The transmigration of souls is usually associated with reincarnation. In the film, All of Me (1984), at the moment of death, a person’s soul can be put “into” another person who is alive such that both people “co-exist” consciously and can control the same body. The comedy is at its best when Steve Martin, who plays Roger Cobb, into whose body the dying millionaire, Edwina Cutwater, is transferred, physically enacts an alternating struggle between Edwina’s feminine movements and Roger’s masculine movements. Martin’s physical talent is amazing. The tension within Roger’s (and Edwina’s) shared body is gradually resolved as the two “souls” become friends—attesting to the underlying goodness of Edwina in stark distinction to the sordid character of Terry Hoskins, who has falsely agreed to let Edwina share her body—two souls and one body—instead of Roger’s in exchange for $20 million. It is the goodness of Roger and the unfolding of Edwina’s goodness up against the absolute badness of Terry that underlies the film’s narrative. In the end, the good win out, and Terry’s soul is put into a horse when Edwina’s soul is transferred by a Hindu guru from Roger to Terry. With Terry’s body all to herself, Edwina is free to become romantically involved with Roger. The good souls win and the squalid one is put in a horse. The upshot is that justice does indeed apply to souls.
Terry’s arrangement to accept Edwina’s soul in exchange for $20 million is a rouse from Terry’s standpoint of disbelief in the transmigration of souls. When Terry realizes that Edwina’s soul has accidentally been transferred to Roger, Terry’s strategy is to send the Hindu guru back to India so Edwina’s soul could not be transferred from Roger; Terry could then enjoy Edwina’s fortune without paying the price by having Edwina as a “live-in,” permanent “roommate” of sorts. Roger, with Edwina in his body, Tyrone Wattell, a blind jazz-player, and Prahka Lasa, the Hindu guru, join forces to trap Terry into taking Edwina’s soul as per the stipulations in Edwina’s will. At one point, Terry resorts to a gun, which puts her in the position of wanting to make a deal: in exchange for not being turned into the police (for the third time), she would give her body to Edwina and have her own soul put into her father’s horse, in which Terry presumably could do no harm. The movie ends when this new agreement is exacted. The good people—Roger, Tyrone, Prahka, and even Edwina—are rid of the bad “apple,” Terry. Having led an unhappy life, Edwina is finally willing to enjoy life in her second body, which is much more beautiful than her first one.
The good/bad dichotomy that serves as the film’s leitmotif and basic framework is not as “black and white” as it may appear by the end of the film. During her first life, Edwina is nasty, especially to her lawyer, Roger. By the end if the film, Edwina seems to be another character completely. Both her very bad and good qualities belie a strict good/bad dichotomy regarding souls. This element of “grayness” fits the Roman Catholic notion of purgatory, a spiritual state after death in which a sinful soul can redeem itself by paying the price for having committed serious sins yet being repentant. The strict “heaven or hell” dichotomy is based on the false assumption that souls are either good or bad.
In actuality, most of us are probably in-between being saints or demons. Even so, a basic difference between people who are basically good and those who are nasty at the core level of their being cannot be ignored, and we may have an instinctual urge for justice as a means of placing a pathos of distance between us and the really bad guys. In the film, Terry will not repent; she will not change, whereas Edwina does. Even Roger becomes nicer to Edwina. Most of us are works in progress—some people seem to relax as they age whereas others become bitter. One of the few benefits of aging is having accrued enough observational experience of people to be able to intuit the difference and steer clear of the baddies.
In the film, Terry finds her place in a horse’s body, so perhaps in it she “turns over a new leaf” and becomes charitable at least to anyone who rides her. Perhaps rather than a “black and white” dichotomy, the entrenched bad souls just haven’t found their niche yet. Edwina finds her spot in Terry, and Terry finds hers in a horse. Roger finds his in being a musician rather than a lawyer. The afterlife dichotomy, which is arguably artificial, fails to incorporate this kind of trajectory of finding one’s own place.
