A young movie director who binges on real-crime channels
about
disappeared people is exposed to the story of Elisha and Elija
in
the biblical book of Kings. She reads about Elisha going to
meet
his master, on the way passing through three cities. In each
city,
a group of fifty "prophet
children" meet him secretly and
warn
him that his master is about to end his life today. Elisha
hushes
them. Elija repeatedly requests that Elisha leave him alone,
but
he stubbornly continues to follow his master.
The two men leave Jericho and reach the Jordan River. Elija
takes his wig off and hits the water with it, "parting" the
waters
so the two can cross over to the desert. A storm stirs up after
Elisha asks to receive twice his master’s powers, and after a
promise by Elija that if Elisha sees him go, his request will be
granted, a storm stirrs up. They walk into the fog with
thunder
and lightning flashes, and Elija is lost in the storm. Elisha
searches for him for a while but returns alone to Jericho,
refusing the offer of a local professional search group to go
back
and look for him. Following a three day search, they give up,
with Elisha telling them: I told you so.
The young movie director is intrigued by the similarities with
several similar disappearance stories, and begins writing the
synapsis for a historical documentary, teaming up with an
Israeli
archaeologist. The two begin to discover clues left in the
locations described in the biblical story, and, as it turns out,
they find people more than 2500 years later who have a
tradition which they themselves do not understand about the
murder of Elija.
As her research advances, she learns that both prophets were
immersed in violence, including the murder of 500 priests of
Baal, and the killing of 102 policemen sent to arrest Elija,
while
Elisha killed 52 boys using trained bears, and infected his
personal aid with a skin disease when he didn’t like
something
that Gehazi did. A married barren woman who seeks his help
gets pregnant shortly after meeting him, and has a boy whose
life he saves using artificial respiration and cardiopulmonary
resuscitation.
Elisha was an inventor and a performing magician, learning
from
his master how to make fire from rain, and himself
discovering
how to make poisonous water from the sulpherous water
fountains near Jericho into drinking water using minerals, and
using a similar formula to cause seven years of starvation
when
the bad water in the fountains "returned" upon request.
It turns out that Elisha’s invention of the floating iron ship
was
part of the plot, but the movie ends with you wondering what
Gehazi’s part was.