DVD Review: Seeing Heaven

written by
Tony Ryan

posted on
05.09.2011

comments/discussion
skip to comments

filed under
Home Video

BUY FROM AMAZON: CLICK HERE!

STUDIO: Breaking Glass Pictures
MSRP: $21.99
RATED: Unrated
RUNNING TIME: 109 minutes

SPECIAL FEATURES:

nope

The Pitch

Seeing Heaven or Shut The Fuck Up.

The Humans

Alexander Bracq, Denton Lethe, Maximo Salvo

The Nutshell

Okay, a plot? Shit. I can do this. So, an escort with special powers is wandering around some unnamed UK city. This escort’s powers involve visions about his brother that he can only get when he has sex, but his partners also see the visions as they get closer to climax. Seeing heaven, get it? So one day, escort gets his ass kicked by a guy with an awesome mustache. Escort guy gets picked up by a bartender who wants to have sex with him. Escort steals a card and goes to the house of a porn producer, for some fucking reason. Porn guy’s all like ‘hey you, be in my porn’ and escort guy is all over that. But it’s cool, cause it’s not like a regular porn it’s all about art and shit. After that point in the movie I drank myself into the depths of hell, so I’m a little fuzzy. But I think they do the porn, have a bunch of visions, and them some shit about tarot cards. Heaven indeed.

I was all ready to dump this shit early and become a millionaire, but they saw my plan.

The Lowdown

Seeing Heaven is secretly about people smoking cigarettes in slow motion. It does a damn find job of it and it’s the only thing it gets right. They take those cigarettes in slow and exhale with motherfucking style. But that’s not all, slow motion smoking goes perfect with cryptic voice overs. And, oh yeah, do they serve the best cryptic voice overs here. It doesn’t make a lick of sense and is on some infinite scratchy loop from coffee house hell. Top it all off with some bullshit mystic nonsense to pass as a plot and you have the perfect film to give Judy Funny for her birthday.

Fuck this movie. Oh my God, fuck this movie so much. You struggle for the exact words to describe something this horrible, but one phrase kept popping back into my head while watching (being abused by?) this film; shut the fuck up. People kept talking when they really needed to just shut the fuck up. They could have shaved a needed hour and a half off the film if everyone would have just shut the fuck up. What do you do when someone says, exact quote, “There is a reality behind the reality”? You do whatever you can to make them stop talking. I wanted to use my mute button as a punishment for having to hear such things. This movie needs to shut up. So hard. If this movie would just shut up it would be perfect if you wanted to recreate the MOMA for mentally retarded people in your basement.

If anyone can tell me who distributed this DVD, let me know.

There is reality behind the reality. That was said. Not only was it said once, it was said over and over again in flashbacks. Just let that sink in while I give you a little context. They are shooting a porn and that was a direction. You know as much as I did now. Putting aside the leap in logic that a porn directors biggest direction isn’t to move a leg so you can see more cock, what the good fuck does that mean? You could make an argument that it’s a reference to the themes of the movie, but then you would need to shut the fuck up more than Seeing Heaven does. There are tons of obvious literary references for the films stupid John Edward influenced themes. Every awful line is obviously trying to play into that, by stating exactly what those themes are and telling logic to get fucked. It was written by someone who farted out pretentious line after pretentious line and randomly shoved it into a screenplay. Then some actor came along and read it like he was auditioning for the part of God. And no one ever thought about how it would alter the lives of people who have to hear it. It’s a senseless crime that harms the literally tens of people that might accidently watch this film. And that is only a misdemeanor in the crimes against taste in Seeing Heaven.

Oh holy shit, it’s about a guy who has psychic visions when he has sex. And it’s called Seeing Heaven.I can’t really let that pass by, can I? It’s about a dude who has psychic visions when he has sex and the title is the most obvious reference this side of calling it The Cum Medium. And the best part, these visions are from his dead brother who just happens to not exist. So it’s just the one guy getting visions from a dead person who doesn’t exist. The dead brother shows up in a climax that also involves tarot cards and gang rape, so it fits right in. And if you are saying what the fuck to yourself right now, you’re right. That is exactly right. But don’t forget, you have to imagine all this insane bullshit with a bright shining gloss of pretension. This is what that guy you saw buying Bad Mutha Truckers in a matching American flag outfit thinks art films are. It’s a joke. When people laugh at a Guy Maddin film, this is what they are really imagining it is. This is gay cowboys eating pudding. It doesn’t even bother with context ninety percent of the time, it’s just slow motion and people who won’t shut up. When it does decide to try to make sense, it throws in a bunch of new age bullshit as a simple crutch. There is no better way to explain away non logic than new age nonsense. Why doesn’t this film make any sense? Because ghosts and crystals and shit, of course.

Seeing Heaven is the counter argument to the concept of art. If you see this film, any aspect of this film, firmly tell it to fuck off and go about your business. This film needs someone to listen so it can feel really good about itself. Just don’t engage this film and it will go away. It may lure you in with some scary mystery guy in a splooge mask, but I’ll tell you right now it’s just a British guy who think interrupting gang rape is rather rude. Your reward for sitting through all that torture is the elevator scene from Vanilla Sky. Only, twist alert, it’s just a guy talking to himself this time. I can’t help but think an audience seeing this shite was an afterthought for the filmmakers.You could possibly argue that this is soft core porn, and you’d have some evidence. The film is filled with shirtless guys and simulated sex, but it’s far too self important to truly be pornographic. Most soft core porn seems to be having fun. This isn’t fun. Seeing Heaven thinks it is telling you the most important story ever. A story about sex, love, and the meaning of it all. But really it’s about sweaty dudes, slow motion smoking, and voice overs stolen from student films. A perfect combination of cliches that need to shut the fuck up.