If faith was taken out of the equation and all an individual would have to do is submit to God’s will to be saved, why would she turn down paradise? Michael Tolkin’s 1991 film, The Rapture, asks this question, but there are no easy answers. Sharon, the film’s protagonist, takes a journey from one extreme of sexuality, spirituality, and morality to the other of devotion to God and a Christian life. At one point early in the film Sharon asks, “What’s control got to do with it?” The question, in an existential sense, comes across as a rhetorical question in light of the limitations of choice presented in the narrative. Control and who has control dictates the abundance or scarcity of choices people can make. God and devotion to God limits those choices, thus a person of faith surrenders control to God.

Sharon struggles with this idea early in the film — questioning many of the implications that the existence of God would cause. In spite of these concerns, Sharon is still drawn to God’s love and control. The words of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor starts ringing prophetic: people are weak and give their freedom away to the first person that feeds them. Sharon feels God can relieve her hunger for something more. Where sex and cheap night life thrills failed it seems Sharon was at her happiest when her freedom and choice were surrendered to God.

This all starts spiraling away when reality enters the picture and her husband is murdered by a disgruntled worker. A vision leads her and her daughter Mary to the desert to await the impending rapture. The religious flock that she had been a part of insists she take this quest alone. Suddenly the inclusiveness of her community was pushing her out, saying they were not invited. But it feels more like Sharon is the one who is no longer invited to be there. She stays strong to her faith as she is completely convinced that God will care for her and Mary and takes no provision for their stay. Sharon does a three-sixty of sorts from a desert of empty sex and mundane work to being literally lost in a lonely desert.

Having the comforts of life affords a certain level of freedom to debate or put a person’s faith in a deity, but when reality strikes and survival becomes paramount, these leisurely concerns are replaced by the need to survive. As Sharon starts to run out of food for her and her child, so too does her patience with God. It is crucial that her faith never seems to waverer, but rather her relationship with God. As time passes in the desert and the rapture does not come, she keeps giving God one more chance. Eventually, Mary challenges the God’s rules when she decides to take the life of Mary. Why wouldn’t a true believer seek death if true paradise can only be found when they die? It is a logical criticism that the film asks, and Sharon has no answer for. At the request of Mary, Sharon takes her own daughter’s life, hoping perhaps that God will still her hand like he did Abraham’s. When she is finally caught and put in jail, she comes to the realization that “You have to love Him. Not me, not anymore. He’s got too many rules.”

Sharon’s realization is not a lack of faith, but a condemnation of God’s laws. God’s rules are a system of control; a system that limits choice. Heaven is portrayed in religious text as the ultimate utopia. But analyzing the utopia of heaven a bit further, it is easy to see that it falls into the same critical trappings of more literary thoughts on utopias. It is exclusive; only the saved are allowed in. It is at war with Hell over the fate of humans and all of existence. It can offer salvation, but only through complete surrender to the God’s authority. How are God and heaven that different from Big Brother and the Party in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four? However, in Nineteen Eighty-Four Winston comes to love Big Brother, but Sharon chooses differently.

At a crucial point in the film, Sharon asks “Who forgives God?” The answer to that question is that it is up to the individual to make the choice whether they forgive God for the evils in the world. It is the individual’s choice to submit to loving him and give up their own free will for an invitation to his heavenly utopia. Sharon did not forgive God for all the ill he had done, and in doing so made the ultimate choice to be damned for all eternity.

choice, fall 2011, michael tolkin, rapture, video