Made in Heaven (1987) Lorimar/Fantasy-Drama RT: 102 minutes Rated PG (language, violent content, brief rear nudity, thematic elements) Director: Alan Rudolph Screenplay: Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon Music: Mark Isham Cinematography: Jan Kiesser Release date: November 6, 1987 (US) Cast: Timothy Hutton, Kelly McGillis, Maureen Stapleton, Ann Wedgeworth, James Gammon, Mare Winningham, Don Murray, Timothy Daly, David Rasche, Amanda Plummer, Willard E. Pugh, Vyto Ruginis, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Ric Ocasek, Marj Dusay, Ray Gideon, Zack Finch, Robert Knepper, James Tolkan, Gailard Sartain, Ellen Barkin (uncredited), Debra Winger (credited as “Emmett”). Box Office: $4.5M (US)
Rating: ****
Some people believe that God made a perfect match between every man and every woman when He created the world, “soulmates” if you will. It’s a nice idea if you believe in such things. The romantic fantasy Made in Heaven uses it as the foundation for a beautiful love story about two souls who meet in Heaven and fall in love only to be separated on Earth. It may come as a complete shock to all those who think I’m some deranged maniac that lives on a steady diet of violent, bloody movies, but I absolutely love Made in Heaven. It’s an eccentric piece to be sure, but I’d expect nothing less from Alan Rudolph, a filmmaker who perfectly epitomizes unconventionality.
The story begins with a young man named Mike Shea (Hutton, Ordinary People) reaching a crossroads in his life. He’s recently unemployed and gets dumped by his girlfriend (Winningham, St. Elmo’s Fire) for a more successful man. He decides to pick up and move to California to start a new life. Unfortunately, he never makes it. He dies while saving a young woman and her two children from drowning. He wakes up in Heaven where he’s greeted by his dear, departed Aunt Lisa (Stapleton, Reds) who explains the rules of his new heavenly home.
Heaven turns out to be a wonderful place where anything is possible. For example, one can visit family members or old friends simply by thinking about them. The first time Mike attempts it, he ends up in the home of a family that includes heavenly guide Annie (McGillis, The Accused). She’s a “new soul” meaning she’s never inhabited a human body or been to Earth. The two souls fall in love and vow to be with each other forever.
Life (or Afterlife) has never been so sweet. Things are going great until Annie is sent to Earth for her tour of duty as a person. Mike is beside himself with grief and loneliness; he demands to be sent back to Earth too. The one who “runs things” in Heaven is Emmett (Winger, An Officer and a Gentleman), a chain-smoking angel who grants Mike’s request with the condition that he finds his soulmate within 30 years. Neither one of them will have any conscious memory of their time together in Heaven, but they’ll know it if and when they meet each other again on Earth.
Mike is reborn as Elmo Barnett and Annie is reborn as Ally Chandler. Elmo’s childhood is less than idyllic. His unmarried mother lives with a mean drunk who mistreats little Elmo. Ally’s mother dies while she’s still a child. She’s raised by her father (Murray, Endless Love) who opens a toy company because he wants to make people laugh. Once Elmo and Ally reach adulthood, they set out on their own paths which cross at various times. Ally, an executive at her father’s company, writes a successful children’s book about her childhood imaginary friend “Mike” while her marriage to commercial director Tom (Daly, Wings) ends in divorce.
After serving in Vietnam, Elmo takes to the road as a drifter. He has a few adventures. At one point, he gets mixed up with a femme fatale type (Barkin, The Big Easy) who tricks him into helping her rob an underground casino. The thing is neither one of them is happy. There’s something missing from their lives, but they don’t know what. Occasionally, they get a sense of déjà vu brought on by a comment or something seen from the corner of their eye. Meanwhile, Elmo’s 30th birthday keeps getting closer. Will destiny allow the two soulmates to meet again or will their paths never cross?
I’m going to jump ahead a bit and tell you what happens to Elmo when he reaches L.A. courtesy of Mike’s parents, played by Ann Wedgeworth (Steel Magnolias) and James Gammon (Major League), who pick him up hitchhiking because he reminds them of his son. He becomes a musician after teaching himself to play the trumpet. Music has always been in him; he just didn’t know it until somebody put a trumpet in his hands. He ends up composing a beautiful love song entitled “We Never Danced” that becomes a hit. I mention this because of the joy I had watching Elmo creating the song, especially when he puts together an orchestra with the help of a record executive (Plummer, Pulp Fiction) who comes to believe in him.
Alan Rudolph is an acquired taste. His movies tend to be idiosyncratic and populated by eccentric characters. His credits include Welcome to L.A., Choose Me, Trouble in Mind, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Afterglow and the abominable Breakfast of Champions. I’m not usually a fan of his work; I didn’t like any of aforementioned titles. On the other hand, I LOVE Made in Heaven, one of the few commercial movies on his resume (alongside Roadie and Endangered Species). It’s certainly his most accessible movie even with its eccentric touches like cameos by rockers Neil Young, Tom Petty and Ric Ocasek in addition to uncredited performances by Winger (Hutton’s then-wife) and Barkin. If there’s one thing Rudolph can do, it’s putting together a great cast. Made in Heaven is no exception. It has a fairly impressive cast that also includes David Rasche (Sledge Hammer), Willard E. Pugh (Moving Violations) and Robert Knepper (D.O.A.).
Made in Heaven is nice to look at thanks to Jan Kiesser’s gorgeous cinematography. He films the opening scenes in black and white in order to give the viewer a sense of time and place, post-WWII small-town America. He shifts to soft-focus color when Mike goes to Heaven where he meets people who have been dead for years like his childhood mailman (Tolkan, Back to the Future). Mike and Annie have a beautiful romantic interlude in a grassy meadow. Once both souls return to Earth, the movie takes on a different look. It resembles reality, yet there’s something unreal about it at the same time.
Made in Heaven is an eccentric movie; not everybody will fall in love with it. It’s not your usual romantic drama. The brief encounter between Elmo and the lady gangster is truly bizarre; it seems out of place in a love story, yet feels so right in a movie with faint but distinct echoes of Jim Jarmusch. It has genuine heart and emotion throughout. It’s heartbreaking when Mike says goodbye to his parents, but even sadder when we realize he’ll never see them again.
Made in Heaven continues to tug at the heartstrings as Elmo and Ally try to figure out what’s missing from their lives as fate draws them closer together. Hutton and McGillis have great chemistry together. You come to like and care about their characters. You really want them to find each other before it’s too late. It’s a nice thought the idea of a higher power seeing to it that two souls who clearly belong together eventually come together. It’s never a direct intervention though; it’s usually a nudge or a push in the right direction. In this universe, there are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. It’s part of a grand design of our lives. We never know what’s around the next corner. We never know if the next face we see will be our true soulmate. At the same time, there’s this part of our subconscious that will recognize our soulmate when our paths finally cross. It’s a lovely thought, isn’t it? The hopeless romantics for whom Made in Heaven is made will surely agree.
That’s what I took away from Made in Heaven. The more cynical among us will dismiss it as pure bunk. I prefer the more romantic viewpoint. Although it tends to move a little slowly, it’s an outstanding film with a wonderful pay-off. Given Rudolph’s unique style, it’s easy to understand why Made in Heaven bombed during its one-week theatrical run. It’s unfair. It deserves far more recognition than it gets. By way of a hard sell, let me say that anybody who loves Vincent Ward’s 1998 romantic drama What Dreams May Come will love Made in Heaven as well. It’s the very definition of “hidden treasure”. It’s a real find for anybody that likes a side of the Great Beyond with their love stories. It’s a heavenly experience.
