|
Hereafter
| Released |
28 January 2011 |
| Director |
Clint Eastwood |
Starring
|
Matt Damon, Cécile de France, Frankie McLaren, George McLaren, Jay Mohr, Bryce Dallas Howard, Marthe Keller, Thierry Neuvic, Derek Jacobi |
| Writer(s) |
Peter Morgan |
Producer(s)
|
Clint Eastwood, Kathleen Kennedy, Robert Lorenz |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
123 minutes |
| Genre |
Drama |
| Rating |
12A |
|
|
R.I.P.
The latest directorial venture from Clint Eastwood is a meditation on death, tragedy and what lies beyond this mortal coil written by the acclaimed Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon). The story travels the globe, following three people who have experienced death and whose lives become woven together. Sounds impressive doesn’t it?
Well, Hereafter certainly starts dramatically, with a horribly realistic sequence of a tsunami hitting a picture perfect Asian coastal town. With the 2003 tsunami still fresh in all our memories, this is a hugely impressive and suitably upsetting sequence that introduces us to Marie Lelay (Cecile De France), a successful French journalist who narrowly avoids drowning and who is changed by an apparent glimpse at the afterlife. Meanwhile, in London a young boy from a troubled homelife loses his twin brother in an accident and cannot accept the loss. In America, George Lonegan (Matt Damon) attempts to put his career as a medium behind him and live a normal life.
Peter Morgan is usually a safe pair of hands but the globe-trotting, multi-stranded narrative collapses under the weight of cliché, coincidence and an inflated sense of self importance. When the characters finally encounter each other at a book fair in Alexandra Palace in London it is with a groan of implausibility rather than a satisfied sigh. It’s all more Babel than Magnolia. Not only this, but astonishingly, he has failed to give the film even one involving character. The three central characters share an impenetrable blankness. In actor’s workshops no doubt they would say they were internalised performances but they are deeply unmoving.
More troubling though were the evocations of the tsunami and the London underground bombings. These tragic events are footnotes here - only of relevance in their connection to the central characters. The tsunami that begins the film is only of importance in that it sets in motion Marie’s journey of discovery. She, like George, has been negatively effected by her encounter with death, becoming closed off to anything except her own experiences. While the staff at a publishing house watch horrified the events unfolding from the London bombing, Marie just looks vaguely distracted, more interested in pursuing her own investigation of the afterlife than the tragedy unfolding before her.
The final meeting of George and Marie only further compounds the fact that for all its posturing, Hereafter is a very shallow piece of filmmaking.
-
Linda O’Brien |
