The Other Side of Heaven is a movie based a young male missionary who is called to serve an LDS mission on a pacific island called Tonga. John Grover, the main character in this love story, leaves his family and friends in America, to share his religious beliefs with the Polynesian people of Tonga. The location of this movie was filmed in the pacific islands that is surrounded by large ocean waters. In this specific movie we watch a hurricane and a tsunami that I would like to analyze on my paper. Living from experience on a pacific island, I have seen first hand the power that water has to destroy. Typically after any water dealing natural disaster the people of the islands are asked to pick up where they left off and live life. Hurricanes in specific are very popular in the islands and many of local islanders are able to identify when it’s coming with no help of technology. For example, in this movie Grover’s companion notices the “heavy air” he states and understands that heavy air or heavy winds over warm waters could mean danger. Grover and his companion the next scene immediately flee for shelter. Somewhere safe is definitely where you want to be when a hurricane is gearing up. The power and energy of hurricanes are remarkable! ‘During its life cycle a hurricane can expend as much energy as 10,000 nuclear bombs!’ (Nasa Earth Observatory) At this specific part of the movie the director moves forward with the hurricane scene that hit this tiny island. While analyzing this specific scene I noticed things such as the overshadow right before the hurricane hits which tells me that the hurricane was with in hours of hitting if not sooner. I also notice the waves in the scene were a lot bigger along with the heavy air that was stated before. There are thick gray clouds in the air as well. Here is a pic of that specific scene I am talking about.
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Now after watching the film a couple of times my personal opinion on the hurricane scene is that they do a pretty decent job. There are certain parts that I do want talk about. Before this whole scene there is a baptism scene that takes place in the ocean. If a hurricane was gearing up at this very specific scene we would see some of the effects from it, however, it is possible that no specific signs of hurricane could happen as well. What I take while watching is that this was a pretty severe hurricane. Serve enough to destroy homes, pull palm trees down and cause for shelter under ground. I don’t feel that the movie really put thought into the power that hurricanes really have. A scene in specific
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we see that the power of the hurricane is strong enough to pull specific items down but not strong enough to pick up Grover or his companion. Again the power of it is simply not strong enough. Some good parts that I’ve observed are everything leading up to the hurricane the clouds, the waves, the overshadow and also the rain storms that soak the whole scene! It was right on point in my opinion! A lot of these signs that are typical that you would see. (About Education) I would score this scene a 7 out of 10 points for reality. I do believe there really could have been a little more work on making it more real by the small things. I briefly wanted to briefly share on the next natural disaster that happens in the movie, which is a Tsunami. In this particular scene we have Grover with 3 of his members on their way back from the outer islands. We see in the scene they get caught up in a tsunami.
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Now the difference from the scene compared to the last would be that I believe this scene really shows the power of a tsunami. The director again does a phenomenal job at depicting that. From the storms, heavy winds, the height on the tsunami, the lighting that hits the water, and power each wave contains. This specific scene to me gave me Goosebumps! And I wonder, how they actually make it out alive, which I can go on about in another post. This movie has been a joy to watch this time analyzing it with a better view on weather. I have learned so much about hurricanes and tsunamis and are more aware of the proper protocol when a natural disaster alarm is given. It is always smart to keep in tune with your local weather stations and to better educate yourselves on the natural disasters that could occur in your own community. Resources: Other side of Heaven movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmqw_GZd2OA http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Hurricanes/ http://weather.about.com/od/hurricanesafety/f/Hurricane-Warning-Signs.htm http://www.weather.com/storms/hurricane-central http://www.weather.gov/subscribe-hurricaneinfo Natural Disaster Text Book