A Little Trip To Heaven

A dark thriller is never a good way to start the first weekend of Spring. But 'A Little Trip To Heaven' was worth the trouble. It is set in 1980s Minessotta and follows the story of the conniving world of people whose opus comes to life when death walks in, life insurance companies and those fraudulent few who sling their necks through the loops of this cold business.

The opening scenes evoke a gamut of emotions. The slideshow of bereaved families bamboozled by clever insurance agents when they have hardly come to terms with their losses and the petty scam artists who make it mandatory for these agents to survey devastation with doubt and insensitivity, renders it humanly difficult to assess who the victim is making them all just characters, their sensitivities shackled by the roles they play.

Mr.Holt is an insurance agent who goes through the procedures of his job with a grim faced neutrality made visible quite remarkably by actor Forrest Whitaker. A car accident brings to the forefront, a suspiscious insurance conspiracy. It is upto Investigator Holt to unravel this intricate plot and go beyond the ambit of his detached duties. Caught in this story are the blameless faces of Isolde and her son Thor, who bring conscience and sensitivity into a series of morbid events. To me these two characters embodied the woman and the child so often trapped by their vulnerabilities in the bleakness of a violent crime.

What struck me most about this movie was the direction and the carefully set pace of the storyline. It was very easy for this dark plot to have shifted into dullness. The cinematography is quite dingy since the story is set in a unfavorable economic setting where simply by virtue of circumstance it is difficult to sympathize with any one character. But the direction is what keeps this feature progressing. Several corners are turned during the film as the tortuous underbelly of something as coordinated as an insurance fraud is scrutinized. The story delves into the different dimensions of Investigator Holt's sometimes dubious and ultimately likeable character. Director Baltasar Kormákur has planted several deliciously subtle cinematic metaphors in the film (a ripped roof, a neon sign with an ominous arrow pointing downwards, images of fire, just to name a few), not to mention the meaningful background score composed by Icelandic musician Mugison.

"Why is heaven in the sky and hell on the ground?" little Thor asks his mother. "Because it is easier to lie down than it is to fly." is her startlingly profound reply. I hope in all sincerity that more filmmakers find the dynamic wings of such creative empiricism.