There are probably several dozen movies in Hollywood's long history which have dealt with the question, the puzzle of life after death: What Dreams May Come, Ghost, The Lovely Bones, etc..
While some of them seem adamant to impose a given doctrine or other about what we should expect once we shed this mortal coil, Clint Eastwood's latest, the Matt Damon supernatural drama Hereafter, seems to give its audience plenty of wiggle room to allow for interpretations, all the while avoiding such pigeonholed terrain so as to keep from sticking to one particular explanation.
While this is a noble path to tread, it's also the main reason why Eastwood's latest fails to live up to its cinematic cousins.
So What is Hereafter About?
Successful French anchorwoman Marie Delay (Cecile de France, High Tension) is relaxing while on assignment in Thailand with her married producer (Thierry Neuvic), when a tsunami surges from the ocean and devastates the entire area.
Marie is caught in the massive wave, and briefly dies from drowning, if only for a few minutes. She is luckily revived, and recalls the surreal experience of another plane of existence, serene, weightless and calm, filled with familiar people. The experience leaves her questioning the possibility of the hereafter and its many moral and philosophical repercussions.
In London, England, young Marcus and his twin brother Jason (Frankie and George McLaren) make due while their drug-addicted mother tries to keep social services at bay from taking away her beloved boys.
Jason heads off to the local chemist for his mom's heroin-battling detox formula, while Marcus tries to finish his homework. An encounter with some bullies forces Jason to flee to the busy street, where an oncoming truck fatally hits him. Left with what seems like half of himself, Marcus mourns his twin's death, while wondering where his soul could have gone after the impact.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, former high profile professional psychic George Lonegan (Matt Damon, True Grit) tries to live a normal life at a tedious factory job, so to get away from his former career. Unlike the various charlatans and frauds out there, George actually possesses the ability to hear (or speak to) the deceased, which has left him with very little semblance of a life of his own.
As Marie and Marcus each separately work to find their own answers, can George find any normalcy to his life that he can enjoy? Can the next girl (Bryce Dallas Howard) manage to see George for who he wants to be, rather than what he might be able to tell her about her own dead parents? Can these three find each other and offer some answers about what awaits us all?
Hereafter a Veritable Hodge-podge of Vague Hints
I wouldn't presume to try and blame Clint Eastwood for not giving us world-changing, concrete answers about metaphysical concepts, but all the same I'd expect him and gifted screenwriter Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon) to show at the very least a little bit more focus to their story.
While it's a noble attempt on their part to try and convey the hardships of an honest-to-goodness, real psychic, this in no way guarantees that we'd get an interesting character to root for in return.
Damon's George Lonegan is a flat, uninteresting loner, one who keeps insisting on putting his psychic days behind him, while giving an eventual reading to what seems like every character he comes across during the film's considerably lengthy and slow-paced running time.
Cecile De France's reporter does show some of that aggressive, hungry curiosity for hard facts, but ends up as a weak built, two dimensional character whose thoughts end up in book form, without bringing her any closer to any tangible answers.
The only worthwhile role in the film belongs to young Frankie McLaren as Marcus. Despite another early empty promise of unanswered questions prompted by the film's premise, his difficulty in making peace with the absence of his brother and best friend, does strike an emotional chord with viewers.
Only once Marcus connects with George through some fortuitous coincidences (aren't they all, in the movie world?) does the film finally start to show some sign of heading towards any sort of tangible rationale about what life after death might actually be like.
Kudos to Clint Eastwood in recreating a shocking tsunami (similar to the one seen in that part of the world in 2004), which prompted the director and Warner Brothers to pull this film out of theatres in Japan, given their recent troubles with a similar catastrophe. That opening shocker does make the rest of the film seem tame by comparison, but a weak script and slow pace is more to blame than an uneven distribution of effects-heavy visuals.
The Final Word on Hereafter
Does a film so aptly named offer much to the subject? Not even remotely. Might as well have called it In Search Of the Afterlife. The movie fails to keep its audience interested throughout, despite its characters' best attempts to find meaning to their common experience. In the end, though, the journey is such a long and boring one that you'll have given up on finding answers of your own.
Hereafter Blu-ray: 2 out of 5
Dominic Messier - Dominic Messier is a Toronto-based Film & TV writer, Sci-Fi TV and Film Dramas Topic Editor, and creator of PopCultureLandscape.com
