The Discovery of Heaven (2001)

Perhaps the fact I haven't yet read the book this film was so absolutely gorgeous to watch. The story develops so naturally one barely can wait to see the next scene, and the next and so forth. Very wise choice to shoot it with a predominantly English cast I think, and even the (still) horrible pronunciation of the English language by Krabbé himself wasn't disturbing enough to distract from the compelling story, events unfolding well-paced, without any of the important characters having difficulty to rise above stereotype cliché's. I am deeply touched by the angelic Flora Montgomery (Ada Brons; wow, what a fresh, divine and utterly unblemished creature, she must have loved playing her role), Stephen Fry (Onno Quist) stunned me with a very impressive performance, Neil Newbon was IMHO well-cast in his role and held his ground. Mulisch may be (or come across as) an annoying public figure, his work on which this film is based must be nothing short of Great Art. I look forward to reading it.Wholeheartedly recommended for anyone but those who only dig brute action or sappy Hollywood all's well that ends well crap. A must-see!(9/10)

The discovery of heaven is the magnum opus of Dutch writer Harry Mulisch, where science, religion and philosophy meet in a 900-page book full of autobiographical details, among which the persecution of Jews in WW2 and the roaring sixties. The story in a nutshell: Science and technology have on earth substituted the Ten Commandments of Moses, so a plan is conceived by God and his angels to bring the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments back from earth to heaven, as the contract between mankind and God is abandoned. Angels are given this task by God, and a child is born on earth to accomplish heaven's plan. The child is the result of a love triangle between astronomer Max Delius (the writer Mulisch), politician Onno Quist and a cellist Ada Brons. (One example of the level of detail in the book: A remarkable congruency is that Max's father, who betrayed his Jewish wife in WW2, has three important locations where his life played out and Auschwitz is the center of again a triangle) As the book states that coincidence does not exist and everything has a reason, all events happening are arranged by angels in heaven including the conception of the child, although Max Delius is on the brink of scientifically discovering heaven.In the script they made a good effort to condense the book to its bare essentials by selecting the most relevant parts for the movie. But there are (also in the book) irrelevant loose elements that seem redundant and distract from the core message: Vietnam demonstrations, the whole Cuba part, some characters and relations add little. And there are things from the book they could have used like all mothers having the same face after the tablets are placed. Stephen Fry's often failed attempts to be funny are out of place although the book contains some humor: The weapon course in Cuba and Onno's walking stick interpreted as a miracle when seen as Moses' stick. The ending is better in the book than in the movie, where it is somewhat banal.The pacing is unnecessarily slow despite the enormous amount of events happening in both the movie and the book. The story is told in a very predictable and straightforward way; the director Jeroen Krabbé is just not up to this job and has little imagination and visual style. Take the many direct references to religion and heaven and even the way heaven is represented. Or the clumsy way the deaths are foreshadowed with a short flash. I guess Peter Greenaway (planning to do a movie on Rembrandt) would have been a better choice as director, but this had to make some money being a lavish production for Dutch standards. The role of God and angels is comparable here to that of the writer of the book; in the movie to the role of the director (and even actor Krabbé as angel). Because the best movies are usually about other movies, the book and script lacks writers, photographers, painters or publishers to lift this to a meta-level. Here we have the relative mundane politicians and scientists.As science is about everything that can be potentially explained, religion is about everything that can not be explained rationally. The book and movie's statement that physics may one day take over religion, or make religion redundant, is fairly accurate as metaphysics is coming increasingly closer to a theory of everything. But as our knowledge increases, a warning is issued that it will not necessarily lead to a greater happiness or higher morality. The book and movie mixes small, uninteresting stories with larger-than-life stories in a strange and awkward way. It also messes things up inconsistently (e.g. in the book there is an image of concentration camps in space). Some of the book and movie consists of contrived, pseudo-intellectual nonsense, being deliberately pretentious lacking any mastery of the art form at hand (be it writing or film-making).

I must have seen a completely different movie, because I cannot identify in any level with most of the comments here. What work of art? The movie is boring, the acting is contrived at best and the only redeeming factor would be that the story itself is great, but unfortunately it was transformed in a 127 minutes borefest. To be completely fair, the movie has its moments, mostly on the first half hour when you anticipate everything that is supposed to happen and you get to know the characters and the storyline, but then..nothing else! I really had high hopes on this movie mostly based on the IMDB reviews, but I learned a lesson. Obviously oppinions are very subjective, but I still wonder why such a high grade for a very flawed movie..

I had gone to the movie, with great expectations. I had been to a briefing by Jeroen Krabbe about the movie, so in short i knew what the movie was about, i read parts of the book and summaries, and i had seen the making of the movie. So i went with a certain idea in my mind. I was a little let down by the movie. First of all, you never learn to know and love the characters. At the end you still feel like an outsider looking in, other than someone who is actually experiencing it all. The scenes are little pieces of their lives, with too much information per scene and too little emotion. Flora Montgomery shows no emotion, her face shows nothing. Besides this, the characters are all unlovable and by the end you want them to die and get it over with, because you don't care about Max or Onno. Only Quinten is a little lovable, but more because of how he is treated than who he is. Toward the end, the movie starts getting a little faster. In the beginning it just drags on. Besides this, the movie was filmed wonderfully. Krabbe did an amazing job and he is an amazing director. Also, the way the whole film fits together is wonderful too.