Heaven on earth

FIRST-TIME child actor Connor Corum (right) with costars Reilly and Kinnear.

Ten years ago, a little boy named Colton almost died on the operating table, but managed to survive and resume his life as an “ordinary” child. From time to time, however, he would perplex and intrigue his parents with mystifying stories about what he had “seen” during an out-of-body experience, and his visit with “Jesus” in “Heaven.” His father, a preacher and volunteer fireman, implicitly believed his son’s narratives, but his mother thought that the boy was just being naughtily imaginative.

In time, more people learned about young Colton’s “visit,” especially when his father wrote a little book, “Heaven Is For Real,” which became a bestseller read by millions—and has now been made into a film starring Greg Kinnear.

We caught the small but hugely inspirational movie early this week, and appreciated the way that it told its unusual story very slowly, letting its initially “ordinary” parameters seep into viewers’ consciousness, before unleashing its “amazing” tale about its tiny protagonist’s unique encounter with the sublime and the divine.

It also helps a lot that the first-time child actor (Connor Corum) cast as Colton is a precociously beautiful boy whose natural portrayal makes everything he does acutely and movingly believable.

As the movie’s storytelling builds up, the production shapes up as a narrative, not just of Colton’s “heavenly” experience, but also about how the resulting controversy tests his family’s love for him.

Faith

In particular, his preacher-father is pushed to reexamine and reevaluate his own faith, because he quickly learns that it’s one thing to preach it, but quite another to see it personally impinge on and “intrude” into his life.

Other characters are affected in different ways, so the film ends up as a sounding board for different views of what “heaven” should mean—on earth!

The movie’s slow progression and focus on “ordinary” details could easily have caused the production to lose significance and pertinent coherence, but the leads’ felt portrayals prevent this from happening, and the film is able to rise to truly inspiring and moving heights and make viewers reconsider their own spiritual parameters.

Yes, some of the visual and aural approximations of angels in joyous celebration may be too “etherealized” for comfort, but this is no facile, “estampita” production, so its occasional “heavenly” flourishes can be overlooked.

Another occasional distraction is provided by the fact that Kelly Reilly, the actress cast as Colton’s mother, is too movie-star lovely to fit into the film’s rigorously “ordinary” Midwest milieu. But this instance of infelicitous casting similarly fades into insignificance after “Heaven’s” major themes and insights persuasively kick in!