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    		•

    FILMS

    Flatliners (1990)
  • Starring Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt, Kimberly Scott, Joshua Rudoy

  • Directed by Joel Schumacher

    • If you were born in the '70s, like I was—you probably did the majority of your growing up in the '80s and early '90s. (Arrested development aside, of course.) I find that many of the movies that people consider their "teen movies," those which they remember rewatching endlessly with friends, are films like Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club or Can't Buy Me Love or some other such film. Even at a young age my tastes bent more towards science fiction and fantasy, preferring to watch movies like Flatliners and The Seventh Sign and The Lost Boys and Can't Buy Me Love.

    "Today is a good day to die."

    Flatliners is the story of a group of young doctors who tempt death. They kill each other and are clinically dead, then they use science to revive their friends—and in doing so, they hope to bring back the answers to the age-old questions: What happens when you die? Is there life after death?

    The movie answers these questions with a definitive "yes." However, the things that are out there are not necessarily good. Your dreams and hopes and loves are all out there waiting for you. But so are your sins. And in Flatliners, each doctor brings his own sins and pain back with him (or her) when he's (she's) revived. In some instances it's just psychological. In David's (Sutherland) case, he brings back Billy Mahoney—a young kid who continuously beats the crap out of David. Who says dreams and nightmares can't be real?

    Flatliners does an incredible job with mood and atmosphere. There's very little action that takes place during the daytime, and even those are usually interior scenes. This story is very much encased in darkness. If I recall correctly, I think the movie itself is bookmarked with the sun setting in the very first scene and and it rising in the very last scene.

    One of the cooler setpieces for Flatliners is the museum in which they conduct their near-death-experience experiments. It's never explicitly stated in the film but it seems as if the school is undergoing renovation and some of the classes (such as gross anatomy) are temporarily being conducted in the gallery rooms of future art exhibits. Classic architecture and oil painting are draped with large sheets of plastic—which is a great effect. When the wind blows, or when someone is running through the museum, the crinkling tatters of the plastic billow out. It's a minor detail, but something that I really like.

    Sutherland, Roberts, Bacon, Baldwin, and Platt all give good performances, but this movie isn't really about the performances. This movie is about the idea. Call me morbid or disturbed, but it's an idea that is incredibly intriguing. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to die. (Quite the opposite, in fact. I want to live forever) But who isn't curious about what happens after death? Is there a happy hunting ground? Elysium fields? Heaven? Hell? Nothing but decomposition?

    I hope that heaven and the afterlife is pretty much the exact same as living on Earth; with a few exceptions, of course. I hope heaven is a place where there's no room for stress or worries or taxes or mortgage payments. In my heaven there's comic books and novels and movies and video games and ice cream and dancing and laughing and friends and RPGs and stand-up comedians and roller-coasters and beautiful sunsets and sex and everything else that is enjoyable about living. There's always time to do everything you want to do, and at the end of the day—no matter how much you've done, there's always an hour or two which you'll have just for yourself. To do with what you like. To relax. And when that is over, your sleep is perfect and sound and restful.

    I hope it's like just like that, but I can wait to find out.