We honor the great actress/filmmaker Diane Keaton with a new restoration of her first venture behind the camera (she’d direct four films, eventually, and even an episode of Twin Peaks).
Heaven is a talking-head documentary that probes humanity’s evolving relationship to the puzzle of what happens to us after we die. Keaton conducted wide-ranging conversations with an eclectic assortment of everyman interviewees (including her own sister and grandmother), all filmed in expressionistic, dramatically illuminated compositions against the backdrop of an otherworldly soundstage set. The metaphysical speculation and earnest philosophizing of Keaton’s subjects are complemented with an atmospheric score by composer Howard Shore, and thoughtfully illustrated with excerpts from televised religious programming and films as diverse as The Passion of Joan of Arc, Metropolis, Night of the Demon, and A Matter of Life and Death, emphasizing how the familiar images served up to us by popular culture have nourished, and responded to, our species’ enduring fascination with the question of where we go from here.