Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
11/7/10
It
is the universe's $64,000 question: what happens after we die?
Answers ranging from “nothing” to elaborate metaphysical explanations of
other planes of existence have been bandied about by philosophers and theologians
as long as there've been people to wonder, but no one can claim to know
with absolute certainty. And so too as long as there've been movies,
they've proven an idea medium to imagine glimpses into possible afterlives
while usually coming to the logical conclusion that it's not a good idea
to spend too much of one's time on Earth obsessing over what might come
after it. Clint Eastwood and Peter Morgan's Hereafter threads
this needle with consummate skill: it's a real, serious-minded hashing
out of psychic phenomenon, ghosts and near-death experiences that never
loses sight of the fact that there is life before death as well.
One of those movies that follows disparate characters all over the world
while we wait for their destinies to intersect, Hereafter takes
its sweet time going about its business. But by the time its three
tales have become one, the movie has taken you over a massive amount of
thematic ground and taken some excellent characters through genuinely moving
journeys. By turns light on its feet and heartbreaking, and buoyed
by sensational special effects so skillfully woven into the plot you'll
barely realize they were there, Hereafter is a real three-course
meal of a movie, about a subject as worthy of thorough examination as any
known to man.
French
TV journalist Marie LaLay (Cecile de France) is in Thailand with her producer/lover
Didier (Thierry Neuvic) when a tsunami hits, almost drowning her until
she's pulled from the water and resuscitated by two fisherman. While
she'd stopped breathing, Marie had found herself in a strange other world,
unencumbered by time or weight, surrounded by the shadowy figures of her
fellow victims. She tries to shake it off and go back to work, but
the killer instinct that had made her a TV star is gone, and Didier suggests
she take time off and work on a book, which begins as a biography of Francois
Mitterrand and ends up as an inquiry into the afterlife. In London,
twin brothers Marcus and Jason (Frankie & George McLaren) are all each
other has while their drug-addled mother (Lyndsey Marshal) struggles to
even put up a front for social services. One day, Jason goes to pick
up a prescription for her and is struck and killed by a van, leaving Marcus
with foster parents and an obsession with contacting his departed brother.
In San Francisco, George Lonagan (Matt Damon) works on the docks and takes
a cooking class trying to be normal, but he hides a very abnormal secret:
ever since a childhood illness, he is able to establish a psychic link
to the dead whenever he touches the living people they cared about.
He did this for a living, but was finally overwhelmed, which doesn't stop
his brother (Jay Mohr) from trying to restart this family business at every
turn. At the class, a tentative romance forms between George and
his partner Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard), but George can't answer basic
questions about his life without divulging the truth about himself.
As Marie, Marcus and George struggle to understand and overcome their connections
to death, fate draws them ever closer to a fateful meeting.
What
separates Hereafter from any other movie I can think of on its subject
is that while it establishes a loose series of details about the afterlife
(the one Marie visits and George contacts are clearly the same place),
it's not trying to sell us anything. Rather, Morgan's excellent script
is sifting through the phrase “life after death” and all its possible meanings,
from a real continuation of your consciousness to more abstract notions
of being survived by family and the immortality of art, personified by
the way Charles Dickens helps George to endure the heartbreak of his isolated
life. But the ultimate struggle of each of the movie's characters
is to find a way to avert their eyes from that light at the end of the
tunnel, be it Heaven or the train, and focus on finding happiness in the
here and now. For this purpose, Morgan successfully borrowers from
the structure of a romantic comedy, pairing Marie and George for much of
the running time with partners who're not right for them and keep them
from finding peace with their brushes with the dead. In the case
of Didier, it's obvious from the opening shot that he's a heel, but Melanie's
relationship with George is more intriguing because Damon and Howard strike
real sparks and the cooking class is a delightful setting that feels like
it could have supported a movie of its own. Every relationship gone
back leaves one feeling like they'll never be happy, but what happens between
this particular couple, which was WANT to work, is perfectly utilized to
represent an entire lifetime of similar heartbreak for George, and I really
just wanted to step through the screen and give the poor guy a hug.
That
this is a modern indie-style multi-character drama about death that makes
a person think of the likes of Shall We Dance? speaks to the skill
both Morgan and Eastwood bring to the proceedings. Because the movie
is so deliberate, it would be easy for it to be morbid and lifeless, but
the filmmakes and their cast find the tiny joys in the corners of their
characters' tragic lives with enough regularity to keep us connected to
them, and the climax really delivers the goods. It also helps that
when the life-and-death plot takes an action-oriented turn, as in the opening
tsunami or a later bit of surprising violence, Eastwood and his special
effects team bring the thunder. The opening sequence is as good a
movie disaster as you'll ever see, and brings to mind massive water tanks
and sealed-off streets filled with extras and collapsible sets, but amazingly
all the water and much of the carnage is CGI. Effects really have
come a LONG way, and the 80-year-old behind the camera has no problem getting
maximum impact from them.
And,
as you expect, his cast is terrific, in part because they're all so well
chosen. Damon is at his best when there's a blue collar edge to his
characters, and there's nothing pretentious or “actory” about the way George
keeps to himself while also tentatively reaching out. While de France
has a lot of tough dialog to sell us in a foreign language, she's very
convincing as both a celebrity and a survivor. And the McLaren brothers,
making their film debut, swap off the roles of Marcus and Jason quite effectively,
making both notably different characters. It helps that the butterflies
of the first-time actor and trauma have many common attributes, but because
there's nothing cutsey or Hollywood about the boys, it's easy to buy Marcus
as a real kid. That pays off in a big way in the closing scenes.
Elsewhere, Howard does a great job as a character we can understand without
being any less angry with her, Mohr is effectively cast to type as the
brother who probably has no idea what a jerk he is, and Jean-Yves Berteloot
has one sensational moment as Marie's publisher when the expression of
horror that she might actually be able to tell him what lies on the other
side of death speaks a thousand words. Plus, we get the sight of
Derek Jacobi playing himself at a book convention with an absolutely perfect
sense of the fine line between “Thanks for supporting my work,” and “OK,
your affection is creepy” that veteran actors tend to have at those sort
of public appearances.
Hereafter
is the kind of movie the award season exists to spotlight, because
it's probably a little too deliberate and structurally atypical for a mass
audience, but still possessing sensibilities mainstream enough to entertain
the kind of people drawn to a movie because they've heard it has artistic
merit. It's another fine addition to Eastwood's amazingly eclectic
filmography and a terrific bullet point on Morgan's resume as one of Hollywood's
best-regarded screenwriters. I don't know what lies on The Other
Side, and neither do they, but the answer will find us all in time.
Meanwhile, we've got this whole Life thing to worry about. |
