Left Behind, the Movie, Part 1

eThe novel Left Behind begins truly in medias res. It opens on a plane, minutes before the rapture. According to Fred Clark, we get about 15 pages of expository flashback to about the main characters, Rayford Steele the pilot and Buck Williams the greatest investigative reporter of all time (GIRAT, Clark calls him) before the rapture hits. The movie has to start a little further back because the technique does not work so well in movies as in books. Consider Rayford. He is thinking about how his marriage is on the rocks because his wife has become a born again Christian and he has not, so he has taken refuge in flirtation (but nothing physical) with flight attendant Hattie Durham. That works as an expository flashback in a novel, but really has to be shown in a movie. And then there's Buck Williams. Aside from learning he is GIRAT, we also learn that Israel has become the world's bread basket thanks to a magic fertilizer developed by biologist Chaim Rosensweig, peace and plenty reigned throughout the Middle East until Russia dumped its entire nuclear arsenal on Israel, but don't worry, a miraculous firestorm hit, and all the missiles and planes crashed to the ground without killing or hurting a single person.* Hm. That doesn't work too well as an expository flashback even in a novel, much less a movie.

So that is where our movie begins. Please pardon my using links instead of videos; I haven't figured out how to link videos. Also, Clark linked to a version that broke the movie into eleven parts. Mine has two, so the lineups won't be the same. I will follow Fred Clark's version both to match his commentary and because that was how I first saw it.

The movie begins with a global earth with the sun coming up over it and Buck Williams (played, Fred informs us, by Kirk Cameron, a genuine PMD Christian) saying, "How do you describe both a beginning and an end? We should have known better, but we didn't. What does it matter what we think we know? In the end, there's no denying the truth." That sounds profound, but what does it actually mean? Presumably it refers to the Rapture. Next we get the credits, against a backdrop of Jerusalem, both the architecture and bustling street scenes. Life goes on. But once the credits are over things turn sinister. We see that while the Israelis are carrying on their daily lives, their Arab neighbors are massing planes and tanks, preparing to attack.**

The actual movie begins with Buck as a reporter for Global News Network (GNN) being filmed in the middle of a wheat field, saying that with the worst food shortage in history, this formula may offer a ray of hope. In the novel, Buck is a reporter for the new magazine Global Weekly. Clark remarks that really the story works better with him as a TV reporter, and I agree. In those few short lines, the movie has conveyed some important information -- there is a terrible world-wide food shortage, and Israeli scientist Chaim Rosensweig has a fertilizer that may resolve it. Buck asks who he will sell it to in light of the recent crop failures. Rosensweig says, "Eden [the name of the formula] is not for sale, not for money. All I want is peace for Israel."

Clearly Rosensweig is a good guy, but there are serious ethical implications about refusing to sell your magic fertilizer when people all over the world are starving. We do not, however, get much chance to ponder them, because right then the planes attack. With shells exploding everywhere, Buck, Rosensweig and the cameramen run to take cover in a ramshackle old building. Buck helps the old man along and makes sure Rosensweig and the cameramen get inside. He is going to stay out, but an Israeli soldier drags him in.

And it turns out the old building was just cover. Underneath it is the Israeli strategic air command. (Fred points out that this is decidely odd. I don't know if I would have noticed it on my own). The Israelis frantically attempt to scramble their planes and fire their missiles, but everything jams. Rosensweig prepares for the worst. And then the radar shows all the enemy planes are blowing up. Everyone is baffled. Rosensweig is sure it is it must be a cruel trick. Buck says, "Only one way to find out" and shows his heroic nature by grabbing a camera and single-handedly running out to see what is going on.

Outside the planes are bursting into flames and crashing. The sky has turned black. (As Buck remarks, "The sun is gone.") Supposedly, this fulfills a prophecy somewhere in Ezekiel Chapter 38 or 39 that say the enemies will be so numerous as to blot out the sun. Reading over those chapters, I did not see any such prophecy, although it did say they would be like "a cloud on the land." In any event, I could only think of it from a post-9-11 perspective (the movie is pre-9-11). We now know that with enough smoke in the air, the sky will turn pitch black on a cloudless day.

Anyhow, Buck picks up a camera and points it at himself and the sky and broadcasts what he is seeing. Meanwhile, back home, people in the newsroom are gathering around watching him in worshipful awe. "He would have filmed Hiroshima at ground zero if he'd been there," says one admirer. (Someone in the comments section remarks that that would have been a very short and not very informative film). Another says, "Yeah, that's our Buck." We also get a focus on a mysterious woman with a sort of diamond on her forehead who seems very anxious about Buck's fate. Little romance there, maybe?

Just as the explosions and fire are dying down and Buck is beginning to relax, thinking the worst is over, a mysterious old man in a long robe and beard appears and says, in a strangely flat, expressionless voice, "The war will continue until the end. Desolations have been decreed. You will confirm a covenant with many for seven years." He turns around and walks away through the ruins, with erie music playing. Fred Clark says this is from the book of Daniel. I didn't know that. Neither does Buck. But the eerie music clearly reflects an eerie feeling he has that what we are witnessing now is not the end, but only the beginning.

See Fred Clark's review by way of comparison.

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*And Buck is the only person to recognize this as a miracle. Supposedly it fulfills millenia old prophecies in Ezekiel, Chapters 38 and 39. However, the original Left Behind was written in 1995, only a few years after the Gulf War. During the war, Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles against Israel. The Scuds mostly fell in empty fields and did remarkably little damage. My guess is that LaHaye and jenkins (the authors) saw this as an obvious miracle showing God's favoritism toward Israel. My guess is that they were annoyed at other people for simply concluding that Scuds were duds, and that this influenced them when they wrote their book.

**This varies from the original , in which it was Russia that attacked. This apparently is an interpretation of the same chapters in Ezekiel, which refer to an attack by "Magog," described as a power from the remote north. Interestingly, this interpretation apparently goes back to the Scofield Reference Bible, which dates back to 1909, before nuclear weapons or even Communism. But Russia was having major pogroms against the Jews at the time. The novel was written in 1995, when the Cold War was over, but recent and a lot of people felt sort of nostalgic for it. The movie, by constrast, came out in 2000, when no one cared about the Cold War anymore.