Stars: Matt Damon, Cecile de France, Frankie McLaren, George McLaren, Lynne Marshal, Jay Mohr, Bryce Dallas Howard
Director: Clint Eastwood
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars
Death. It's the source of our greatest fears, our profoundest beliefs, our myriad curiosities. Some believe it holds the answers to the meaning of life (an irony lost on some), others believe it is simply a biological reaction to disease, injury, or time. Whatever your thoughts, it's a fascinating source of artistic inspiration (one could argue that all great art revolves around birth, life, love, or death, and perhaps all four at once), and so when I started to realize Clint Eastwood's premise in Hereafter, I felt thrilled and excited that this stoic, grandmaster of film who created one of the finest movies of the 1990's (Unforgiven, for the record) may have stumbled across something breathtaking after toiling for a number of years in increasingly fruitless territory. Alas, I was stuck with something promising but unfulfilling, a great idea that got sidetracked by a series of silly cliches.(Spoilers ahead) Hereafter is three stories for the price of one, and each revolves around death or near death experiences. In the opening scenes, we see something that would be largely borrowed from several years later in The Impossible, the Indonesian tsunami and its effects on, in this case, a French political journalist (de France), who sees the white light and finds herself continually thrown off-balance when she is revived, not by the injury but by the challenge to her beliefs.
De France's story has the most potential, and part of me wishes that they had stuck with it a little while longer, as Eastwood finds some solid truths about spirituality. People will regularly claim their belief in God, in Heaven, but when they try to get specific about it, try to prove they're right, and yet don't get to a crazy, televangelist sort of attitude with it but a rational, beautiful journey of faith, the general populace turns away. They get uncomfortable. We're so ingrained to associate outspoken religious people with gay-bashing or obnoxious faith-pushing or righteous indignation that we've forgotten that spirituality can be liberating and discussion, even if it leads to arguments, can be productive. In the best parts of de France's stories, she touches on this-in particular, the scene where she pitches the book about her change of life and she is not only shot down, but also is told her credibility is hurt for such nonsense, is a real examination of where a few zealots have taken the public consciousness toward religion and an open discussion of it.
Alas, her story becomes awash in convenient plot points (her book is instantly picked up by a publisher) and lesser stories surround it. In particular, the story of a young boy who loses his twin brother. I'm aware this sounds callous, and obviously this is an unspeakable tragedy were it to happen in real life, but Eastwood coasts too far on our emotions with this plot-everyone feels bad for the living brother, but Eastwood's choosing first-time actors (to make them seem less "child actor-y") doesn't work. Non-actors, particularly child non-actors are rarely any good without some sort of strong film background (Hunter McCracken in The Tree of Life being a rare and brilliant exception), and while they have memorable faces, the McLaren's occasionally enter Jake Lloyd territory with their stilted, uniform line readings (I'm thinking of the badly timed takes in the final scene with Damon in particular, but the evidence is there throughout).
The third story is the tale of George (Damon), a true psychic, a man who can communicate with the dead, but has found that this comes at a terrible price-everyone wants to use him for his gifts, and he doesn't want to live his life for death, but no one seems to care about this decision. Again, this is a great premise, and occasionally crackles (the Jenifer Lewis scene is excellent, and perhaps the minute turn by Lewis is the film's best acting) but we don't get to know the character and the constantly switching to the other stories costs us a firmer connection with Damon's character. Damon, of course, can act, and does so rather well, but he's saddled with too small, too traditional of an arc for his character and what should have been a series of interactions between he and different clients turns into a story about a man trying to make a change. It also doesn't help that he's saddled with Jay Mohr, who must be so tired of playing assholes that he can barely bother to bring any energy to his user brother. Bryce Dallas Howard fares a bit better, but like I've found with most of her work (trust me, I'm trying to like her, as she looks like a movie star, and not just because she's beautiful, but because she's got a smoky, quirky beauty that I find very appealing) she's too broad and doesn't know when to dial it back. Was I the only person who kept thinking that Christina Hendricks could have nailed this part?
The film is at its worst in the final thirty minutes, when Eastwood, realizing that he isn't Terrence Malick and probably can't find the meaning of life in a two hour movie, decides to give us a Nora Ephron flick instead, with Damon and de France enjoying a meet cute and then suddenly, oddly falling in love. It's one of the weirder and more bizarre endings I've seen in a while, I'll give Clint that, but it's completely out-of-synch with the rest of the film, and I was not a fan at all. There is a time and a place for romance, and it is when two characters showed some sense of compatibility during the rest of the film.
The film's Oscar nomination is also an odd one. Hereafter received a nomination for Best Visual Effects, which makes sense on some level if you know something about the Visual Effects nominating process (if I'm correct, and dear reader, correct me if I'm wrong below), but as part of the nominations process, the film's VE team will put together a short reel of the Visual Effects highlights. This is how films like Snow White and the Huntsman, which isn't supremely Visual Effects dominated, can occasionally score a nomination, and how Hereafter, which throws out anything resembling meaningful visual effects after the first fifteen minutes, can succeed over the likes of Tron: Legacy, which would normally be more up the Academy's alley. Since we'll be perusing this category on Sunday more thoroughly, I won't go too in-depth on this, but I will say it's an odd citation.
How about you though? Do you think that Hereafter deserved its Oscar nomination (and do you think the producers of The Impossible wish they had beaten it to the punch?)? What do you think of Clint's films as of late? And which of these three plots struck you as the best, the worst?
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