George (Matt Damon) is a blue-collar American with a special connection to the afterlife dating from his childhood. French journalist Marie (Cécile de France) has a near-death experience that shakes her reality. And when London schoolboy Marcus (Frankie and George McLaren) loses the person closest to him, he desperately needs answers. Each seeking the truth, their lives will intersect, forever changed by what they believe might – or must – exist in the hereafter. Academy Award winner* Clint Eastwood directs this haunting original tale from a screenplay by two-time Oscar nominee* Peter Morgan. Jay Mohr, Bryce Dallas Howard, Marthe Keller and Derek Jacobi also star.
The movie certainly is original and welcomed. Eastwood took a chance by telling a supernatural story that is very out of the ordinary for the famed director. The good part about said story is that Matt Damon, Cécile de France and the McLaren twins are perfect for their leads. Damon, who is an actor that has slowly grown on me, nails the isolated George perfectly. He creates a normal feeling around George that allows the audience to buy into the fact that he has this supernatural gift. At first, it’s goofy when he’s reading for Richard Kind’s Christos, as you simply think this is pretty dull. As you see his gift established and you understand the character’s anguish not only with the readee, but also with how people perceive him you slowly begin to understand the character’s hesitancy with contacting the afterlife. Damon builds this character’s loneliness up perfectly, which makes the end of the movie that much sweeter.
As for the other characters, Cécile de France does a superb job with creating a secondary life for her rich reporter persona Marie. I think Eastwood’s decision to introduce her character first really establishes the entire story and how badly this ‘hereafter’ affects everyone’s life in the film. Her ending is as equally as powerful as Damon’s.
Finally, the McLaren twins had the most heartbreaking story out of the movie. I won’t go into the details, but just prepare yourself with tissues (especially towards the ending). Their ability to sell who they are and what situation they are in during the first five minutes of introduction to their characters is nothing short of brilliant. When the ‘situation’ strikes you’re already with the kids feeling pretty awful.
With all this said, there were some issues with Hereafter. The biggest issue of the film was broken into two halves; pacing and story balance. I’m not sure what Eastwood had in mind, but the film should have been no more than an hour and half. Somehow Eastwood and crew squeezed two hours out of this and it seemed much too long. I know traditionally his films run somewhere around two and a half hours, but this one didn’t need anything close to that. By the end of the film you were just wondering where the ending was going to be, which is a bad thing for an audience to think about.
The issue of story balance was probably the most severe out of the two, as you won’t be able to detect where the film was going until towards the end. Sometimes that is a good thing, but for this movie specifically it created a horrible imbalance. There was way too much time spent with Marie, not enough with the Marcus and Jason, and certainly not enough time with George. If George truly was the main character, as the trailer dictates, he should have been in it more. We needed more information about George’s distaste for reading, and just other examples With that said, the other equation in the imbalance is when characters appear in the story. The viewer never anticipates a change over from story to story and that’s never a good thing.
Are those two things big? Yeah, they’re big because your challenge as a filmmaker is to capture someone’s attention and make them invest their emotional time into your story and characters. The imbalance creates a disconnection from the overall body of work and the audience will capture moments, but not ingest the entire film.
With that said, I think this was a chance that Eastwood took by telling this sort of story. While flawed, the story of feeling the ultimate level of loneliness is still somewhat powerful. Hereafter is certainly worth a once through.
As for the Blu-ray portion of the film, it looked great. While Eastwood’s style is to shoot darker scenes with less color, there are still moments (especially in the opening scenes) where you’ll sit back and say, “Wow, that looks good.” The colors in the majority of this film may not completely shine in 1080p, but there are no artifacts or graininess for your eyes to compete with when showing on a large HD screen. I think this is a very solid Blu-ray release in terms of quality. The audio is damn good, too. It comes to you in DTS-HD 5.1 and it especially sounds solid in the opening scene (that opening scene really does set the mood of the entire film perfectly).
As for special features, here’s what you’re looking at:
◦ The Eastwood Factor: 90 minute documentary, first time in HD
◦ 9 featurettes with Clint Eastwood and Matt Damon exploring the world of skeptics, psychics and mediums, and the possibility of life after death
– Tsunami! Recreating a Disaster
– Is There Life After Death?
– Clint on Casting
– Delving into the Hereafter
– Twin Bonding
– French Speaking French
– Why The White Light?
– Hereafter’s Locations
– “Casting” the Silent Characters
– The Eastwood Experience
◦ DVD version of the film
◦ Digital Copy of the film on Disc
The features on here are positively interesting, which makes for a good experience. The 90 minute documentary is pretty damn nice. The other features, which are more related to the film, seem to fit the bill. In some ways they are a bit more entertaining, but that’s because they’re in shorter bursts. Overall, the features are great and somewhat exceed the main body of work.
Available on Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD, On Demand and for Download 3/15! http://bit.ly/HereafterFB