PG | 1h 49min | Drama | 2016
Kevin Beam (Martin Henderson) and his wife, Christy (Jennifer Garner), dote on their three playful children: their oldest, 13-year-old Abbie (Brighton Sharbino); middle daughter Anna (Kylie Rogers); and the youngest, Adelynn (Courtney Fansler). One day, Anna develops a stomach pain that steadily worsens. After doctors misdiagnose her with relatively harmless conditions, ranging from acid reflux to lactose intolerance, the Beams discover that things are much more severe: Her disease could be lethal.
As Anna’s pain peaks, a pediatrician performs emergency surgery on what turns out to be an abdominal obstruction. He warns that without specialist treatment, she’ll die. The specialist he recommends is one of America’s foremost pediatric gastroenterologists, Boston-based Dr. Samuel Nurko (Eugenio Derbez). But Nurko is so overbooked that it’ll be months before he can examine Anna.
Against incredible odds, Kevin holds down the fort back home and Christy rushes Anna to Boston. Nurko advises more specialized treatment, including being fed through nasal tubes because Anna’s pain-wracked digestive system isn’t getting neural messages that enable digestion.
The chaos draws the couple into an agonizing regimen that revolves around Anna’s pills, diet, lab tests, clinical reviews, and flights to Boston that demand regular hospitalization. Watching their already frail Anna wither away stretches the prayerful family physically, emotionally, financially, and spiritually. The ordeal tests their faith in God, in themselves, and in each other. It also tests every ounce of little Anna’s resilience.
Then, when she’s out in the yard with her sisters, an accident that should’ve been fatal changes everything.
Blessed with an excellent cast, sensitive editing, and thoughtful cinematography, director Patricia Riggen draws on the real-life Christy’s memoir “Miracles From Heaven: A Little Girl and Her Amazing Story of Healing.”
Ms. Riggen’s opening low-angle shot of the giant hollow tree that Anna falls into brims with symbolism, already hinting that its gnarled, upturned bare branches look like so many hands stretching skyward in expectant prayer. In the background, Christy’s puzzled voiceover ponders the meaning of a miracle: something that can’t be explained by natural or scientific laws.
What’s unsaid is that some people attribute extraordinary events to divine agency, while others place them in the realm of mystery.
Everyday Goodness
Despite his explicitly spiritual theme, screenwriter Randy Brown’s storytelling is far from fanciful. Instead, it’s sincere, nuanced, and grounded. Christy here is no Bible-thumping, hymn-singing, saintly supermom. She’s human, often edgy, impatient, bitter, and sarcastic. She admits to losing faith and being unable to pray. She wonders whether God hears her in the first place. But even in the thick of self-pity, she sees a repeated, unexplained outpouring of love from complete strangers, not just family and friends.Mr. Brown’s characters, even supposedly self-righteous religious ones, don’t have smart answers for why suffering persists, striking some, sparing others. Still, they believe that connecting to God, even at their lowest points, beats walking away from him. Alongside the Beams, Mr. Brown is saying that God’s love surrounds us, even if we or our loved ones fall sick, have accidents, or die. Watch Christy’s testimony delivered at her church.
Mr. Brown’s is a mature, balanced faith-based screenplay because it dwells on the real lesson of miracles and avoids making the miracles themselves talking points or spectacles. Many faith-based films spotlight miracles almost to the exclusion of everything else. This movie defies that. It’s saying that the miracle, however spectacular, isn’t the point. Faith in God and his love through the daily, inexplicable goodness of family, friends, and strangers is just as stunning.
The film is titled “miracles” rather than “miracle.” It doesn’t glorify a single miracle over others showing one manifestation of goodness as miraculous, while undermining others as coincidental or conventional.
