The Discovery

The Discovery poses a very interesting question. If life after death was scientifically proven, would this knowledge cause a massive wave of suicides? Oh, wait; did I say “interesting”? Actually, I meant “stupid.” Dr. Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford) claims to have discovered, in Hamlet's words, "the undiscovered country." Six months later, “the number of suicides has quickly reached one million.” They say curiosity killed the cat, but even a cat has more common sense than this. It’s impossible to take The Discovery seriously for the simple reason that millions and millions of people have believed and continue to do so in some kind of afterlife, and none of them save the most deranged and disturbed are in any hurry to cross over to the other side.

What's more, these believers have no regard for scientific proof – if they did, they wouldn’t be believers at all –; to them, it all comes down to faith, which is the basis for all religions. By the same token, most religions have laws against suicide; oh, those who take their own lives do go somewhere, but it’s not a place anyone is looking forward to spending the rest of eternity at. Of course, it’s possible that the afterlife Dr. Redford has discovered is not governed according to the tenets of any one theology – but then its true nature is never specified, so who’s to say that all these idiots offing themselves aren’t punching a one-way ticket straight to hell (or worse)?

One thing’s for sure, though, and it’s that these suicidal maniacs are too dumb to live anyway. All of Redford’s considerable gravitas can’t keep the good doctor from coming across as a quack, whose explanation for the afterlife sounds, accordingly, as a crock of pseudoscientific drivel. The makers of this movie undoubtedly have a low opinion of the same masses one assumes they expected to lure into watching this dreck, if they truly believe so many of us would so carelessly engage in an experiment that is tantamount to jumping into a pool that may or may not have any water in it.