Hereafter

Recently I found myself sitting in a theater misled by a poster to think I was about to watch a supernatural mystery a la M. Night Shyamalan.  Instead I was presented with a film involving a Tsunami, near death experiences and personal loss all on an international scale.  No, I was not watching the blockbuster production of a Roland Emmerich film but rather the considerably more subtle and poignant work of a Hollywood legend, Clint Eastwood.  With his newest film Hereafter Clint Eastwood once again demonstrates his masterful understanding of cinema, creating a melodramatic film that balances the antagonistic forces of the real and the fantastic, the comic and the solemn, the living and the dead.  Eastwood’s level approach to love and death refrains from the overly romantic (it is certainly not What Dreams May Come) instead becoming a methodical examination of the loneliness death can impose on the living.  While some may despair at his choice of subject matter (this is tobacco chewing, gun loving Eastwood, right?) Hereafter is ultimately a strong melodrama to add to Clint’s repertory.

Written by screenwriter Peter Morgan, shortly after the unexpected death of a family friend, this screenplay is a departure from the fact-based narratives of Frost/Nixon and The Queen, that ventures onto the border of the metaphysical.  A sprawling three-story narrative, Morgan begins the film on the coast of the Indian Ocean just as a Tsunami slams into the region.  This action packed sequence of destruction (not 2012) ultimately enters Marie Lelay (Cecile de France), a French Journalist, into a state of underwater unconsciousness where she glimpses the afterlife.  Among ghostly silhouettes and hazy light Marie is ultimately revived but forever changed by her near death experience.  Shaken and unhinged by what she saw, Marie becomes ostracized by her materialist Parisian community for her new spirituality.

At the same time George Lonegan (Matt Damon) has settled in San Francisco living in a state of forced reclusion in an attempt to repress his genuine psychic capabilities and avoid his overbearing brother Billy’s (Jay Mohr) efforts to commercialize it.  Unable to have intimate encounters (George is plagued by The Dead Zone syndrome) George lives a barren life punctuated by trips to his lowly factory job and the occasional cooking class.

Across the pond lives Marcus (aptly played by the interchangeable Frankie and George McLaren), a London youth who following the death of his twin in a traffic accident, is further abandoned by his junkie mother.  Forlorn and at the mercy of Social Services, Marcus is unable to move forward with life, withdraws into himself and becomes obsessed with psychic matters in hopes of reconnecting with his older twin (by twelve minutes).

The three narratives unfold at a deliberately slow pace, adding to the sense of pervasive loneliness and stasis that death has infused each one.  We watch as each character unsuccessfully seeks fulfillment within their own realm; Marcus visits a number of charlatan psychics, Marie writes about her experience and George has a brief liaison with Melanie (Bryce Dallas).  Eastwood masterfully weaves between these storylines, allowing the viewer to languish with his characters and slowly fostering a sense of the inevitable.  It becomes clear that it will not be until these three meet that resolution will become possible and ultimately this becomes the driving force behind the narrative.  In the same way that fate, in the form of death, has stripped these individuals of their personal agency, we are left wondering how will it bring them together to find catharsis.

While not everybody will enjoy this film (there are some shortcomings in the ending) Hereafter is still a successful and laudable venture into previously unexplored territory for Eastwood; a testament to his directorial skill.  For the most part his steady hand successfully navigates the melodramatic material and episodic nature of the script by successfully engaging the audience and creating pathos for the character’s plights. Coupled with strong acting, by Cecile de France (her first time starring in a studio film), the always-engaging Matt Damon and exemplary jobs by the McLaren twins, Clint effectively balances the somber tone of the subject material with moments of self-aware humor.  Eastwood’s laid back approach seems to wink at the moments of cliché and coincidence allowing them to organically spring from the narrative as if asking, “if death can come at any moment, why not life?” 

Peeking across realms, Eastwood creates a film that does not purport to explain the afterlife but simply show how the Hereafter, and our brushes with it, can inform our Here-Now.  It is a film that straddles these two realms convincingly, that is ultimately more interested with the catharsis of the living than with the mystery of the afterlife. And if that doesn’t intrigue you, there is always Clint Eastwood’s score.

                                            Sam Broadwin