Heavens Above is the high point of the several collaborations between Peter Sellers and the British film making duo of Roy and John Boulting. The film takes on two most sacred of cows, organised religion and Christian beliefs (particularly how they work in the real world), with a brilliant, straight performance by Sellers, undermined by a ridiculous and unnecessary climax.
Sellers plays John Smallwood, a good hearted but naive prison chaplain, assigned as vicar to a small and prosperous English country town after a clerical error.
Smallwood's brand of Christianity runs on charity and forgiveness, the polar opposite of his congregation, who are outraged when he takes on a black man as his churchwarden, lets a gypsy family live in the vicarage, and talks the local landowner Lady Despard into giving free food for the church to distribute to the locals.
The cinematic legacy of Peter Sellers rests on his comic creations such as Inspector Clouseau and Dr Strangelove, but with Smallwood he gives us a character who is both vulnerable and believable, even resisting the urge to make his Brummie accent comically broad.
The writing, directing and producing team of Roy and John Boulting had worked with Sellers on the industrial relations satire I'm Alright Jack, where they mocked both the power-crazed unions and the greedy boardrooms. Here they take a similar approach, laying into the hypocritical church leaders and their congregation, but also Smallwood's guileless and easily exploited Christianity, and his betrayal by both his bosses and the people he tried to help is heart breaking.
Then, from out of nowhere, the story takes an unexpected diversion, abandoning village life to focus on a frightened astronaut and a new job for Smallwood. The comedy becomes broad and wacky, the polar opposite of everything we've seen up to then. Jarring and pointless, this switch nearly derails the rest of the film.
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