MovieChat Forums > Resurrection (1980) Discussion > Another thought on the ending.......

Another thought on the ending.......


Spoiler...stop reading if you don't want to hear about the ending).
This is in response to the post about whether or not Edna gets the boy's cancer at the end of the movie......
There is a scene early in the movie where the old man at the gas station puts his hands on Edna's head and tells her to go out and make plenty of lemonade. During the end credits they show a still of this shot, again. Perhaps this is where Edna actually gets her healing powers, from the old man who fixes things, on the day that he touched her. Then, at the end of the movie, Edna passes on her healing powers to the boy.
When Edna left the old man at the gas station, he smiles in the same way that Edna smiles after hugging the little boy. Edna smiles as she leaves the old man and his dogs behind. In the end she is smiling as young boy and his new dog are leaving.

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I'm checking out the boards because Resurrection is on HBO later this month. It's an incredible and moving film, and I'm not even religious. Maybe that's why I like it so much.

Anyway, I think it's obvious that she received the gift from the old man at the beginning...where else did she get it from? I'll have to read here further for other opinions. I'm not sure if she passes it along to all those she cures (she cured a lot of people), but you never know.

Cheers!

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...I think it's obvious that she received the gift from the old man at the beginning...where else did she get it from?
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Edna connected spiritually and holistically with the old man at the gas station. He may have been like Edna himself and had healing powers, but I don't quite feel the intention of the film was to suggest that he passed on his healing powers to Edna. She had a life after death experience and the love and generosity that was in her being from the beginning, was able to flourish and come to fruition because of her experience and encounter with the old man. I saw that her connection with the old man on a subliminal, or subconscious plane, helped her to 'harness' her gift. It also allowed her a sanctuary to retreat too at the end....from the ambivalent attitudes of many that she had associated with beforehand.

It was clear, that all she wanted from the sick boy was to heal him and sense his love. Edna, gave him the puppy and told him that she didn't think that it would be a problem, when he said he probably won't be around to take care of the animal. Edna got just as much love and joy from the people she was able to heal, as well as being able to radiate and project that much love back.

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Very true, but we are supposed to think she's quite possibly choosing to give her life to save the boy--but there's no terror for her in death. This is her choice, and she embraces it willingly, joyfully.

Maybe the boy becomes a healer, maybe not, but I think the real point is what you said.

In the Mark gospel, when a leper says to Jesus "If you want to, you can heal me", Jesus says "Of course I want to--be healed." In some manuscripts, we're told he's filled with compassion--in others that he's angry. But would he have been angry at the man, or at the world that treated lepers like--well--lepers--leading to the man being unsure that even a healer would want to touch him. I think Jesus felt both anger and compassion, in equal measure. He had a gift, and he wanted to use it. And after he died, so many people used his name to justify hate.

Will we ever grow up?



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but we are supposed to think she's quite possibly choosing to give her life to save the boy--but there's no terror for her in death.


No, we are not to think Edna gave her life to save the boy. Recall her earlier healing of the crippled woman wherein she laid behind her on the hospital bed and clearly took the woman's disease upon herself and fell to the floor. The woman was healed and the disease soon passed through Edna (or however you want to put it). The same concept was used a dozen years earlier in the Star Trek episode "The Empath."

So Edna simply transferred healing power to the boy at the end. If indeed she took his cancer upon herself it wouldn't be able to stay on her because she had the healing power, just like in the case of the woman in the hospital bed.

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The movie's biblical references to Eve and the snake are there to make us wonder if she got the power from the devil disguised as the two-headed snake, as Sam Shepard's father claims, but I think she got the power from her near-death experience just as the woman in her grandmother's story got hers. I did not get the impression anywhere that it was a power that was transferable, it was earned. And it was not the man's touch on the head that healed her so we don't even know that he had the power.

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Have always thought that Esco passed it on to her, and she passed it on to the boy.

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I thought the same thing

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