Mommy, what happens when we die?

HEREAFTER (2010)

The film opens with a scene, which captures the devastation of the 2004 Tsunami. It's a spine chilling sequence. Especially now with the same happening in Japan, the timing of this film’s release in India couldn’t be more coincidental. A filmmaker like Roland Emmerich (2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day) could have made an action flick, a story about massive destruction or the apocalypse (pick one) and the viewer being glued to the screen watching one tsunami take down a city, then a hurricane taking down another one, people trying to survive and yes, surviving! I admit that is also fun sometimes. In a strangely perverse way, maybe.

 

Clint Eastwood, on the other hand, is not bothered by that. 

He is more interested in what happens after the disaster. The hereafter. Although, the “hereafter” referred to in the title is one of the afterlife. Matt Damon plays George Lonegan, a psychic who can communicate with the dead. He’s the real deal. The film shows us the quacks and the real ones so that we believe him. He doesn’t want to do it anymore. He wants to have a normal life. By normal, he means, meet a nice girl, get married, and make a family. This does pay off as he meets Melanie played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who is so likeable and alluring, that it pains me to see an actress of her caliber not getting the right movies and roles. Sadly, she has been in every movie that tanked. (The Village, Lady in the Water, Terminator Salvation, Spider-Man 3). I hope her luck changes after this and Twilight: Eclipse.

I’ve seen that this film is not being received well by people. By this I mean friends, critics and the box office in general. I feel this is so because if a filmmaker of Eastwood’s stature makes a film like about the “hereafter”, we are expecting to go in and find some answers about death. What it all means? Where do we go after we die? Right?

Wrong! That’s where we are making a mistake, not the filmmaker. He is only exploring some truths about life. I’m a major Clint Eastwood fan. (Bias?) His quiet, contemplative style of filmmaking is right up my alley. He doesn’t pace up things. Patient, calm, leading up to a resolution the way it should. His minimalist use of music. His flair for taking out wonderful performances. For example, the little twin boys Marcus and Jason. (Frankie McLaren and George McLaren). Their story plucked out my heartstrings. I just couldn’t see that little boy go through that.

The thing that is wonderful about Hereafter is the way the screenplay is constructed. It doesn’t seem like a film about three stories, yet it is. Usually when you have multiple storylines, you are able to clearly differentiate between them. Here, it seems like one story. Because it is. Not like you can’t differentiate but its juxtaposition is so seamless that you almost forget you jumped to the other storyline. Peter Morgan, the screenwriter who also wrote Frost/Nixon (2008) and The Queen (2006), knows this. Clint Eastwood responds to it. Apart from its construction, I love the movie for what it has to say (or not). It is more about fate and loss than about the metaphysical. It doesn’t say, come I’ll show you why death exists and why we die or why we lose people. Instead, it says we lose our loved ones but we gain loved ones too. It doesn’t provide answers about life. It shows life. It doesn’t exactly give you a warm fuzzy feeling but it leaves you with optimism. The cerebral kind, if not the emotional kind.

This film is not for people who don’t like slow films. I on the other hand, think calling a film “slow” is absolutely ridiculous. How fast are our lives anyway? If you have seen Clint Eastwood’s films and like them, you will not mind the pacing.

RATING: *****