Analysis of Angels by Our Side Movie - Essay Example

Nevertheless, when his love is long gone, he doesn’t regret the decision he made, and that’s because he realizes that love has given meaning to his life. In the movie, Seth, played by Nicholas Cage is an angel that walks the earth to escort people to heaven after they die. He hovers over the city of Los Angeles to watch over humans, listening to their thoughts, keenly observing their lives, and guiding them to the next world when they die. While Seth and his fellow angels try to offer comfort to people as much as they can, they have trouble understanding humans and their lives.

That discourages them from direct contact with humans and hence they stay invisible to them. Until he meets a heart surgeon, Maggie played by Meg Ryan, who is trying to save the life of her patient; the same life, which Seth was to call upon. The movie here shows two extremely different worlds; the angel’s world and the human’s world. These angels lack the ability to taste or smell; they do not feel pain either. They can remain invisible and they can move as fast as their thoughts. Humans, on the other hand, enjoy their life differently; just like Dr.

Maggie, her patient Dennis Franz and other humans living on Earth. They know the taste of fruit; they enjoy the rain; feel the wind; and ultimately live a normal life (Silberling). All of Maggie’s efforts to save the life of her patient go in vain when he passes away. Her agony touches something deep inside Seth; something he never knew existed within him and he finds himself falling in love with her. He then makes a decision to make himself visible to her. He eventually tells her that he’s a messenger from God.

She unintentionally sees herself drawn deeper into this mystery man staring at her with those bulging angel eyes. She didn't believe in angels until she fell in love with one (Wikiquotes). With this unexpected display of affection, we begin to understand the power of love, the power of dreams, and the belief that if your love is true, anything is possible. That’s the beauty of love; the dream of love that almost unquenchably lies at the heart of every human being. One of Maggie’s patients, Nathaniel Messinger (Franz) reveals his angelic origin to Seth.

He tells Seth how he got himself converted to a human, a process he referred to as the “falling” (Silberling). Love knows no boundaries; totally in love with Maggie, Seth thinks of exercising this option of “falling” so that he can be a human and be with the person he loves, both physically and mentally. Seth decides his path of the “falling” by jumping from the top of a skyscraper. After this symbolic gesture, he immediately wakes up to experience all of the human feelings and sensations that he had never been able to understand.

He begins to feel the physical injury and pain. Now a human, he runs to meet the love of his life. Maggie realizes that he has given up his exalted status for her love. Nature tends not to produce beings that long for things nature itself does not supply. We grow hungry only because there’s such a thing as food. We get thirsty only because there’s such a thing as water. We have sex drives only because there’s such a thing as sex. Human drives and desires seem to point to realities that fulfill them (Lewis 3).

Unfortunately, their happiness ends when Maggie meets with an accident. The irony of the situation is that now Maggie can see the angels who have come to escort her but Seth cannot. Seth is left alone in the world of humans. Cassiel, his fellow angel comes to visit him and asks him whether he repents his decision to change to a human. “No”, Seth says, “I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss of her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it.”(Silberling) He now has to adjust to his new life without Maggie.

His life now has a meaning; he knows it is something to do with the love he had for Maggie. Now, if the depth of one’s love can be measured by the sacrifice one is willing to make for the beloved – and what better indicator of love is there than this? What if angels walked among us and one of them fell in love with us? (Wikiquote) What will you choose to believe and how will you choose to live? However, the answer to this question is the faith you have in your love. You can decide to live your life on the conviction that the story depicts the supremacy of love or on the conviction that it is not. You could have reasons for choosing one option over the other but fortunately or unfortunately neither option can be proven, as love is faith. However we live, we live by faith.