From: David P. Hayes
Date: 1997/10/14
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.past-films
In article <EHzsvv.CD5@nonexistent.com>, genbac@blast.net (Rufie710)
wrote:
> In article <01bcd7d3$541a1cc0$6467e3c7@default>, "P.J.
Gladnick"
> <pjglad@gate.net> wrote:
> > THE RAPTURE has to be the most bizarre and stupid film ever made.
> yup. agreed.
I disagree. "The Rapture" (1991) nonetheless does perplex some viewers because they fail to fail to see that their preconceptions are not those of the filmmaker. "The Rapture" begins by depicting a woman's (Mimi Rogers) promiscuity, lightly touching on her being able to see through the arguments made by the religious zealots who attempt to convert her. Later, she will become one of them herself? Is this stupid? No. The film has its ways of letting us know that this same character is falling into the same trap she had before, having tossed aside the sexual trappings but remaining blind and indiscriminate.
Dialogue from the promiscuous part of her life (which is always photographed and performed such to connote that it's an undesirable life, the people positioned like dogs at one point, as if to connote the extent to which the characters have become unhuman) is echoed by remarks made during the religious zealot stage. These are writers' ways of suggesting parallels. The story structure does as well.
You two are not alone in misunderstanding the film. Upon its release, Roger Ebert on his television show said that it was a quality film which he liked, but that it was confusing (Ebert didn't phrase it to admit that the confusion was his, not the films') and that he recommended it as thought-provoking. Apparently Ebert couldn't lose hold of the idea that a conversion was supposed to be good and that if the events of the story didn't lead that way, then the problem was with the film.
As for myself, I was held in grip wondering "Is she really going to do that?," and "The story wouldn't lead there, would it?" Yet when unprecedented-in-movies events occurred, I would realize that the turns in the story were logical and were the consequences of the characters' belief systems.
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