CAST: Matt Damon, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jay Mohr, Richard Kind, Cécile De France, Lyndsey Marshal, Mylène Jampanoï, Steve Schirripa, Marthe Keller, Niamh Cusack; DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood; WRITER: Peter Morgan; GENRE: Suspense/Thriller; RUNNING TIME: 129 min.
Technical: 4
Moral: 3
Rating: V 14 (14 years old and above)
An illness in the childhood of George Lonegan (Matt Damon) gave him the ability to communicate with the recently departed. Becoming a celebrated psychic, he realizes he cannot ever enjoy a normal life if it is spent connecting with the dead. He hides from the public by working in a warehouse in San Francisco, but somehow is found by people needing to communicate with their dear departed or to simply understand death. One of them is a French television reporter Marie LeLay (Cecile De France) who, on a holiday with her producer-lover (Thierry Neuvic), goes through a near-death experience that changes her life. Another is a widower who is distraught over his wife’s sudden death. Then there is also a young boy Marcus (Frankie McLaren) who cannot get over losing his beloved twin brother Jason (George McLaren). It seems George cannot escape his mysterious ability which people say is a gift but which he sees as a curse.
If you’ve ever seen a perfectly braided hairdo, you will note that its beauty depends on balance, as the hair is divided into three equal parts which are made to criss-cross over one another to form a perfect braid. That is the image Hereafter evokes, with its three separate tales involving death somehow skillfully woven until they are revealed to be part of one whole story that bears a powerful message about death. The master weaver here is Clint Eastwood, getting even better as a director at age 80. The plot is seamless and the treatment of the subject of communicating with the dead handled with discretion, prudence, and—again—balance. No mushiness, no fear-inducing special effects, no notions that make death larger than life while plumbing the depths of feelings and thoughts that haunt people who have been confronted with death. Nothing more, or less, may be asked of Damon’s acting; watching him the viewer does not see the actor but the character, a gifted man who refuses to buckle under the weight of his gift. Technically at least, Hereafter deserves an Oscar.
The three main characters consulting the psychic do not know one another. They are separated by space, their circumstances in life cocoon them from the rest of the world, and yet their individual world share a gloom that every man in their situation must inevitably face. It is a gloom that a person must learn to grapple with by himself to understand and accept, but in time the gloom gives way to light. Hereafter is a film that can make you think about your own mortality, even as you try to understand other people’s loss by it. There is something to be learned, too, from the psychic’s attitude towards his unusual ability. In the film, the psychic’s feet are firmly anchored to the ground—while he cannot question that he has an unusual ability, he is not awed by it nor overwhelmed by people adulation of him. Hereafter presents a sensible view that may be good for viewers to adopt, particularly in our culture where such abilities are all too quickly accepted as “powers” and “gifts” that put the psychic several notches above the average man.
