THE RAPTURE IS IS difficult to evaluate. It honestly deals with the struggle to overcome meaninglessness yet the screenwriter's point of view is so cynical and apparently post-modern that there is no possibility of any genuine healing or meaning. Simply, the film The Rapture could be translated as, "Look how hard I am trying and God just doesn't come through! What a bad God! I think I will damn myself just to get back at Him." The simplistic solutions of sexual swinging and spiritual mindlessness have met a simple partner- modern cynicism.
The quest for meaning seems to be some huge ordeal whereby sacrifice and suffering are needed to procure it. Of course, this theology results in a God with horns -- a manipulative child- god who withholds meaning in order to make us dependent on Him. Surely our imaginations could come up with a less literal and banal message.
Maybe, however, the message is not quite so modern. The Rapture repeats ol' Prometheus' song that God has what I want, I have to steal it from Him or trick Him into giving it to me. The quest for meaning seems to be some huge ordeal whereby sacrifice and suffering are needed to procure it. Of course, this theology results in a God with horns -- a manipulative child-god who withholds meaning in order to make us dependent on Him. Surely our imaginations could come up with a less literal and banal message.
Was The Rapture to be rewritten I can imagine several alternatives. One possibility is to allow Sharon to discover the meaning of her life in her pathology. She is a voyeur -- admittedly sensually indulgent but she's as numb as a antiseptic cotton wad.. What would happen if she actually did love, if she fell into love and moved beyond lust, neediness and narcissism to meet meaning in the devotion to another's growth? The cynic might think that these lessons could be wiped out at the death of her husband, Randy. They would be if she made a literal idol of her relationship like she did with her sexuality or her religious experience. Wouldn't it be a novel plot if human neediness turned into the habit of self-extension that expanded beyond one person and eventually enveloped her universe? It might end up a love story, a date flick, but with more depth, more meaning, than usual. I think you might even be able to use the same title -- The Rapture.
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