Hi guys,
Last weekend I watched Hereafter. A movie where director Clint Eastwood delves into the mysterious world of the hereafter, an ensemble supernatural drama starring Matt Damon, Cécile De France, Jay Mohr, and Bryce Dallas Howard.
Brief Synopsis
In the wake of a near-death experience during a powerful tsunami, French television reporter Marie (De France) takes her married lover's advice to pen the political book she has always talked about writing. As hard as Marie tries to stay focused on the task at hand, however, she repeatedly finds her attention diverted to scientists who have been stigmatised for investigating the afterlife. Meanwhile, in America, reluctant psychic George (Matt Damon) struggles in vain to cease using his powers for profit while falling for a gorgeous stranger (Bryce Dallas Howard). All the while, his greedy brother (Jay Mohr) prods him to milk his ability for all it's worth. Over in London, a pair of inseparable twins is forcibly parted by tragedy when one of them dies suddenly. The harder the more introverted surviving twin (Frankie McLaren) attempts to reach out to his deceased brother in the afterlife, the deeper his mom sinks into heroin addiction. When his mother goes into rehab, the grieving boy is placed in foster care, and begins succumbing to his corrosive ennui.
My personal view
You might expect Hereafter, a movie centred on near-death experiences and visions of the afterlife, to be uplifting and exhilarating, especially with Clint Eastwood at the helm. You'd be right, but only for very brief moments in a two-hour film that, at times, seems like it's gone on for at least four hours. For the most part, Hereafter flat-lines. Clint Eastwood does his usual fabulous job, investing the film with mood and detail galore, and drawing affecting performances from Matt Damon, Cécile De France and Frankie and George McLaren.
The tsunami is a good reason to at least rent the movie when it comes out on DVD: Eastwood puts the viewer in the water with De France's character as she's tossed and tumbled down a chute of roiling water, debris, vehicles and bodies. A scene just before the tsunami strikes, as De France and other characters hear the water but still can't see it, chills to the bone: Standing in an outdoor market, the doomed can see palm trees in the distance snapping and disappearing, but don't yet know what's causing it. (I’d like to point out that this may just be the saving grace of the film.)
The script is so dull that the audience howled with relief anytime a teensy bit of humour worked its way in. Bryce Dallas Howard, wasted in a throwaway role that serves only to emphasise Damon's character's loneliness (which we already got, thanks), gets a huge laugh when her character, in a cooking class, notes, "The woman next to me brought her own knife. She's very intimidating." Yeah...that's how desperate we are for a laugh...or any emotion, for that matter. Damon winningly conveys his character's deep sadness and sense of alienation (although hearing, "It's not a gift, it's a curse," once, was enough) but his Eeyore-type slump and self-degradation get pretty old around the 90-minute mark.
The last 30 minutes of the film hint at what it might have been if someone had whipped that script into shape; the idea of exploring experiences of the afterlife was a great one, and Eastwood certainly has the vision to pull it off. But even the most talented doctor can't revive the really, most sincerely dead. And Hereafter, while not exactly DOA, never makes it out of the emergency room.
-S
No comments:
Post a Comment