Tuesday 19 April 2011

A touch of Hope

Also about magic of a more human kind, was the film A Touch of Hope, also based on a book about a Healer given the name Dean Kraft to protect his identity and location. The end notes admit that the facts of the story have been changed but the individual does exist and is helping hundreds if not thousands of patients to recover or improve from serious and medical conditions. The man is possessed of energy which if he directs towards a particular patient, embracing their pain and suffering he can bring about sudden dramatic “cures”. The film portrays his struggle to accept his power and the implication for how he will spend the rest of his life. Because of the reaction of a male work colleague on disclosure he does not talk about what is happening to his girlfriend or family, but does agree to participate in formal testing trials when approached by a doctor exploring the effectiveness of alternative medicines.

Although he has great success with a patient with a degenerative condition which prevents her walking the inability to save his father who experiences a severe heart attack and a stroke leads him to reject his powers and abandon participation in the trial until approached by a mother who daughter has remained in coma since being temporarily trapped in icy waters until rescued. It is then revealed that the girl is the daughter of the Medical Director of a hospital which authorised the investigation of alternative therapies after standard medicine failed to revive the child. All the previous investigation failed after raising hopes so the M D refuses to give permission for the man to experiment with his daughter despite the intercession of his wife.

The man is convinced that he is able to control the force within him sufficiently to help the girl although in doing so his own heart stops beating and he has to be revived. As sub stories there is the relationship between the man and the girlfriend and this is said to end happily ever after and the failure of the man when a child to save his younger brother in a swimming accident, Whether any of this is true is another story, except that there is an individual with curative powers through the use of his hands and the focusing of mental strength somewhere in the USA and how much of this is faith healing or some measurable energy is an open question.

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