Genre: Drama, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy, & Remake
Runtime: 1 hr. 57 min
Rating: PG 13 for sexuality including language, and some nudity
Starring: Nicholas Cage, Meg Ryan, Dennis Franz, Andre Brauer
Synopsis: An angel comes to earth and falls in love with the woman he's assigned to watch over.
Excuse me for complaining about the terrible synopsis offered online...I think I might need to find another website that offers better synopses then Yahoo! movies. But let's move on...
This movie starts out by showing the writer's/director's/producer's view of what an "angel" is and does. In this case, it's all about watching, occasional helping, and leading the dead into the afterlife. Now I could probably go on for pages talking about how much I disagreed with the theology of this movie, but that's not really the point of this blog, so I'll leave it alone.
I will admit however, that for the first hour to hour and a half I was seriously wondering if I would have anything to say about the movie that wasn't ranting against the theology of it...and then it struck me.
WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!
Seth (Cage) is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of angels that live and "work" in Los Angeles. Every morning and every evening they go to the same beach and listen to the sun rise and set. The rest of their time is spent listening to people's thoughts, helping, and guiding the dead. Many shots show the angels standing passively above the city on high rises.
One key scene near the beginning of the movie, shows Seth and a fellow angel sitting on a freeway sign comparing notes on what the souls they've guided have said was the best thing about life. Seth asks his companion if he's ever wanted to know what it felt like to be human.
Not far into the movie, Seth meets Maggie (Ryan) a cardiac surgeon trying desperately to save a man's life - Seth is there to collect the man's soul. And so begins the journey of Seth and Maggie. Along the way, this angel who doesn't know what it is to experience any of the five senses, falls in love with Maggie AND finds out that it is possible for an angel to become human by "falling" to earth.
It was at this moment that the epiphany hit me. It takes most of the movie to get there, but Seth is a type of Christ figure. Christ left heaven, discarded his eternal body, and endured the pain of humanity because he LOVED us.
