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Year after year, director Clint Eastwood continues to release the kind of moving dramas that consistently top critics’ annual top-10 lists. Writer Peter Morgan, meanwhile, has penned some positively captivating screenplays—from The Queen to Frost/Nixon. Put them together, and it seems like you’d be pretty safe to expect an unforgettable Oscar front-runner with crisp dialogue and powerful performances. So how the pairing produced a subdued and reserved film like Hereafter is a mystery.
Hereafter follows three characters whose lives are touched by death. Parisian journalist Marie LeLay (Cécile De France) is on vacation with her boyfriend when a tsunami strikes. Marie is caught up in the sudden flooding and is knocked unconscious. Before she’s resuscitated, she has a hazy vision that deeply affects her even after she returns home.
Marcus and Jason (George and Frankie McLaren) are twin boys living in London with their addict mom. Marcus, the more timid of the two, relies on his outgoing brother for everything—so when Jason is killed, Marcus begins searching for a way to stay connected to the brother he lost.
After a childhood brush with death left him with psychic abilities, George (Matt Damon) turned his gift into a profession. But after years of communing with the dead, he’s decided to try to live a normal life. Still, no matter how hard he tries to deny his abilities, people keep coming to him, begging for his help.
After the exuberant drama of Eastwood’s Invictus and the engaging character development of Morgan’s The Damned United, I was hoping for more of the same from Hereafter: a riveting story with strong characters and a memorable message. Instead, Hereafter is surprisingly hazy and washed-out—both visually and emotionally.
Though the story explores a fascinating topic, the storytelling is languid, wandering aimlessly in and out of the characters’ lives. At the same time, subplots and minor characters come and go with little rhyme or reason—like Bryce Dallas Howard’s Melanie, who turns out to be a surprisingly pointless character.
Meanwhile, all three of the main characters are all struggling with difficult experiences: the loss of a loved one, a brush with death, or a connection to the afterlife causing a disconnection to real life. But their inability to cope with their experiences makes them seem more like ghosts than living, breathing characters.
Because the film is divided into three stories, the character development suffers even more—and we never really get the chance to connect to the characters. Damon gives another solid performance, which helps to give his character some depth—but even he feels shadowy and weak. And when the three stories come together in the end, the outcome is disappointingly anti-climactic.
The ethereal theme is definitely an interesting departure for Eastwood. But, aside from a couple of great scenes, the heavy, muted drama of Hereafter falls short of his—and Morgan’s—typically powerful storytelling.
Blu-ray Review:
The special features menu on the Hereafter Blu-ray release includes just two items—but that doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to get through them in just a couple of minutes. If you want to take in everything that this release has to offer, you’ll have to set aside more than two hours for the extras alone.
For insights into the filmmaking process, there’s Step into the Hereafter, which is broken up into nine focus points (which you can then choose to watch within the movie or on their own). These focus points take viewers behind the scenes of the tsunami scene, discuss other filmmaking topics like locations and casting, and even include discussions about twins, near-death experiences, and mediums. For the most part, they aren’t the typical making-of topics, but they do provide interesting insights into the film. And even if you aren’t interested in the more spiritual topics, the first focus point (on the tsunami scene) is definitely worth a look.
The disc also includes an extended, feature-length version of Robert Schickel’s documentary, The Eastwood Factor (an excerpt of which was included on the Invictus Blu-ray release). While taking a walk through the Warner Bros. backlot with the legendary director, the feature also takes a walk through his remarkable career. Filled with anecdotes and clips from Eastwood’s most beloved movies, this feature alone will make the Blu-ray purchase worthwhile for Eastwood’s fans.
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