As Good As It Gets

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Ed Harris and Anne Heche display fabulous performances in The Third Miracle, and this, instead of the plot and storyline, made the movie. What the film and possibly Catholic dogmatics err on is their failure to acknowledge the very scriptural definition of "faith" (Hebrews 11:1). Faith should not at all be based on signs and miracles, even though Jesus and God often employed visible miracles. However, miracles are employed not to bring faith, but to authenticate divinity before unbelievers. Faith only comes from hearing God's Word, sharing in the Eucarist and baptism. The film fails grossly in separating the true meaning of faith and miracles.Aside from erroneous Christian dogmatics, the film and research team failed to get their facts straight on the events that occurred in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia in 1944. Banska Bystrica was controlled only by the Slovak Army throughout 1944. The German Army only occupied Banska Bystrica in October 1944 after they crushed the Slovak National Uprising whose headquarters was in Banska Bystrica. The German Air Force bombed Banska Bystrica between September and October 1944. The Americans never bombed Banska Bystrica in 1944. In fact, the Americans flew in to an airport just south of Banska Bystrica (Tri Duby) several B-17 fortresses with war matériel in support of the insurgent Slovak Army during the Slovak National Uprising in September and October 1944. On August 20, 1944, the 15th USAF flew bombing missions over Banska Bystrica to bomb an oil refinery at Dubová just 20 km NE of Banska Bystrica, but never dropped bombs on Banska Bystrica. (See http://www.muzeumsnp.sk/WWW-USA-nov%E1/USA-GB-oprava.htm for greater detail.) Banska Bystrica was finally liberated from Nazi control in March 1945, and if there was any bombing of Banska Bystrica in 1945, it was performed by the Soviet Air Force.

As a non-Catholic, I'm not sure if I can truly gage the impact of Agnieszka Holland's The Third Miracle. I found it both moving and lacking, but I'd recommend it to those who are wondering about the mysteries of life and the human spirit. I have no idea how the Catholic Church and its membership would feel about it.On a purely human level, the movie is about doubt: Ed Harris is Father Frank Shore, an American priest asked by his Bishop (Charles Haid) to investigate Helen (Barbara Sukowa) an American candidate for sainthood. Along the way, Frank uncovers miraculous deeds, encounters his own doubts about his calling, and eventually seems to believe in miracles.Other main characters have their doubts too: the prospective saint's non-Catholic daughter Roxane (Anne Heche in one of her best performances to date), the stuffy official Vatican investigator Cardinal Werner (Armin Mueller-Stahl), and Maria (Caterina Scorsone), the troubled subject of one of the questionable miracles.Good prerequisites for this film might be Martin Scorsese's film version of Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and most of Federico Fellini's films, in particular 8 1/2 (1963) and Juliet of the Spirits (1965).Holland lets the Church off lightly compared to Fellini, but she does successfully underscore the pomposity of the cardinals and bishops in their big cars and sparkling vestments. This leads to an essential question about her reasoning and the meaning of film's ending, but I won't give that away: I'll leave that for you to judge.

I thought the movie was wonderful. Very intense and thought provoking. Ed Harris did a superb job. It is an excellent movie dealing with faith and Christianity; a subject not dealt with enough in movies today.

`The Third Miracle' tackles much of the same subject matter as 1999's `Stigmata' but manages to do so without reducing it to the level of horror movie absurdity. The stories of both movies revolve around a doubting, questioning priest whose job it is to investigate and either certify or debunk purported instances of divine intervention. However, `The Third Miracle,' because it treats the material within the context of a serious drama, emerges as by far the more interesting of the two films. Ed Harris, in a solid performance, stars as the man whose job it is to verify these ostensible miracles but who, like most movie priests it seems, has come to question his faith and to doubt his own worthiness to even carry out the task. Anne Heche delivers her customary fine performance as the cynical daughter of the woman whose potential candidacy for canonization sets the plot in motion. Indeed, the film is at its most intriguing when it allows us to get a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes nuts-and-bolts machinations that the church uses in determining the viability of sainthood. We watch as the Catholic hierarchy treads the fine line between faith in supernatural intervention and the more worldly concerns of pragmatic politics. We see the petty jealousies, character attacks and power struggles that reduce even the most ethereal of ventures to the level of basic human frailty. In many ways, this broader conflict reflects the one which rages on a more intimate, personal level within the tortured psyche of Harris' character himself. It is his internal struggle between doubt and faith, between the physical and the spiritual, between strength and weakness that manages to keep the many strands of the plot together even when the film, at times, verges a bit on the banal and the tedious. Happily, too, the film does not succumb to the fashionable secular cynicism that is all too common in films today. `The Third Miracle' manages to explore the many-sided complexity of this issue without trashing the spiritual nature of the topic in the process. `The Third Miracle' is not by any stretch a great film, but it succeeds in exploring a tricky subject without insulting the intelligence of the audience along the way. After `Stigmata,' we offer our most humble thanks for that.