Left Behind
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Left Behind, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
On a light-night flight to London, pilot Rayford Steele and intrepid journalist Buck Williams witness one of the strangest events in human history; a number of passengers just disappear from the plane, leaving behind clothes, rings, and panicky co-passengers. While flight attendant Hattie Durham attempts to keep the calm, Ray radios the ground and discovers the same thing has happened everywhere- people are vanishing. No one knows why. But Ray suspects something, and if his suspicions are correct, he will return home to find his wife and son missing as well…
Capsule review: Left Behind sucks.
Slightly longer capsule review: Left Behind really sucks.
Full-length review (with brief autobiographical introduction):
I decided I was a writer when I was eleven, and since then, I’ve spent a hell of lot of time trying not to suck at it. I don’t think I’m good yet- aw hell, let’s be honest, I think I’m damn good. But maybe not as good as I could be. I don’t know what that means, though. I don’t know if I’m pushing myself towards a, for me, unreachable goal, or if striving and reaching drives me in a direction I could not go otherwise. Would anybody else care if I wasn’t near perfect? And, perhaps more importantly, will it have any effect on my ever getting published?
Gosh, what a fool I am. Left Behind has shown me the light. You don’t need talent to write, or respect for the genre your working in, or believable characters, or even a forward moving plot. You just need to mix some clichés and bland Christian theosophy into a big bowl, find a publisher desperate enough to print mass quantities of your ramblings, and sit back and wait for the accolades to roll in.
I should have known from the beginning I was in trouble. I mean, I suspected the book wouldn’t be great, but I told myself that if it’s sold so many copies (“300,000 copies of the series in print!”), it can’t be all bad. There could be some fun stuff in the “Anti-christ versus the world” parts.
Not really. It’s taken me two weeks and over four hundred pages worth of bland, unconvincing prose to be able to say definitively: there’s not much fun stuff in this book at all.
Never had I imagined that the Rapture could be so friggin dull. There are a couple of exciting scenes in the novel- no, wait, let’s be exact here. There are precisely two exciting scenes in the novel. The first is at the beginning. The second is at the end. In between is a vast wasteland of repetitive, pointless action and unconvincing spiritual conquests. Clearly, the action is supposed to keep us interested so the more “serious” parts will be easier to take. The problem being, the whole conspiracy plotline is unconvincing and childish, the sort of thing Robert Ludlum might write if he were five years old and had spent three months sniffing glue. It’s better than the straight religious sections, but not so much better that you don’t notice the holes on either side.
We open with the passengers disappearing mid-flight, and while the moment is more than a little reminiscent of other, better stories (“The Langoliers” springs to mind…), it’s still well-handled enough to be mildly entertaining. Once Rayford Steele (get used to hearing the full name of any major characters; as if afraid we would forget them, the narrative keeps repeating them) gets his plane back on the ground, he makes his way home, while Buck Williams tries to get to New York to contact his paper. The chaos here is believable and wide-spread; I particularly liked the bit where Ray and his daughter Chloe watch a group of cranes taking cars out of a jammed parking garage.
The problem is, once the chaos is established, the plot goes into idle-mode, where it stays for much of the remainder of the novel. We see Ray wandering around his house, missing his wife. We watch Buck e-mailing people. Ray is conflicted. Buck talks to his editor. Ray is upset. Buck talks to his contacts. And so on. Buck begins investigating a secret conspiracy, flying over to London to investigate the death of a friend, and almost getting killed himself; but while stuff clearly happens to him (even a car bombing), it never gets out of the realm of exposition/foreshadowing. We’re supposed to be worried, we get told over and over. There’s a bunch of people planning dark, evil things. But when they can’t even manage to off one lousy reporter, I’m not impressed.
Still, it was better than the Rayford plot. He is on the “serious” side of the storyline, and while it isn’t always painful, it is very, very dull. I’m not a Christian, or committed to any particular religious faith, but I find it hard to believe that anyone would be seriously gripped by Ray’s transformation. For one thing, it’s not as if he even undergoes a change of thought- the impression one gets of his character is not of an atheist (or agnostic) by choice, but of a man who is too spiritually lazy to give himself up to what he believes in his heart to be true. I suppose it makes his rapid more turn around more convincing if the seeds of conversion are already pre-planted, but it doesn’t make for a drama of conflict. Once the events in the novel begin to unfold, he doesn’t have much of a choice to do anything but become a believer.
Which is the major problem with the religious aspects of the plot (aside from the aching dullness). I thought, going in, that the purpose of this novel was to try and convert people to the Christian faith. Maybe it is, but how can you be personally affected by a story where the dice are so obviously loaded to one side? After all, this is a world where clear proof of God exists. The Rapture has happened; pretend all you like that there are other reasons, but when the majority of the Christian population of the world disappears one night in a manner exactly described in the Bible, it’s pretty damn obvious what happened. People “giving themselves to Christ” in such a situation aren’t trying to fill some sort of void in their lives with God- they’re accepting reality. Since we live in a Rapture-less world, why should we follow in their footsteps?
With the both plots as mediocre as they are, and with the supposedly spiritual aspect of the story being as deeply shallow (heh) as it is, one must look to other places for entertainment. And while for the most part, the authors maintain a level of political correctness that gives the proceedings a rice-cake tastelessness, there are a few moments where the underlying convictions shine through; one favorite of mine is a scene where Hattie tells Ray about her friend Mary who works in an abortion clinic. The world lost all of its children (I think child is defined here as ten and under) in the disappearances, and as a consequence, there are no more unwanted fetuses. Which makes Mary and her coworkers depressed because they can’t do abortions any more, and they’re all out of jobs.
Putting aside that it’s doubtful any clinic in the country would specialize in abortions only, the idea that the folks who perform such duties do it purely for the money, and enjoy the work, is hideous. It’s like assuming all Pro-life folks are mongoloid idiots- it prevents the possibility for rational debate by pre-negating anything the other side would say. Because of course, if a person is so horrible as to want to kill unborn children, they can’t possibly be a decent human being or have any strong moral convictions, so why bother listening to them?
This complete disregard for opposing viewpoints can be seen in another telling moment in the story; and while it’s subtler than the one above, it speaks volumes about the authors’ intentions. Once Ray joins up with the local church, he makes fast friends with Pastor Bruce Barnes, and Barnes invites him to be a part of a special, uber-group within the church community: the folks who he thinks are charismatic and committed enough to help lead the others through the dark times ahead. Ray is, of course, enthusiastic (after giving himself to the Lord, Ray spends the rest of the novel in a state not unlike an infatuated teenager; every conversation, every thought, every aspect of his life, is overwhelmed with his desire to be more involved with God, and his attempts to pull the unconverted over to the side of the righteous), but Bruce warns him that his first duty will be to meet with the skeptics and cynics and deal with their questions. Ray is willing, and asks his daughter Chloe to accompany him.
This woke me up a little; ah, I thought, here we’ll get to it, here we’ll see some discussion- and even if it’s heavy-handed, it’ll at least be more interesting than Ray trying to beat his daughter to death with his beliefs.
I was wrong. We never see the meeting, never hear another mention of it, never get any idea of what is discussed. The only non-Christian point of view that’s given in the novel is Chloe’s, and it’s a pretty-half hearted one at that; one gets the feeling she’s reacting more to her dad’s sermonizing than any personal convictions. Which is the point. The authors don’t intend to give any real story time to any beliefs but their own; if it’s not in agreement with their small-minded, tunnel vision ideals, than it’s either belittled or ignored completely, and while the first method is amusingly crude (maybe other people would get offended by the abortion clinic bit; to me, it was so childish and clumsy that I couldn’t help laughing), the second is creepy in its innocuousness. A brief Amazon search on Jerry Jenkins reveals he co-authored a book called The Art of Verbal Judo; which should give you an idea on his approach to evangelizing.
I could go on. And on, and on, about this. Nothing irritates me more than someone trying to force me to believe something, and that’s exactly what this novel, in its inept and idiotic manner, tries to do. What we have here is an attempt at giving genre escapism with a message to an audience that either demands more entertainment from it’s escapism to be much interested, or is already so enamored of the message that any further attempts to bring them over are unnecessary.
If this novel had been willing to follow through on its central premise, if it had made an attempt to fully exploit the potentials that lie at the heart of that premise, I may not have loved it, but I wouldn’t have been as contemptuous as I am. The prose is terrible, but I’ve read that before; the dialogue is unfortunate, but I’ve read that too; what gets me so riled up is the sheer lack of respect or interest in the genre these writers show. They aren’t here to tell us an exciting story. They are here to distract us with a mediocre story while they shove our heads full of mindless Pro-Christian propaganda.
Y’know what? I’ve known some damn smart Christians in my life. I wish I was in contact with more of them right now, because they could probably beat this book to death far more effectively than I.
SCREEN:
Buy this!
Left Behind, directed by Victor Sarin
While covering a story in Israel, Buck Williams (Kirk Cameron) is witness to a miracle; a massive military strike against the country is prevented when the attacking enemy planes and tanks begin to explode, without Israeli army firing a single shot. When Buck goes out into the open air to get a better look, he meets an old man who tells him this has all been prophesized, and that a great change is coming. Meanwhile, Rayford Steele (Bradford Johnson) leaves home to pilot a flight to London, against his wife’s disappointed objections: it’s their son’s birthday, and one gets the feeling this isn’t the first time Ray has missed a family event. Everything is about to change for the worst, however, because that night, while flying over the US, something strange happens; over a third of the plane’s passengers vanish in mid-air, with only their clothes and personal belongings left to indicate they were ever there at all. Ray tries to find answers, while Buck (also on board the flight) helps Hattie Durham (Chelsea Noble) to calm down those still remaining…
Essentially an hour and a half long “Touched by an Angel” episode with some explosions thrown in, there is very little to distinguish Left Behind from any of the hundreds of pot-boiler DTV thrillers churned out each year. We have a washed-up former star in a lead role (Kirk Cameron), a meager CGI budget that’s used up in the first five minutes, and a plot that could have been worked up by anyone with more than five minutes worth of Sunday School lessons floating around in the back of their heads. The only distinguishing marks are its absolute seriousness about its topic, and its half-hearted attempt to mix television style proselytizing (warm lighting, thickly swelling violin stings at “important” moments) with political espionage, with less than stellar results.
The acting is, on the whole, competent if not remarkable. Cameron gives his best, and while he’s not entirely convincing as a supposedly world-wise cynical reporter, I’d say that’s more the fault of the script than anything else. The nicest thing that one can about Bradford Johnson is that he looks like a Rayford Steele; I’m not sure how nice that is, though, when you consider how much “Rayford Steele” sounds like the name of a porn star. Clarence Gilyard plays the Reverend Bruce Barnes, who is left behind with the rest because his faith is not pure. Why it isn’t pure, we never get told. We do see Clarence have a breakdown in his church, frustrated at himself for his insincerity and yelling at God for seeing through him. Gilyard seems in his element here, which makes sense when one takes into account his other big acting job: playing sidekick to the non-presence that kicks, Chuck Norris. Clearly, he’s experienced being alone on camera.
I could list the rest of the cast, but honestly, nobody is so good as to stand out, or so bad as to be worth mentioning. The problem is there’s not much else here to talk about. The special effects are horrible, but the only big effects sequence is the opening attack and defense of Israel. The giggles you get from the obviously miniature tanks rumbling across the desert won’t last you the remaining 90 or so minutes.
The conspiracy is a hoot, though. Dirk Burton (Jack Langedijk) is the dumbest stool pigeon I’ve ever seen- he tells Buck on a cell phone line (!) to meet him at “the usual place.” So, you’re giving out top secret hush-hush they’ll kill you if they find out information, and you have a “usual place” to do it in? Cause god knows, nobody would every try and track you down…
Dick ain’t the only deck short a few cards, though. Neither of the two major bad-guy players, Jonathan Stonengal (Daniel Pilon) and Joshua Todd-Cothran (Anthony DeSantis), seem to grasp the concept of “behind-the-scenes” manipulations. The two men are more than willing to appear in public at UN meetings, even going so far as to shake the hand of their main pawn live on cable television. Sheesh. (The television network, by the way, is the same news organization that Buck works for: GNN. How long did it take them to come up with that, I wonder? Three, four seconds?) When they meet their fates at the film’s conclusion, it’s less a shocking power reversal than an inevitability: Darwinism at work, folks.
The major difference that sets Left Behind apart from most DTV crap is its attempt at a religious message. But even that’s not so remarkable, because a quick search on IMDB yields a dozen pre-millennial video potboilers with God playing a background role. I haven’t seen any of the others, but if Left Behind is any indicator, the Lord has his work cut out for him. I can’t imagine anyone watching this movie and being inspired to the Christian faith, unless they have a strong need in their lives for bland homilies and track lighting. There’s nothing we’re shown here that you haven’t seen before, and there’s no real attempt made to convince people with opposing viewpoints to come around to their side. It’s like a video intended for viewing in small town Sunday School classes somehow escaped to the outside world; with no context for any of the beliefs on display, there’s no emotional connection, no matter how loud the violins play.
There’s one moment in this entire movie that’s done well; and it happens fairly early on, so I can share it without worrying about spoilage. After a moderately uncomfortable scene between Ray and Hattie aboard a late night flight, we cut to an elderly woman sleeping in a window seat. The camera pulls back slowly, and we see that the chair beside her is empty.
Or is it? Empty wouldn’t be a problem, it’s a red-eye, they aren’t always full-up. Only what we see in that seat is a problem, and unless it gets explained damn quick, it will be a very big problem, because- they’re just an empty set of clothes. Somebody’s pants and shirt. And who takes off their pants and shirt on an airplane 50,000 feet above the earth?
It’s a small sequence, very neat, very even-handed. There’s no flashing lights or explosions, no booming voice saying, “ALL THOSE WHO BELIEVE SHALL COME UNTO ME.” Just the sleeping woman and the empty suit of clothes.
It’s the only effective moment in a movie filled with dead time. Savor it will while it lasts.
COMPARE/CONTRAST:
Expecting that anyone passionate enough about the original novel to make a movie out of it would treat the original as holy writ, I was surprised to find that there were a substantial number of changes made between source and screen. While none of these changes go far enough to make the story interesting, involving or honest, they at least manage to shave off the more awkward and clumsy sections, and make things run a bit more smoothly.
Instead of starting blank aboard the flight with Ray and Buck, we see Buck’s trip to Israel, and the attack by the Russians- interestingly, the fact that it is the Russians is down played, if mentioned at all. Opening with the attack serves the purpose of grabbing the viewer’s interest immediately with an action sequence; or, at least, that’s what I think the intention is. That the effects work doesn’t quite live up to that intention is probably due more to budgetary constraints than anything else.
After we finish with Buck, we see Ray at home, getting ready to leave for work. Immediately, the film sets up Ray as a mediocre father, who shirks his family responsibilities for his job; we hear him telling his daughter Chloe, when she accuses him of deserting his wife and son, that he’s “uncomfortable” with all her religious talk, and he just knows that if he stays for the son’s birthday party, he’s going to have a bad time of it.
In the book, Ray’s difficulties are told to us through his perspective after the fact, when he’s berating himself for not listening to his wife when she was still around. In the movie, seeing this in action gives us a clearer sense of his problems, and makes them less about survivor’s guilt. While I still have issues with the scene on a moral level (in a good movie, Ray’s uncomfortable-ness with his wife’s religious devotion would be presented fairly, as a very natural and honest response to fanaticism, even if not exactly a polite one; here, it’s just used as further proof that he’s a sinning, irresponsible meathead who needs to come to the Light), I can appreciate it on pure story-telling grounds as being superior to the novel’s heavy-handed exposition. After all, I had to at least think a little to figure out what was going on. The book rubbed my nose in the issues so often it’s like they’re written in bright, thick neon.
Character relationships are also streamlined; instead of Hattie and Buck meeting for the first time during the crisis, we find that they have a history, with Buck even helping Hattie to get a job at the UN. Also, Buck gets to know Ray much quicker than in the novel, actually coming with him to his house after the disappearances and sleeping on his couch while Ray grieves over the loss of his wife and son. It’s a matter of preference which method you like: while the movie version makes sense, the long time you have to wait before the main characters’ stories meet up in the novel makes it far more apparent that something important is happening when they do finally run into one another.
One area where the movie makes a very clear jump ahead of the book is in the climactic revelation of the identity of the Anti-Christ. In the novel, you can figure out who the main bad guy is as soon as you hear him mentioned; other than the Rapture itself, his is the only plot-line that gets much time devoted to it, and the attempt further in to present red herrings, to make it more of a shock when the villain is revealed, wouldn’t convince anyone who’s ever seen a movie or read a book before. In the film, however, the AC’s presence is far more subdued: he’s connected to the conspiracy, and we keep seeing him around Todd-Cothran and Stonengahl, but he’s so low key that his eventual unveiling as the supreme evil is actually unexpected. I already knew who was who from reading the book (and, let’s be honest, while it’s not as blatant as a park ranger named Asmodeus, calling your bad guy Nicholae Carpathia is at least a little suspicious), but I enjoyed the handling of his character, and can at least imagine a situation where his unveiling would be a surprise.
Sadly, the religious aspects of either story are handled much the same way. The movie somehow manages to be even simpler about matters of faith than the novel- Chloe’s conversion, a character transition which takes about two hundred pages of book time, here happens after a conversation or two with her father, culminating in her taking a Bible out of the closet and reading a few pages. After that, there’s no mention made again of her spiritual difficulties; which seems sort of cheap to me, but hey, if it makes things go quicker, I’m all for it.
The viewpoint both the book and the movie share on the Christian faith is nicely exemplified by two scenes in the film, which happen one right on top of the other. Hattie comes by the Steele residence to see Ray, after Ray has been born again, and they have an uncomfortable conversation about their clumsy attempts at an affair. Ray apologies for his impure desires, and tells Hattie that he’s finally found the answers. “All my life I spent searching, when all I really needed was here,” he tells her, thrusting the Bible in his hands forward, “with this and my family.” (These aren’t direct quotes, understand; it’s close, but I returned my copy of the movie to Blockbuster a few days ago. I already gave up four bucks to see it, and I had no interest in getting fined for keeping it late.)
Hattie is nonplussed, and leaves soon after. When Ray finds Chloe (Janaya Stephens) eavesdropped on their conversation, he apologizes to her as well, and then they start talking about God and so such. Chloe says something along the lines of, “All these people ended up in Hell, for what?” The best Ray can respond with is, “It’s not about Hell, Chloe,” followed by a childish and unconvincing pep-talk on God’s love.
Like the novel bringing up then rapidly discarding the possibility of skeptics and people who might not like a God who demands such mindless, cult-like devotion, we see the same inept attempt at “arguing” with someone who doesn’t agree by either side-stepping their concerns, or presenting them in a naïve, easy to ignore manner. It’s a lot like the way religion is handled in big budget filming, by presenting anyone with strong spiritual convictions as a complete psychotic; frankly, I’m not sure which method is more distasteful. Probably I’m going to have less of an issue when the story in question supports my viewpoint, but even I get uncomfortable when anyone with even the slightest need for God in their life is presented as weak or foolish.
Like most complex issues, it seems these days that nobody wants to present religion on film in anything but the easiest Day-Glo colors: in the Anti-God camp, all Christians are Pro-life morons who own too many guns and still think fire is a nifty idea; while in the Pro-God camp, all atheists are immature intellectuals without any feelings, or pouting adults who’s refusal to believe is more a childish desire to rebel against a wiser being than any sort of chosen stance. The extremists on neither side want to accept the difficult, frightening idea that many of the people who disagree with you are just as smart and passionate as you are, if not more so; it’s far easier to ignore such quieter, more reasonable folks in favor of the louder, dismissible ones.
All spiritual concerns aside, Left Behind is not very good. It might appeal to someone vastly unfamiliar with the thriller genre, but even that’s doubtful- the plot moves so slow in the novel that anyone who isn’t used to reading longer books will give up in despair pretty quickly, and while the movie has the advantage of a vastly shortened running time, it’s not exactly remarkable.
And yet, as the opening credits of the movie remind us, Left Behind is a Best-Selling Novel, so clearly, somebody out there is buying. If you are a fan, and were satisfied by the low-level theatrics and hollow sermons, maybe you’re seeing something I missed. More power to yah- but might I suggest risking your eternal soul by reading some other books? Try a few G.K. Chesterson novels, or maybe the Space trilogy by C.S. Lewis. Both men are deeply committed Christians, and are not ashamed to discuss issues of faith in their work; and both have a far clearer grasp on story values than Jenkins or LeHaye, and, I suspect, a great deal more respect for their audiences.
SOURCE:
SCREEN: Q.5
Man, I bet the wrap party on this one rocked.
