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 (102210)
Hereafter is of those beautifully impossible words,
a composite of contradictory terms, whose literal meaning is as elusive as the
thing it represents. Hereafter, Clint Eastwood's film about facing death and
finding life, is similarly elusive. Death is not an abstract concept. It is the
punctuation mark at the end of a life sentence whose finality causes us to
bubble-wrap it in the opposite of a creation myth. No one knows what happens
after we die, but the belief that an afterlife exists is a solace to many.
The stories are told individually in parallel fashion, and the events that occur
range from the spectacular to the mundane. Eastwood cuts from one to another in
the fragmented style of, say, "Babel,"
before tying them in a slipknot of a resolution that will cause many to ask, "Is
that all there is?" The answer, on first blush, is yes.
But "Hereafter," made in the ghostly image of the concept it explores, lingers
after it's gone. It is less surprising that Eastwood, who just turned 80,
wonders what if anything comes next, than that he remains so prolific an artist.
Eastwood is less of a lion in winter than a creature of habit, prowling for
ideas and creating films as wildly varied as "Changeling," "Gran Torino" and "Invictus."
And this pursuit, and what little time he may have left to conduct it, gives
"Hereafter" urgency and resonance. It is not his most accessible work; it has a
literal and procedural quality that some will regard as ambiguous and
meandering. But knowing that it is part of a continuum adds dimension and
meaning.
This is Eastwood exploring the wilderness between being and nothingness, and
reporting back with his findings. They are inconclusive. His gauzy limbo of an
afterlife may be a nice place to visit, but you don't want to live there. And
nothing much happens in the film, except traumatized people helping each other
come to terms with whatever is haunting them.
Though the main characters of Clint Eastwood’s HEREAFTER have all been
profoundly affected by their brushes with the afterlife, the film is about
anything but death. Rather, it is how each of them copes here after the
experiences that have altered their lives irrevocably. Screenwriter Peter Morgan
skillfully weaves together three stories that move inevitably towards one
another, resonating and reverberating back and forth, building almost
imperceptibly to a conclusion that embraces a comforting sense of synchronicity
lurking beneath a veneer of random events.
The film begins with an externalization of the unsettling, engulfing sense of
the impermanence of life and the utter finality of death. In it Marie Lelay
(Cecile de France), a rich and successful television journalist, is caught in an
Indonesian tsunami. In a harrowing special effects sequence that mixes chaos and
quiet, Marie is pulled along by the violent waves and knocked unconscious by the
debris. This is when she experiences a vision of what she comes to understand as
the afterlife. It’s not an understanding that convinces her producer, who is
also her lover, that she is recovered enough to return to work. Her obsession
begins to chip away at her, and by extension the life she has led until then.
In San Francisco, George Lonegan (Matt Damon) has tried for three years to put
his ability to speak to the dead behind him, as well as any connection in this
life beyond the one with his brother, Billy, (Jay Mohr). Preferring to work a
forklift and live a life that isn’t about death, George succumbs to one last
reading for a special client of his brother‘s. Billy chides him for ignoring his
duty to help people through their grief, not understanding the toll their joint
business took on George. Physical contact with another person is an instant
connection to those who have died in that person’s life, no matter how
unpleasant, yet George still craves the company of others, even if it‘s the
formal setting of a cooking class with small talk and tomato sauce.
In London, 12-year-old Marcus is dealing with the accidental death of his twin
brother, Jason, and the subsequent placement in a foster home by withdrawing
from everyone. Kindly social workers, well-meaning foster parents barely
register with him as he single-mindedly pursues every preternatural avenue
available to him in a desperate attempt to contact Jason whose presence is
palpable to him even though he is now ashes in an urn.
The story cuts back and forth between the three, but never quite leaving any of
them behind. A discussion of a Sikh uprising during a news meeting Marie attends
is followed by Jason’s perfunctory funeral, which is followed by one in which
the deceased is a Sikh. George works at the C&H Sugar factory. In London, he
stays as a hotel whose logo is C-H. There is the irony that George likes nothing
better than to listen to audio books of Dickens being read aloud, while refusing
to do readings for others, or profoundly regretting the one he does for a new
acquaintance (Bryce Dallas Howard, fragile and beautiful as a porcelain doll).
There is more than just an irony, but also a sense of inevitability that when he
first sees Marie, she is reading aloud during a business trip to London.
Brilliant light illuminates as much as it throws into shadow. Simple but
profound music, composed by Eastwood, provides a sweetly melancholy descant to
the desperate loneliness of these people’s lives. Throughout, with the spare
quality that is trademark Eastwood, the mood is rich in profound emotion, the
silences provided by measured dialogue, provides the space for the entire canvas
of human emotions to appear. Performances are deceptively quiet, Damon as the
everyman with a gift he can’t fathom. Lelay strong yet vulnerable when her world
falls apart. Especially the McLaren twins, who each play Marcus in turn. As they
sit facing each other while their drug-addicted mother stumbles into their flat
and then drags herself up the stairs, the mirror images of their faces tell the
story of their lives to that point without a word.
There is a Buddhist sense of compassion for these lost souls, and the ones that
surround them, balanced with the longing of each character’s need to connect to
the living and the dead. Yet the film as a whole is one of intensity and passion
that is subsumed by the unknowns in this life and the next.
HEREAFTER is about faith, but not religion. That point is made without
equivocation by the hospice administrator (Marthe Keller) Marie consults for
answers. An avowed atheist, she has nonetheless followed with an open mind the
evidence collected from those who have, she believes, glimpsed the other side.
It proposes a fierce universe, but one where things happen for a reason, and in
this it is as profoundly comforting as it is overwhelmingly lyrical.
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