The Five People You Meet in Heaven – 2 Stars (Average)

The Five People YouMeet in Heaven"
Is Difficult to Understand But Rewarding

For anyone who has read Mitch Albom's book Tuesdays With Morrie, it was axiomatic to read The Five People You Meet in Heaven and then see the movie.

Albom was asked why it took him so long between his first two books, he said "To be honest, I was a bit overwhelmed by Tuesdays' success. At first, nobody wanted to publish that book or talk much about it.

"Then, suddenly, all anyone wanted me to do was write a sequel. I knew I didn't want to do that. I said everything in that book that I had to say about the last class between Morrie and me. So I waited until something inspired me the way that book did. It just happened to take six years."


When asked if anything Morrie had said led to the story line of "Five People" he revealed the fact that "Morrie often told a story about waves, and how when they hit the shore they ceased to exist—unless you realized that, in truth, they weren't really waves at all, they were part of the ocean.


"Morrie saw himself that way, as part of something connected to a bigger humanity. In the Five People, I sort of explore that idea, that we are all connected to each other in ways we don't even realize, and that perhaps, when your life is over, you may find out all the other 'waves' in this big ocean that you affected without even knowing it."


These insights show the integrity and sensitivity of Mitch Albom, who also penned the movie script for his book. Albom works for the Detroit Free Press and is arguably one of best sportswriters in the United States. His work in "Five People" shows flashes of his pure writing talent.


The Five People You Meet in Heaven is the story of Eddie (Jon Voight), a simple man living a simple life as a maintenance man who has a regret and an ache in his heart.



He spends his entire life berating himself because he never left the amusement park to pursue his dream of becoming an engineer. He blames everyone but himself for not getting on in the world. This is his regret, and he feels that his life has been wasted.


Eddie dies on his 83rd birthday while trying to save a little girl from a falling cart in a roller coaster ride gone bad, and develops an ache in his heart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his as he tries to pull the girl away—and then nothing.


He dies not knowing if he saved the girl’s life or not.


He awakens in Heaven and is destined to meet five people, loved ones and distant strangers who form a thread in his life that when woven into a fabric explain the meaning of his life.


Each person shares with Eddie a lesson in life that he failed to learn on Earth.


Albom's writing skills shine through in these memorable quotes from the five characters:


Ruby: "Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that by hating someone we hurt them. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do to others, we also do to ourselves."


Blue Man: "There are no random acts. We are all connected. You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind."


Blue Man: "In heaven, there is no judgment, but rather an opportunity to examine our lives—who we touched, the choices we made, and the consequences of those choices.


" Blue Man: "Strangers are family you have yet to come to know."


Marguerite (Eddie's wife who precedes him in death): "Lost love is still love, Eddie. It just takes a different form, that's all. You can't hold their hand, you can't tousle their hair. But when those senses weaken another one comes to life. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end, Eddie. Love doesn't."


Be forewarned that The Five People You Meet in Heaven can and probably will bring tears to your eyes, and make your throat retract and become sore with tension. This is no movie for children of any age, adults can hardly deal with it and attempt to understand the subject matter and significance of its message.


This movie has an incredible ending that allows Eddie to finally understand the meaning of his life. I will not reveal the ending here, you must see the ending to earn its blessing.


This is an extremely complicated story, and the movie does not make the story any easier to understand and follow. It forces us to examine our existence here on earth; however, the story and the movie are worth the effort if you have any spiritual development.


The only other movie I have seen more complicated to understand is The Hours, which was far more miserable, depressing and dramatically overdone despite some serious Oscar attention (Best Actress Oscar for Nicole Kidman and 8 other nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director Stephen Daldry, Best Supporting Actor Ed Harris and Best Supporting Actress Julianne Moore).


Because of its complexity The Five People You Meet in Heaven earned little, if any, critical acclaim or accolades. This is why I write reviews. With no one to sing its praises, the voice of understanding goes silent. Silence is a void that is unbearable.


Perhaps Albom's effort falls short of reaching more people because he is a writer and not a philosopher. A writer like Albom can craft a beautiful sentence that a reader like me can appreciate. A philosopher can craft another sentence that immediately strikes a chord with nearly everyone.


Great poets often achieve this heartfelt effect, perhaps they are philosophers too.


I would have given The Five People You Meet in Heaven a 3 rating in a heartbeat (very high in my system) if it were not so difficult for viewers to digest and appreciate. I would see this movie again, and was a better person for having seen it the first time.


(Note from Mary-Ann: I have read the book and seen the film and I was very touched by it an even though I know I will have to read the book and watch the movie again before I completely understand all of it, it made me feel good nonetheless. If you are on a spiritual path you will love this film.)




Plot summary (source Wikipedia):
The story is about a simple man named Eddie. He is the Head of Maintenance at Ruby Pier, an amusement park along the seaside. Eddie is described as gruff and coarse in appearance, though somewhat warm towards the children who populate the pier. 
The story begins with Eddie's last day on Earth — his eighty-third birthday. As he goes about his everyday routine, a sudden scream near a tower drop ride alerts him to danger — one of the cars has come loose, suspended hundreds of feet in the air. As other workers rush to free the passengers of the ride, Eddie realizes that the cable that supports the car must have somehow come unraveled; he is right in this assumption, as weeks earlier, a young man accidentally lost his car keys in the ride, causing the cable to be husked like an ear of corn.

Eddie tries to warn his maintenance assistants not to release the brakes of the ride, but his voice is lost in the crowd so no one can hear his shouts. When the brakes are freed, the car comes hurtling toward the boardwalk. Eddie notices a little girl frozen in fear beneath the car; he dives to save her, and manages to push her out of the way - saving her life - though he himself fails to move and is killed by the falling cart.

Eddie finds himself transported to Heaven, which strangely looks like the Ruby Pier of his childhood. While there, he encounters a strange face: the Blue Man, or Joseph Corvelzchik, a "freak" in Ruby Pier's old freak show. The Blue Man explains that Heaven is not the Eden — like atmosphere often imagined; rather, it is a personal journey. Five different individuals are "appointed" to each new person in Heaven, and all visit them to learn one lesson and, in turn, discover their meaning and purpose in life. The Blue Man begins by telling his own story. He attained his “freak” status by using silver nitrate as treatment for his nerves and incontinence as a child, resulting in argyria. At first, he was shunned by all — until he was discovered by a traveling circus. He found happiness in being the "best freak" in the shows, and reveals that Ruby Pier is his own, personalized Heaven.

Eddie is intrigued by the Blue Man's tale, but wonders how the two are connected; he vaguely remembers seeing him as a child, growing up along Ruby Pier. The Blue Man explains that Eddie and his friends inadvertently killed him while playing a baseball game in the street — the Blue Man swerved to avoid hitting the children, which resulted in a heart attack. Eddie apologizes profusely and prepares to "pay" for his "sin" — but the Blue Man laughs and explains that he has no need for regret. He then teaches Eddie his lesson — all people are connected in some way, be it a close friendship or a simple bond. With this lesson passed on, the Blue Man moves on, his skin becoming "perfect" as Eddie is transported to his next stage of Heaven.

Eddie is transported to a war-torn battlefield, full of explosions and bones. He discovers a set of dog tags that bear his name, and painfully recalls his own war days, in the Philippines during World War II. A voice suddenly calls out to him — it is the Captain, Eddie's commanding officer and Second Person. The two talk, and Eddie remembers their horrid experiences. He and his men were captured by Japanese soldiers and held prisoner for some time; eventually, the group escaped and, in an act of retaliation, destroys the village that their enemies had built.
While burning the various huts to the ground, Eddie spotted a shadow in one of the buildings. He began to scream for whoever was inside the hut to emerge, nearly losing his mind after months of starvation and isolation. He pushed away his fellow soldiers as he prepared to enter the flaming hut. A sudden blast of pain in his leg stopped him from entering — this bullet wound warped Eddie's leg completely. The resulting depression and post-traumatic stress that this wound caused halted his life for a good deal of time, and he reveals that he never truly recovered spiritually or emotionally from the war.

The Captain reveals the truth of that night — it was he that shot Eddie to save his life. An enraged Eddie attacks the Captain viciously, until the officer reveals that while Eddie laid in the back of a convoy, unconscious, he stepped forward to look for more soldiers. The Captain accidentally stepped on a land mine, which killed him instantly. Eddie apologizes for his selfishness, but the Captain turns this into his lesson: sacrifice. He explains that all people make sacrifices and choices, and it is only the most painful of these choices that allows others to live. Eddie forgives the Captain, who reveals that his Heaven truly resembles an untouched Paradise before he, too, moves on.

Eddie is then taken to an isolated diner amidst snow-covered purple mountains. He notices that many of the restaurant's patrons have been injured, and that the man sitting in a corner booth is his father. He begins to scream out "Dad!", but a voice stops him. It is the voice of an elderly woman, who introduces herself by explaining her life. She was a waitress in a diner similar to the one before the pair, and reveals that she married a wealthy man named Emile who, in an act of love, built an amusement park for her to capture her youth forever. She is Ruby, the namesake of Ruby Pier. She has come to regret the park's existence, though, as it caught fire one night, burning almost everything to the ground. Emile's fortune was gone, and Ruby nursed him back to health, all the while wishing that her park had never been built.

As Ruby tells her tale, Eddie remembers his agonizing relationship with his father. The man was often drunk, and often hit Eddie and his brother Joe after bad nights. Eddie's father also never told his son that he loved or cared for him; the only praise Eddie ever received was when he fixed something broken on Ruby Pier. After the war, Eddie's father confused his son's depression and stress with weakness, and tried to abuse him again; Eddie resisted, and the two stopped speaking.

Ruby forces Eddie to confront the night that his father died. Mickey Shea, a maintenance worker at the pier and an alcoholic, had come to Eddie's home, drunk. While there, he tried to molest Eddie's mother. When Eddie's father arrived, Mickey ran into the rain-soaked night, eventually stumbling into the waters surrounding the pier. Though furious, Eddie's father dives into the ocean and saves Mickey; the resulting pneumonia killed him. Ruby explains that she knows this because Emile shared a hospital room with his father.

Ruby finally imparts her lesson on Eddie: anger is a terrible feeling that results in nothing but pain for all parties. She explains that her diner in Heaven is a reminder of a simpler time, and a haven for all those injured at Ruby Pier. She also urges Eddie to forgive his father, explaining that he cannot move on until he does so. Eddie confronts the old man, and breaks down emotionally as he utters two words: "It's fixed." Ruby nods to Eddie as she disappears into the night.

After leaving Ruby, Eddie moves through various wedding receptions in his next stage of heaven. At one of the weddings, he encounters a woman handing out chocolates “for the bitter and the sweet.” It is his wife, Marguerite. Eddie loved her from the moment they met, before the war broke out, and never cared for anyone as much as his wife. The two planned to adopt a child, as Marguerite was unable to bear them herself.

Marguerite explained that it is never easy to deal with the loss of a loved one, and nearly impossible to cope with the premature death of a spouse. Although life is finite, love is eternal, she says. Marguerite explains to Eddie that even after a loved one dies, the feeling of love lives on. In the absence of a physical connection, in heaven he finds himself in a sea of white, empty and silent. 
He hears the sounds of screaming children — the same sounds that have haunted his dreams ever since the day he escaped captivity in the Philippines. Upon investigating the source of these screams, he finds children playing peacefully in a river. They are screams of joy, not of horror. Amongst the children, he finds a young Filipino girl, Tala. It turns out that she was the shadow he saw in the burning hut. He was responsible for her death.
After hysterically screaming and sobbing, Eddie collapses before the little girl, who shares with him his final lesson. Eddie explains to her that he was sad because he feels as if he didn’t do anything meaningful with his life. To this, she responds by sharing with him his purpose on earth. “Children. You keep them safe. You make good for me. Is where you were supposed to be. Eddie Main-ten-ance.” (p. 191).

Before Eddie exits his final stage in heaven, Tala tells him that he did, in fact, successfully push the young girl to safety from the plummeting ride. Eddie is confused at first, telling Tala that he felt his arms pulling her, not pushing. It turns out that these arms belonged to Tala, who was pulling him into heaven, keeping him safe.

Eddie is then swept away and is brought back to the pier. He sees thousands of people, some dead, some yet to be born. They are all people whose lives Eddie had unknowingly saved by maintaining the park rides. Finally, he comes to a beautiful, young, Marguerite sitting on a Ferris wheel. He looks at the clouds forming into one word: Home.

The Pier returns as it did before after Eddie’s death. Dominguez carries on with Eddie's old maintenance job. Albom reiterates the idea that all lives are connected by revealing that the owner of the car key responsible for the ride malfunction, and in turn, Nicky is the great-grandson of Ruby. The girl Eddie saved, “Amy or Annie,” many years from now will see in her first stage in heaven as “a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and this world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.” (p. 196)


Characters (source Wikipedia):
Eddie
Since his days as a child, Ruby Pier was part of Eddie’s life. He played there every day as a child with his older brother and friends, and began working there as a teenager under the supervision of his father, who held Eddie’s position before his untimely death. After he returned from his stint in World War II he resumed his life at the pier, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Eddie underwent years of abuse from his father. It started with neglect, took a turn towards violence, and concluded with absolute silence. His father would beat him as a child in his drunken state, culminating one night shortly after Eddie returned from war. As his father took a swing at Eddie, drunk, Eddie resisted by grabbing his father’s fist, for which his father never spoke to him again. Eddie’s relationship with his parents became distant after that, living alone with his wife, Marguerite. A few years later, his father died of pneumonia. His mother did not react well, or even sanely. She seemed unable to cope with her husband’s death and entered a stage of denial, which necessitated Eddie’s permanent return to the apartment in which he grew up. From here he returned to working at the pier doing exactly what he was doing before he went off to war.

He lived the next few decades alone with Marguerite. They lived simply, their “deep but quiet” love (p. 156) getting them through the drudgery of their everyday life. Unfortunately, Marguerite could not bear children, prompting them to routinely discuss the prospect of adoption. Eddie’s standard response was “we’re too old.” Marguerite’s rebuttal was “what’s too old to a child?”
They enjoyed their marriage together without a hitch until Eddie’s 39th birthday, when they fought over the phone as Eddie called Marguerite from the track to tell her of his winnings. To reconcile, Marguerite decided to drive to the track and apologize. But, along the way, she was involved in a gruesome car crash that landed her in the hospital for several months. After she was released, doctors found that she had a brain tumor. Marguerite died a few years later.

Eddie lived the rest of his life in remote solitude, keeping his job at Ruby Pier to keep him busy. He hobbled around the pier on his titanium-filled knee, a constant reminder of his time spent fighting in World War II. It is here that he meets his ultimate end, and the reader follows him throughout his exploration of the afterlife.




The Blue Man
As a young boy, Eddie spent many summer days playing with his friends and older brother at Ruby Pier. While playing catch with his friends one afternoon, the baseball Eddie received for his most recent birthday is inadvertently thrown into the street. As Eddie scampers to retrieve it, he steps in front of a car. The driver, in a panic, swerves and narrowly avoids collision with one car then veers into an alley and crashes into the back of another car resulting in his death. Eddie escapes without a scratch.

In Eddie’s first stop in heaven, it is revealed that this was “The Blue Man,” or Joseph Corvelzchik. Joseph lived his life as an attraction in a freak show at Ruby Pier. He emigrated from Poland in 1894, and, like most immigrants of the time, struggled to get by financially. At the age of 10 he took a job working in a sweatshop sewing buttons onto coats. His father always told him to avoid eye contact with the foreman and to remain unnoticed. But, one day, he spills a pile of buttons all over the floor right in front of the foreman, who tells him that he is useless and must go. As his father pleads with the foreman to let him stay, Joseph soils himself in front of the foreman, his father, and the entire industry.
His father never forgave him. As the years passed, his nervousness and incontinence persisted, further humiliating him and disappointing his father. In an act of desperation, Joseph resorted to a primitive medicinal measure — drinking silver nitrate. As this, later considered to be poison, did not cure him of his ailments, he assumed he was not taking a high enough dosage. As he continued to ingest more and more silver nitrate, his skin began to change color (which he remedied by taking more silver nitrate), until eventually he was completely blue. He was left jobless after being fired from the sweatshop for scaring other workers. Eventually he found refuge with a group of carnival men, and his life as a “commodity” had begun. After traveling from carnival to carnival, he found permanent employment at Ruby Pier, where he was referred to as the best freak in the entire show. He lived above a sausage shop, playing cards at night with fellow circus performers and even occasionally Eddie’s father, earning his living by sitting in a cage all day, half dressed, as people walked by and stared in shock, awe, and sometimes, disgust.


He explains that when Eddie retrieved his ball from the street, although he was quite safe and sound, the Blue man wasn't. Eddie had given him a heart attack when he was driving due to a sudden halt and the Blue man was not mad at Eddie because of this, which confused Eddie. The Blue Man then taught Eddie his first lesson, that we are all somehow or another connected. Everything that we do affects what will happen to another. The Blue Man then tells him "Strangers are family you have yet to come to know", meaning that although they never met, what Eddie did affected his life from then on.
The Blue Man taught Eddie the following lesson: "There are no random acts; we are all connected."




The Captain
When Eddie was shipped off to the Philippines during World War II, “The Captain” became Eddie’s commanding officer. He was a few years older than Eddie and his fellow men and had spent his life in the military, as did three generations of his family before him. His stern demeanor and quick temper were his most noticeable attributes. He made a promise to his men: no man gets left behind.

The Captain is the second person Eddie meets in heaven. Here, it is revealed that he was the one who shot Eddie in the leg, crippling him for life. However, unbeknownst to Eddie, the captain was actually saving his life, as Eddie was about to run into a burning hut, thinking he saw the shape of a small child burning in the ruins. Shortly after saving Eddie, the captain steps on a land mine and is killed. His lesson was about sacrifices.
The Captain has taught Eddie the following lesson: "Sacrifice is the noblest thing you can do."



Ruby
As a young girl, Ruby worked at the Seaside Diner, a small diner neighboring what would become Ruby Pier that Eddie used to frequent before it was torn down years ago. She was a beauty back in those days, and as such turned down many men until a young businessman, Emile, sat down in her diner. Ruby did not have much money growing up, and as such was blown away by Emile’s monetary whimsicality. After sufficient courtship, Emile proposed to Ruby and she gleefully accepted. To capture her eternal youth and the everlasting happiness their marriage would undergo, Emile built an amusement park in her name: Ruby Pier.

Ruby, the third person he meets, goes on to tell Eddie about the near-complete destruction of Ruby Pier. For Independence Day, Emile hired extra workers and utilized fireworks to draw extra customers. However, some of the “roustabouts” were drinking one night and began setting off fireworks, causing a fire that almost burned the entire pier to the ground. In a frantic attempt to save his life’s work, Emile tried to extinguish the fire with buckets of water, and in the process was critically injured and ended up in the same hospital room with Eddie’s father. Because of this, she is able to recount to him his father’s final living moments to him. Ruby helps Eddie understand the importance of forgiveness.




Marguerite
Eddie met his wife, Marguerite, right before his 17th birthday. Having met her only once, he ran home to his older brother and proclaimed that one day she would be his wife. Although premature, this prediction turned out to be accurate. They wedded on the Christmas Eve following his return from the war, on the second floor of Sammy’s, a small Chinese restaurant. It was a simple wedding. Eddie used what little money he had from the army on their food (roasted chicken with Chinese vegetables) and entertainment (a man with an accordion).They had a happy, loving marriage even though they could not have children. They were planning to adopt a child until the events of Eddie's 39th birthday. That day he won $800 at the track and called Marguerite to tell her the good news. However, she did not respond positively. Out of spite Eddie put all his winnings on the next race. Marguerite attempted to drive to the track to apologize for yelling at him on his birthday and to convince him to stop betting. On her way there, a couple of drunken kids dropped whiskey bottles off the freeway that landed on her car. This caused her to get in a car crash that lacerated her liver and broke her arm. The cost of the medical bills and her health issues made them ineligible to adopt.

After that tragic event, Eddie and Marguerite's marriage changed. They often sat in silence that was permeated by sullen tension. As time passed, however, they were eventually able to overcome their emotional disconnection and became loving companions once again. However, only a few years later, Marguerite died of a brain tumor. She was the fourth person Eddie met.
Marguerite teaches Eddie that, even though she had died, their love never went away; it just took a different form. Until Marguerite teaches him this, Eddie had felt as though she had been taken from him too early and that their love was torn to pieces.




Tala
During the war, Eddie was held captive in the Philippines by a troop of Japanese soldiers. After he and his fellow captives were able to escape, he set fire to their barracks. As he watched a straw hut burn to the ground, he thought he saw the shape of a small child inside and thought he heard screaming. Unsure if what he saw was real or a hallucination, he tried to run into the burning hut to save the child but was stopped, shot in the leg by his captain, thus saving Eddie's life.
Eddie later finds out in the book that he was, in fact, not hallucinating. He finds out that the child's name was Tala and she explained to him that the hands he felt on his own were not Annie's but hers, guiding him to heaven. He arrived in 'her' heaven, and he had heard screams and terrible noises (as form his terrible dreams) and Eddie walked to the top of a hill to find a lush area near a river where he saw children screaming and playing, having fun, that was the noise of his dreams. Then he saw Tala, showing him to come down the hill, he suddenly appeared at the bottom of the hill and she said hi, but then Eddie had noticed that there was not an adult in sight or even a teenager! Then once Tala and Eddie had talked, Tala had forgiven Eddie, but she told him to "wash" her of the burns. When he rubbed a wet rock up and down on her burns, they disappeared. Tala then told Eddie that his job and his life kept children safe from harm.