Exploring the Hereafter: The Afterlife in Film Quiz

Answer: American Beauty

In a monologue that begins the film, the narrator, Lester, describes a scene from his life and notes that "in a year, I will be dead." Near the end of the film, Lester seems to have gained a renewed perspective on life, before being abruptly murdered by his neighbor, who is conflicted about his own sexuality.

This is followed by a voiceover in which he talks movingly of being overwhelmed by all the beauty that he has seen in the world and being filled with "gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life." Sam Mendes, who directed the film, stated that one of its themes is, "that beauty is found where it is least expected."

Answer: Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey

The sequel to 1989's "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure", its tagline is, "Once, they made history. Now, they are history!" Early in the film, the two titular protagonists are murdered by robots sent from the future that look like themselves, whom they mistake for their future selves.

This film is particularly notable for a hilarious scene in which Bill and Ted challenge Death to a contest that parodies the chess match in "The Seventh Seal". Even though Death claims that he has never been defeated, he loses a series of games including Battleship, Clue, and Twister, before finally conceding defeat and agreeing to help them return to life, which they do with some help from God himself.

After being resurrected, they are able to defeat the robot impostors and overcome the time-traveling villain who resents the influence of their music on future civilization.

Answer: A Scanner Darkly

At the beginning of this scene, Charles changes the channel on the radio and the radio announcer narrates what happens. The announcer notes that Charles is feeling depressed, and having decided to kill himself, spends more days thinking about the scene he will leave behind for "later archaeologists" then the actual decision to die. Specifically, he wants to be found lying on his back on his bed with a copy of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" and an unfinished letter to Exxon protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card. "That way he would indict the system and achieve something by his death, over and above what the death itself achieved." Initially, he was going to drink a cheap wine, but decides to buy a connoisseur wine costing nearly $70 instead. He swallows a large number of pills which, rather than being barbiturates as he expected, appear to be some sort of hallucinogen instead, as rather than asphyxiating, he begins hallucinating, which is when the weird interdimensional being appears. He asks the being if this will take 100,000 hours, but the creature explains that his sins will be read to him ceaselessly in shifts throughout eternity; the list will never end. After a thousand years of this, they are only up to his sixth grade! The narrator notes that he wished he could take back the last half hour of his life, although he thinks to himself, "at least I got a good wine."

The film was based on the novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick and is a reasonably faithful adaptation. Charles Freck was played by Rory Cochrane. The film was remarkable in that it was initially shot with live actors and then animated using interpolated rotoscope so that animators traced over each frame of the footage to create the appearance of an animated graphic novel.

Answer: Jean Cocteau

Jean Cocteau was a highly influential avant-garde artist, playwright, and filmmaker. "Orpheus" was adapted from a stage play of the same name that Cocteau wrote and produced in 1926, and the film is the second part of his "Orphic Trilogy". Like the ancient Greek myth it is based on, the protagonist named Orpheus travels into the Underworld to bargain for the life of his wife, Eurydice.

However, in a novel twist, the protagonist in the film is involved in a love triangle with a Princess who apparently represents Death and who seems to be responsible for the killing of his wife.

While in the underworld, he is interrogated by a tribunal about the death of Eurydice. The tribunal rules that Death claimed Eurydice illegally and they agree to return her to life on the condition that he never look at her again for the rest of his life.

This is a harsher condition than in the Greek myth, which required that Orpheus not look back at Eurydice until they had left the Underworld (which condition he fails in the end). Subsequently, Orpheus ends up looking at Eurydice in the mirror of a car and she disappears. Next, Orpheus is killed by a mob and returns to the Underworld.

There he declares his love for Death, who decides to die herself that he may become an "immortal poet". Finally, the tribunal decide to return him and his wife back to the world of the living with no memory of what has transpired. (A much kinder fate then befell the Greek Orpheus who had no such luck.) The film is noteworthy for its inventive visual effects, in which mirrors, water, and reversed film are used to portray the Underworld.

Answer: Claude Monet

At the beginning of the film, the story seems to be a straightforward drama about a man named David whose playboy lifestyle was disrupted by a car accident that disfigured his face. However, bizarre anomalies occur, such as his former lover who was killed in the accident apparently returning to life. Eventually, he meets someone from "tech support" who explains to him that his body has been in cryonic suspension for 150 years after he killed himself in the hope of being revived in a future age when his face could be repaired.

The company that is keeping him in suspended animation programmed a dream for him that he chose based on the depiction of the sky in a Claude Monet painting he owns called "The Seine at Argenteuil". The film is an English-language adaptation of the 1997 Spanish film "Open Your Eyes" by Alejandro Amenábar. Both films feature Penelope Cruz in the same role.

Answer: Enter the Void

"The Tibetan Book of the Dead", a Buddhist text about what a person's spirit is supposed to experience during the intermediate state between death and rebirth, features prominently in the film, but is not its title. In the film, Oscar has a friend named Alex who tries to discourage him from dealing drugs, and describes the contents of the "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" to him, specifically, about how the spirit of a dead person will often try to stay among the living before experiencing frightening hallucinations that cause it to seek rebirth. Subsequently, Oscar meets a friend named Victor at a bar aptly named The Void, with the intent of selling him drugs. However, it transpires that Victor has betrayed Oscar and called the police on him. Oscar tries unsuccessfully to flush his supply of drugs down a toilet and is shot by police after claiming to have a gun. Having an out-of-body experience, his point-of-view rises above his own body and he has a series of flashbacks from his own life, as well as witnessing scenes involving his friends representing the aftermath of his own death. Although Oscar's apparent after-death experiences appear to be inspired by the "The Tibetan Book of the Dead", Gaspar Noé has subsequently explained that Oscar's visions are really drug-induced hallucinations influenced by Alex's description of the book's contents that occur as Oscar is dying.

"Smile on the Void" is a science fiction novel by Stuart Gordon, while "The Spirit Molecule" is an account by psychiatrist Rick Strassman of his research into the psychedelic substance DMT, which drug happens to play a prominent role in "Enter the Void".

Answer: Winona Ryder

"Beetlejuice" was a big career boost for Ryder, who was only 17 at the time, although she has stated that it had a less than positive effect on her social standing at school, as her peers regarded her as a "a freak and a witch." In it, she plays a typical goth chick who dresses all in black and is fascinated by morbid things.

This might explain why she alone can see Barbara and Adam, whom she initially thinks are ordinary people rather than ghosts. Barbara and Adam's attempts to scare away Lydia's family backfire, as Lydia's father thinks he can turn their house into a supernatural tourist attraction. Against their better judgment, Barbara and Adam seek the help of the self-proclaimed "bio-exorcist" named Betelgeuse (pronounced Beetlejuice), with disastrous results.

The film won several awards, including an Oscar for Best Makeup. A sequel called "Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian" was planned but later cancelled.

Answer: Nicole Kidman

"The Others" unfolds in the form of a mystery, as it initially seems that Grace is a normal woman looking after her children in the period just after the Second World War. However, a number of strange events occur, for example, her daughter Anne sees a group of people in the house several times who say that the house is theirs, and Grace sees a piano playing itself.

More mysteriously, her husband returns even though she thought that he had been killed in the war. There is a very striking scene in which Grace goes to check on her daughter and finds an old woman wearing Anne's clothes, who says in Anne's voice, "I am your daughter." Grace attacks her only to find that the old woman has disappeared, and she is actually attacking Anne. Later Anne tells her brother that their mother has gone mad again like she did on "that day", hinting at something terrible.

It is eventually revealed that the old woman is a spirit medium who has been leading the real occupants of the house in a séance to contact the ghosts who are haunting the place. Furthermore, the medium has discovered that Grace killed her children in a fit of melancholy before taking her own life.

The film received positive reviews and Nicole Kidman was particularly praised for her performance.

Answer: Flatliners

In this film, the medical students take turns inducing temporary cardiac arrest in each other to find out what happens when a person dies. Each person is allowed to flatline and experience brain death for a short period and then the others use a defibrillator to revive them. (Obviously, don't try this at home!) Each person has an individualized vision while clinically "dead", such as flying over a panoramic landscape, followed by a more personalized scene relating to the person's life.

These experiences have unexpected complications in that each person begins having hallucinations during normal life relating to some kind of unfinished personal business revealed in their vision.

For example, there is a disturbing scene in which the character Rachel is in a dissection class and the corpse takes on the likeness of her late father and rise from the table to look at her! It turns out that Rachel has feelings of unresolved guilt about her father's suicide.

This is eventually resolved when he appears to her and apologizes, explaining that she was not to blame for what he had done.

The film had an ensemble cast that included Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, and Julia Roberts.

Answer: The salmon mousse

When Death arrives at the house, no-one initially seems to understand who he is. The host explains to his wife that "It's a Mr. Death or something, he's come about the reaping? I don't think we need any at the moment." The wife invites him inside to come and have a drink and introduces him to her guests as "one of the little men from the village." Death astonishes them by passing through the center of the dinner table.

However, they still don't seem to grasp the gravity of the situation and continue attempting to make foolish conversation. Death becomes impatient and states that he has come to take them away, to which one of the guests responds, "That's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it?" Death gets rather testy when one of the guests starts going on about how this is a positive learning experience and says, "you're dead now, so just shut up!" When Death points to the salmon mousse as the cause of all their deaths, the host asks his wife, "Darling, you didn't use canned salmon, did you?" to which she replies, "I'm most dreadfully embarrassed." Death commands them to follow him, and they all collapse onto the table.

Their spirits rise from their bodies to follow him and they continue talking about the salmon mousse, one of them saying something about how serving botulism at dinner is "social death". One of the women points out that she didn't even eat the mousse, but it's too late at this point! Comically, they decide to follow Death in their cars, and drive away in ghostly versions of their vehicles! Death leads them through a vast tunnel made of clouds with a light at the end. When they finally arrive at their destination, Death says, "Behold, Paradise!" Remarkably, Paradise takes the form of a Las Vegas-style hotel where every day is Christmas.