth?\u201d Late in the film, Todd says that when he had to face a parishioner dealing with the death of a family member that he \u201chad nothing\u201d to offer in the way of comfort prior to Colton\u2019s experience.<\/p>\n Burpo responded to questions sent through the film\u2019s publicist by praising the film but also denying he had doubts about heaven: \u201cMy internal conflict wasn\u2019t about Heaven, it was more about I didn\u2019t know what to believe about near death experiences in general, much less coming from my four year old son.\u201d Certainly by the time he wrote the book, that internal conflict had been resolved, so it is perhaps not surprising that the film would depict Todd as questioning to a greater degree than he himself does when reporting the experiences after the fact.<\/p>\n What is surprising is that the film itself appears to maintain some doubts of its own, hanging back from fully endorsing the authenticity of Colton\u2019s experience. A major visual and thematic motif in the film is that of adults interacting while unaware that they are being heard or observed by children. The first shot of Colton shows him playing in a separate room while mom\u2019s choir practices. In a scene faithful to the book, Todd and Sonja discuss bills and are surprised by Colton\u2019s sudden appearance insisting that they pay the doctors and thus indicating that he has overheard much of their conversation. Colton and his sister share a bedroom and while Todd speaks to Colton the camera pans from across the room, past the reclining figure of Cassie on another bed. Is she asleep? Does she overhear the conversation? We don\u2019t know for sure, but the camera drawing our attention to what Todd is not even seeing certainly struck me as purposeful. Those who want to make Colton\u2019s experience an apologetic of sorts hang a lot of weight on Colton\u2019s knowing things he presumably had no way of knowing. Continually reminding viewers that Colton and Cassie see without being seen appears to leave the door open for a naturalistic explanation to that which believers claim as miraculous.<\/p>\n Less subtle and more problematic is the fact that when the film depicts Colton\u2019s encounter with Jesus, it is not as Colton subsequently describes it. Jesus does not have stigmata marks on the hand we see, but Colton subsequently tells the adults that Jesus has \u201cmarkers.\u201d My colleague Claudia Mundy also pointed out that Jesus\u2019s attire is different from what Colton describes in the book. Are these simply continuity errors rather than attempts to call into question the reliability of Colton\u2019s testimony? Possibly. Parts of the heavenly encounters are clearly altered from Colton\u2019s description in the book to make them more filmable: Colton doesn\u2019t sit on Jesus\u2019s lap, doesn\u2019t see Jesus\u2019s horse (or other animals), and the heavenly encounters are filmed in earthly places that would already be a part of his memory. Artistic license is a given in book to film adaptations. But Colton mentions the stigmata in the film, and it is hard to believe that in a film that asks viewers to accept Colton\u2019s testimony as gospel the depictions of his heavenly stay would not be carefully scrutinized at all stages of the production.<\/p>\n Whether intentional or not, the changes make the film better as a film. By distributing skepticism evenly across all the characters, even the Christians, Heaven is For Real avoids much of the smugness that marred God\u2019s Not Dead<\/em><\/a>. Like that film, Heaven is For Real<\/em> has a token atheist\/skeptic who is actually angry at God rather than dubious of his existence. Unlike that film, Heaven is For Real<\/em> doesn\u2019t force a conversion on the skeptic as a means of declaring its own intellectual victory. This film looks inward, using Colton\u2019s story to ask Christians to think through what they really believe rather than focusing all their energy on how to get non-Christians to believe it too. Its dramatic highlight is a graveside conversation between Todd and Nancy (the always reliable Margo Martindale) that at least attempts to wrestle with the \u201cwhy\u201d questions. Why Colton? Why do so many prayers go unanswered? Why, if heaven is real, does death still sting so much, even for Christians?<\/p>\n Greg Kinnear gives a thoughtful, layered performance that is crucial in presenting Todd as an earnest truth seeker rather than someone trying to capitalize on his circumstances. (The film honestly depicts the Burpo\u2019s money struggles but never hints at much less buys into the cynical criticism that Colton\u2019s experience was being marketed for financial gain.) I did hear one (young) attendee at a test screening complain that Kelly Reilly\u2019s portrayal of Sonja made her seem too frisky, but I appreciated the depiction of a physically affectionate Christian marriage.<\/p>\n