Impure Thoughts
Original post date: 2 June 1987
Rating: ✭✭✰✰
What if you were Catholic and you died and it turned out all those things the Church had told you were true? This is sort of the premise of this U.S. film. Four men at different stages of their lives find themselves dead and in purgatory. The group includes a marine killed in Vietnam, a gay writer who took too many painkillers, an unscrupulous businessman who chokes on a fishbone at a banquet in his honor, and a dogmatic sort who has a heart attack while playing football with his friends. Turns out they all were friends at St. Jude’s Catholic High School in the 1960s. There are lots of flashbacks as they try to figure out why they all wound up together in purgatory. Refreshingly, the actors who play them as teenagers are all really teenagers (as opposed to being in their 20s, as is usually the case in movies). There are plenty of good jabs at the church and at nuns and many other funny moments. At a school dance a stern nun walks around the floor placing a ruler between dancing couples, admonishing, “Six inches! Six inches! Leave room between you for the Holy Ghost!” In another scene, a guy, parked in a convertible with his girlfriend, argues that touching her breast is only a mortal sin if he puts his hand under her sweater. But this movie doesn’t exist merely to ridicule the Catholic Church. It gives an idea of what it is like to be Catholic in America and touches on the prejudice that Catholics have been subject to in a mainly Protestant country. When the four men finally hit on the one event they shared that put them in purgatory (they sneaked a sip from the communion wine when the priest wasn’t around), it turns out that their sin coincides exactly with the assassination of President Kennedy. When they achieve awareness of the moment when innocence was lost, they disappear one by one from purgatory. What is not clear is whether they have gone to heaven, to hell, or if they simply woke up.
Rating: ✭✭✰✰
What if you were Catholic and you died and it turned out all those things the Church had told you were true? This is sort of the premise of this U.S. film. Four men at different stages of their lives find themselves dead and in purgatory. The group includes a marine killed in Vietnam, a gay writer who took too many painkillers, an unscrupulous businessman who chokes on a fishbone at a banquet in his honor, and a dogmatic sort who has a heart attack while playing football with his friends. Turns out they all were friends at St. Jude’s Catholic High School in the 1960s. There are lots of flashbacks as they try to figure out why they all wound up together in purgatory. Refreshingly, the actors who play them as teenagers are all really teenagers (as opposed to being in their 20s, as is usually the case in movies). There are plenty of good jabs at the church and at nuns and many other funny moments. At a school dance a stern nun walks around the floor placing a ruler between dancing couples, admonishing, “Six inches! Six inches! Leave room between you for the Holy Ghost!” In another scene, a guy, parked in a convertible with his girlfriend, argues that touching her breast is only a mortal sin if he puts his hand under her sweater. But this movie doesn’t exist merely to ridicule the Catholic Church. It gives an idea of what it is like to be Catholic in America and touches on the prejudice that Catholics have been subject to in a mainly Protestant country. When the four men finally hit on the one event they shared that put them in purgatory (they sneaked a sip from the communion wine when the priest wasn’t around), it turns out that their sin coincides exactly with the assassination of President Kennedy. When they achieve awareness of the moment when innocence was lost, they disappear one by one from purgatory. What is not clear is whether they have gone to heaven, to hell, or if they simply woke up.
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