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Four recent movies--"Beloved," "City of Angels," "Meet Joe Black," and "What Dreams May Come"--are discussed. These movies discuss the possibility of life after death.

The end of 1998 unexpectedly brought us a small spate of wellpublicized features that dealt with the search for the spirit. Unexpected because it was not just a matter of Hollywood cloning-producers jumping on a theme or situation that a previous film found a box office hitas each film dealt with the subject in its own, distinct manner. Perhaps the phenomenon has been brought on by the times. As we hurtle toward the close of the millennium, it is natural that we look at one of the big questions of human existence, namely: Is there life after this life? And if so, what kind of life?

Of course, Hollywood is always searching for attentiongrabbing concepts, concepts it can sell an audience in a preview trailer and pithy ad campaign on billboards and the sides of buses. Thus, it's a big plus if one can boast big stars as well as a story line that did well elsewhere-as a novel or play, a real-life event, or even a previous movie. The four films discussed here-Beloved, City of Angels, Meet Joe Black, and What Dreams May Comeall had a combination of these attractions. However, what concerns me more is not this icing on the cake, so to speak, but rather the contents, the values that lie beneath the surface.

The Power of Love

In these films, the search for the spirit pivots around the subjects of death and the afterlife. As advertising for What Dreams May Come tells us, "After life there is more. The end is just the beginning." A nice teaser, but this Robin Williams vehicle is thematically the most muddled of the lot, and while "more" is promised, that "more" seems to be merely more of the same Hollywood homilies we have been served before, but with a slicker look. Dreams wants to play to the burgeoning New Age market while doggedly fitting into neat feature-film formulas about love and death.

With its big budget for computer-aided special effects, this film goes the furthest in visualizing the afterlife. When Chris Nielsen (Williams) dies, he ends up in a world of lush vegetation and saturated colors-the palate of his wife's paintings made in her more optimistic moments, when she paints a paradise for them to retire to. In his house beyond the lake, he has everything he wants or needs-beauty and peaceeverything except his beloved wife, Annie (Annabella Sciorra).

He insists on going in search for her, but she is in that Other Place because, we find out, she committed suicide, a no-no even in the New Age. So with a grim, world-weary guide, the Tracker (Max von Sydow), Chris journeys to a surrealistic, dark, and dangerous netherworld. He takes a boat over black waters under stormy skies-the classic voyage over the River Styx. Amusingly, the word Cerberus appears as the name on the hull of a wrecked ship-which is of course awkward since Cerberus was the name of the three-headed dog that guarded Hades in ancient Greek mythology, not a vessel of transport. (For a much more clever updating of the myth, see the 1959 film by Marcel Camus, the classic Black Orpheus, in which a modern-day Brazilian Orpheus descends to Hades to retrieve his beloved Eurydice. Cerberus in this film is played by a real dog, barking fiercely as Orpheus approaches.)

Chris finds Annie in "their house"-or the wreckage of their upper-middle-class dream house now in dusty, dilapidated splendor. She is alternately despondent and violently psychotic, hardly recognizing him, hardly communicating, but most of all-it is suggested-refusing to take responsibility for her own sins. In a modern Freudian twist, denial is the source of her hell, and in fact she chooses to remain in it. When Chris cannot persuade her to leave, he declares that he will hang around in hell just to stay with her.

Of course, this won't do for a Hollywood ending. In the final reel, everything gets fixed just right-the shining power and glory of Chris' love makes Annie snap out of it. They are reunited in their technicolor paradise. Even the two children they lost in a car accident come back to them. And they live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, this speedy resolution smacks of Pop spiritualism at its silliest-romantic love conquers all, even a sentence to hell. ("OK, but she didn't really mean to go to hell!") And it is getting tiresome watching Robin Williams playing lovable, ultrasincere goofs who fly in the face of the Establishment (name it-private boys' schools, hospitals, afterlife administrations) to prove that he is indeed more righteous than everyone else combined. Clearly, the film's contrivances derive from the lack of any profound vision or belief system, as well as a rather cynical play for commercial appeal-be sure we have a happy ending by the last five minutes, even if incredibly forced.

Angels Among Us

Superior by far in tone, acting, and emotional credibility is City of Angels. In this moody romantic drama, Seth (Nicholas Cage) is one of the angels who hover about humankind, an invisible guardian who listens to people's problems, sympathizes with their travails, and holds their hands as they transit from this world to the next. The film is loosely adapted from Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (a 1987 arthouse hit in which an angel falls in love with a blond trapeze artist), and Wenders helped write the City of Angels adaptation.

Here, Seth falls in love with young doctor Maggie, played to the nth degree of curly-blond cuteness by Meg Ryan. In the American schema of things, the object of one's love should be purposeful and altruistic, preferably active in some do-good profession like medicine. Thus, Maggie is a smart, competent surgeon in a busy big-city hospital. Furthermore, she's a doc with heart-she grieves deeply when she loses a patient. (Note also that the love object of Meet Joe Black is a medical resident.) No wonder Seth is smitten and decides to come down to earth to be with her.

In the mode of the popular television show Touched by an Angel-whose enduring success may explain in part why these spiritually oriented films reached production-City of Angels does not balk at stating some things unequivocally. At one point, Maggie tells Seth how she regrets the recent loss of a patient, lamenting, "I wanted him to live!" He replies, "He is living, just not the way you think." "I don't believe in that," she shoots back. "Some things are true whether you believe in them or not," he says.

Seth's choice to take on mortal form is presented as difficult though inevitable. The world of angels has an austere beautythey get to prowl about in spiffy, long black designer coats, and they are free from fear, anguish, and deprivation. Fleshly existence, in contrast, has its perils: One of the first things that happens to Seth when he takes earthly form is that he gets robbed and beaten by a street gang. He bleeds, he feels pain. Yet he gladly accepts that this is the price he pays for his newfound state of being.

On a lighter note is Meet Joe Black, loosely adapted from Death Takes a Holiday, the Alberto Casella play that resulted in the 1934 movie starring Frederic March. In our 1998 version, Death is played by a beautifully blond Brad Pitt, who is given the name "Joe Black" by the man he has come to take away, Bill Parrish (Anthony Hopkins). Parrish is a wildly rich and successful media magnate, about to turn 65 and facing a buyout by another media conglomerate that is, unfortunately, all about sensationalism and profits. He has two daughters, one married (Allison, played by Marcia Gay Harden) and throwing everything into planning a huge birthday party for him, the other beautiful and single (Susan, played by Claire Forlani), a resident in a city hospital and sort of attached to his right-hand man, an ambitious young executive-on-the-climb (Drew, played by Jake Weber).

In walks Death, having taken the body of a young man just killed in a tragic car accident on New York City's mean streets. He wants to have a taste of this thing called life, this thing people hang onto so desperately.

He bargains with Bill: As long as Joe Black cares to stay in the world, so will Bill Parrish. Naturally, Parrish takes him into his hearth and home, where Joe partakes of life's pleasures-from sleeping in a plush bed to sampling peanut butter, to falling in love with (who else?) his wouldbe victim's second daughter. The film is a romantic comedy that tries to minimize its macabre underpinnings by both humorizing and underplaying them. When Joe Black hears the comment "inevitable as death and taxes" at the dinner table, he stops the conversation. "Why death and taxes?" he asks. Drew snaps back arrogantly-he sees Joe as competitor for the attentions of the Parrish family"Don't you know that phrase? It's a commonly used one."

In fact, we don't find out too much about the afterlife in this film, but we do find out something about the preciousness of this life. All the things that we living, sentient beings might savor, Joe Black learns to savor in his brief interval in human form. These are the pleasures of the senses-of taste, smell, touch, sight, and hearing-and many are available for a man of Bill's wealth. When Death ultimately returns to his duties, he goes with a greater appreciation for what it means to be human. While this is a feel-good-about-life movie in the mode of It's a Wonderful Life, Joe Black also shows us that death is finally met by the dying with peaceful acceptance. Human Spirit Triumphant But some do not go gently into that dark night, and by far the most thoughtful and thoughtprovoking of these films is also the most ambitious, Beloved. Based on Toni Morrison's bestselling and quite difficult novel about postslavery life in Ohio, the film shows us that those who are ostensibly "free" are captives of the past. Produced by and starring talk show maven Oprah Winfrey, this work was unfortunately much underrated by critics and avoided by audiences not up for its "educational" appeal. In fact, Beloved has much to say about how our past actions catch up with our current lives and how the things we do today have waves of repercussions for our lives and those of others tomorrow-basic tenets of most world religions. Furthermore, this film shows, you can't stem those repercussions with a snap of the finger.

Sethe (Winfrey) is a "free" woman on free soil, with her own house off a main road and three children. In the beginning her two boys run away from home, unable to tolerate things being constantly broken and thrown about by unseen forces in their ramshackle house. In haunting flashbacks we see Sethe's harrowing life under slavery, being whipped, raped, and worked mercilessly-definitely not a pretty picture and probably part of what kept mass audiences away.

It turns out the source of these household upsets is probably her dead child-a child who substantially manifests in the form of an ethereally beautiful teenager, Beloved (Thandie Newton). It is Sethe's older daughter Denver (Kimberley Elise in a subtly powerful performance) who first recognizes Beloved for who she is.

This film uncompromisingly confronts us with the untidiness of living. The protagonists are not perfectly groomed, affluent white people; they are dirt-poor blacks who have been mistreated all their lives and have struggled every day to come up with enough food for the table and a little dignity. People do not necessarily die proud, happy deaths, led away by guardian angels as in City of Angels or Joe Black. And for the living, death leaves them in the grip of a powerful, sometimes relentless grief combined with guilt that eats away at the soul.

At first Beloved is sweet and doting on Sethe, though completely helpless to do anything for herself, as an infant would be. Eventually she has a breakdown, for she is at heart the infantile id, all about immediate gratification and immediate tantrums when her will is unmet. Poor Sethe accepts her fate, believing it is just punishment for her own past crimes of desperation.

We are never sure where Beloved has been all these years, only that she has been in that Other Realm. What we do know is that she has been frozen in the moment she perished and has not been able to emotionally progress. Denver is her counterpart. Barely a year or two older than Beloved, she has seen the living hell that life can be, but at the same time, she shows compassion and love even for human beings who have failed and failed again. This love cannot redeem Beloved, stuck in infantile rage, and cannot even save her mother, who must live out her own punishment, her own redemption. However, it does empower Denver and give her the wherewithal to eventually escape her own prison.

Perhaps it is fitting that the best films with afterlife themes tend to tell us more about this life than about the life hereafter. While Beloved is a story set in the nineteenth century, it also tells us some basic truths about the human condition: Life is precious, but more precious still is how we live it, day by day, and how much compassion we grant to those around us.