“In reality, this is an optimistic story.” Jack Nicholson furrows his forehead in curiosity as he relates a conversation he had with Stanley Kubrick during the making of The Shining. “On what basis, Stanley?…‘Well, in some way this movie’s about ghosts; anything that says there’s anything after death is an optimistic story.’” It’s a good indication of how deep-seeded humanity’s need to survive death is that a man of Kubrick’s intelligence and insight considered the tale of a possessed man attempting to chop up his wife and child with an axe as optimistic.

Of course, the desire to go on living is the most basic of all survival mechanisms; without it, we’d be like the cast of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, walking into a tigers den or laying under tractors; but hearing it as it’s expressed above, it seems almost pitiful. At the same time, it’s a reminder of how the arts have taken over for religion as our mode of indulging in consoling and pacifying fantasies of the afterlife, a connection most clearly indicated by movies featuring afterlife superstitions descended from religion, such as reincarnation, featured in the new film Dean Spanley, released on Dec 12. It tells the story of a clergyman in Edwardian England who, when drinking Tokay, reverts back to his previous life as a dog. The film, directed by Toa Fraser, is based on fantasy writer Lord Dunsany’s 1930 novella and is only now getting the cinematic treatment.

The arts have taken over for religion as our mode of indulging in consoling and pacifying fantasies of the afterlife.

A lot can happen in 78 years, such as our expanded awareness of the nature and durability of atoms, the recycling of which constitutes the one logical and founded concept of reincarnation and the afterlife. As Bill Bryson put it in his layman’s science book: ‘We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms – up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested – probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to mention.’ Why hasn’t this proved more of a comfort to people? Perhaps it’s the mark of ego and our tendency to consider the body material but consciousness not so, despite all rational evidence pointing to the mind being a manifestation of the material. The attitude seems to be ‘Who cares if the matter I consist of has been around for ages and will go on to do so long after death, I want my consciousness to go on’. But in essence it will, albeit in the most fragmented manner (un)imaginable.

Joseph Campbell, who always stressed the error in people’s tendency to misinterpret mythological metaphor as literal, once remarked that, given the knowledge available, the creators of religious mythology did the best they could. Looking back, reincarnation can be seen as an intuitive, metaphorical understanding of atoms, in the same way as Creation could be considered a blind-folded stab at understanding the Big Bang. Even the concept of Heaven can be seen to have a grain of truth, if we consider that, were we all to live morally, our atoms (that is ourselves, essentially) would go on to inhabit a world with something to some degree comparable to eternal bliss.

Can we be said to be doing the best we can with the knowledge we have? The continued presence of films like Dean Spanley would suggest not.  For all his ignorance of theological texts, Richard Dawkins hit the mark when he stated that the fantasies of religious mythology hold none of the beauty and mystery of the facts of existence, yet our arts don’t seem to agree. With the state of CGI, a film that traced the progress of an atom over eons as it inhabits different life-forms is possible, would make a profound statement and could surely be made to be commercial, but that film remains, as of yet, unmade.

It’s interesting to note that the film, despite starring Nicole Kidman, was a flop.

There are, at least, some films that want to put dated superstitions in their place. The last notable film dealing with reincarnation was Jonathan Glazier’s 2003 movie Birth (incidentally a film that aped Kubrick’s style), in which a widow is convinced that a nine year old boy is the reincarnation of her dead husband, only to realize she has been duped, a revelation which causes her an emotional breakdown, indicating how damaging false promises of an afterlife can be. This story is a far more modern treatment of the concept, reflecting our more rational time, so it’s interesting to note that the film, despite starring Nicole Kidman, was a flop. Perhaps that’s because most of us want to believe, no matter how damaging it may ultimately be, and anything that contradicts that is dismissed. This goes some way to explaining why, as we’re just beginning our journey through a post-metaphysical 21st Century, a film like Dean Spanley, which carries its convictions in the concept of reincarnation through to the end, albeit with a slightly comic tone, turns up.

Of course, there are many other signs of our culture’s inability to live in the light of modern science, the most prominent perhaps being nip/tuck/moisturising culture, where a vanity-fueled battle against signs of aging masks a less conscious denial of the stage following old age – death. It’s perhaps no coincidence that movie stars are the main culprits, since it’s a medium of posterity which preserves the image of those who star in them more efficiently than cryogenic freezing. It’s unlikely that Demi Moore is well versed in atomic science, and the same goes for the arts. Films like Dean Spanley, charming tough they may be, arguably do damage to the cause of creating a more harmonious world, since in trying to push the individual consciousness across life forms, they reinforce an egoism essentially no more commendable than getting a face-lift.