Heaven

By the early 1980s, having firmly established herself as one of the most influential performers of the New Hollywood generation, Keaton turned her attention to other areas of artistic practice, drawing on an early interest in photography and collage to embark on a series of projects behind the camera. In 1987, she directed her first feature film: 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.