Hereafter

Apparently, I don't get Clint Eastwood. Eastwood is one of the prolific filmmakers in cinema; though you could barely compare their films in any other way, it's hard not to think of Eastwood in the same breath as Woody Allen. Both men are known for their work behind and in front of the camera, both are revered and getting on in years, and both somehow manage to make at least one movie per year (for Eastwood, this streak is more recent, but seemingly more impressive considering he's a few years older). Of course, unlike Eastwood, Allen writes his movies. Even if his work has fallen off in the past few years, it's still impressive that Woody Allen's able to write and direct his own films at such an elderly age. There's no ignoring the fact that these two men still working is a genuine pleasure unto itself. But that doesn't give them free passes.

I honestly do not want to think the worst of those critics who've come out in such favor of Hereafter. What I mean by this is that I don't want to sound like A.O. Scott did when he said of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, "There are, of course, those who will resist this conclusion [that the film is a strained and pointless contrivance], in part out of loyalty to Mr. Scorsese, a director to whom otherwise hard-headed critics are inclined to extend the benefit of the doubt." Now, because he's writing for the Grey Lady, and because he's A.O. Scott, my issue isn't with the writing style. I could just as easily say the same of those who love Hereafter, including people such as Kenneth Turan and...A.O. Scott. But I don't want to make such a sweeping generalization, as Scott did. Though it's well-written, what he writes boils down to the following: if you liked Shutter Island, then it's clearly only because you like Martin Scorsese too much to be honest. What he's saying if that if you liked the movie, you're wrong.

And, as much as too many film writers will say, facts and opinions are not the same thing. My opinion of Shutter Island is, to no one's shock (I'm sure), quite different from Mr. Scott's, and I know it has nothing to do with some fawning desire to not pan a Martin Scorsese film. Because of that, I'm going to hope that Scott's not doing what he accuses others of doing in regards to Hereafter. Part of the issue is as I stated initially: I do not get Clint Eastwood. Maybe it's better for me to say that I don't get what people like so much about his films. Eastwood, as director and actor, has made an unquestioned masterpiece: 1992's Unforgiven. I won't spend much time on the film but it's a brilliant examination and subversion of the figure Eastwood cut in various spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s. I'm also a fan, though marginally less so, of Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, so I'm not coming to this party as a perennial Eastwood hater.

But the years have passed, and the more I hear about movies like Changeling and Gran Torino and Invictus, I wonder if I'm watching the same film as those who champion them. Hereafter, it's worth pointing out, has not had a universally positive critical response, but some of the more notable critics have praised the film from top to bottom. And I don't know why. Hereafter is a movie that's almost entirely about how little effort Clint Eastwood puts into the films he makes these days. I should congratulate him for being able to make a relatively coherent feature-length film at the age of 80, but I shouldn't make that the entirety of the praise.

To me, Eastwood's first flaw is something that a surprising number of people consider a strength of his: simplicity. Many people will give the man hosannas for his unsophisticated, unstylish approach to storytelling. And, yeah, that can be a good thing in movies, but after a while, it gets tiresome. A movie about three people touched in various ways by what comes after we die is an intriguing, if done-before, premise, but making the story as dry and uninvolving in the process is not a good idea. What Hereafter is, most of the time, is slow. While only being about two hours long, this is not a movie that feels the need to move fast. Again, some people will say that's something worth cheering for, but not every non-action movie needs to move slow, just to balance out all those movies that go quickly.

The film is written by Peter Morgan, and whatever sparkling prose he may have invented for such films as The Queen and Frost/Nixon is absent here. On the one hand, I can see why he'd want to craft a two-hour film from three divergent stories that end up meeting in the climax. While Morgan's scripts for the other two films were nominated for awards, he might have wanted to do something different, to be experimental in some way. But there's no throughline here. After about an hour of a very common pattern (the first scene is about a female French journalist who dies for a minute in the wake of a tsunami, the second features a little boy whose twin brother dies, and the third follows an ex-psychic trying to make a normal life for himself), the question becomes, solely, "How do these three get in a room together?"

What's more, there's a follow-up: "Why should I care?" Yeah, I didn't get an answer to that one. For Morgan and Eastwood (who reportedly used the first draft of the script, because...well, why not, apparently), the answer is as vague as the visions of the afterlife we're given via Matt Damon's character, George. What's interesting is that each of the stories, by themselves, could make for an engaging film. By cutting the stories up, all Eastwood does is make me want to go back to the character I was just with. Damon fares best here, because he's most comfortable in the role of a guy who just wants to be normal, and has forced his life into normality as awkwardly as you'd imagine. Cecile De France is not bad, but not particularly noteworthy, as Marie, the journalist who decides to discover what she can about the afterlife to shocking results--or so we're told.

This is the final nail in the coffin of Hereafter. In a key late scene, Marie is confronting a publisher who is turning down her proposal for a book about the hereafter, saying that she has had to deal with major prejudice from religious and political factions in writing her book. This is a seriously surprising turn of events, especially since we've seen absolutely no evidence of it. The only person who ends up really doubting her is the douche she was sleeping with. Eastwood, like the most elementary and unknowing creative writer, chooses to tell us, not show, even in his better films. I've been told I should like Clint Eastwood's most recent films by some critics, but as of late, I've seen no evidence that proves otherwise. Someone needs to show me what I've been missing, because I see nothing in Hereafter that changes my mind.