Hereafter Review

At the heart of the follies I’ve found in Clint Eastwood’s ‘Hereafter’ is a matter of highly personal views and distaste, and to write about the film without its inclusion would feel insincere and incomplete. The matter of personal distaste is I don’t much care for the afterlife.  Or rather my afterlife, or those around me. I don’t care about my death, because after it nothing will matter. Whether I end up in heaven, hell, or the endless fields of Elysium; it won’t matter. I’m dead; I can’t make any meaningful actions to affect my afterlife, other than trying to be a good person, which I do compulsively anyway. ‘Hereafter’ doesn’t make me care, but it does attempt to avoid this scepticism in two ways; one includes making it more about the different ways in which the dead affect the living (and often mourning) rather than vice versa. The second way includes severing its ‘version’ of the afterlife of all cultural, historical and religious ties, which counterproductively also limits its potential level of philosophy. The thinking probably is that this way it could be an all-encompassing perspective on the afterlife, and universally tap into all human emotions on the subject, rather than alienating anyone who isn’t of any religions alignment, or not educated in ancient cultures.  The folly here is that in striving to apply to everybody, it’s ultimately personal to nobody. This is only furthered by its anti-plot structure.

The structure here follows three separate protagonists on their very own stories which all intertwine at the end via coincidence. They include: Matt Damon, as man who earned a great living by exploiting his ability to communicate with the dead. He gave it all up, for the obvious existential reasons. Now he works a difficult construction job, trying to step out of the dead’s shadow (which his opportunistic brother continually reminds him of) There’s a French reporter whose career and lifestyle change drastically upon facing an NDE, which gives her powers similar to Damon. Finally a young British boy, who’s been taken away from his alcoholic (albeit loving) mother to stay with foster parents. Conveniently this coincides with the loss of his twin brother (who he treated as an older leader)

This is called an Anti-plot structure. It has its merits (Pulp Fiction, anyone?) but here it stifles the characters. As I’ve already said, from a philosophical standpoint the films idea of the afterlife is flawed and uninteresting at the first hurdle, but there is potential in making a story that highlights the personal woes of people whose lives revolve around the dead, and thus begin to lead morbid lifestyles. Unfortunately the mostly amble along meaninglessly.  The English boy spends all his time in the film looking to communicate with his brother, and finding nothing but pretentious speakers who don’t help. These scenes contain not a shred of development or rich characterization, and it’s only through sheer luck that he achieves his goal. And yet when that happens, the conclusion to his fraternal relationship amounts to nothing more than a generic ‘You have to grow up and stop needing me’ and ‘Mum needs you to look after her’ (Not exact quotes) The French lady is similarly ambling, as she essentially just takes a frenetic interest in the afterlife, eventually losing her job and becoming a writer. That’s really it, except drawn out mercilessly, with pointless meetings she has at work and with a one dimensionally demonized ‘bad boyfriend’  It’s hard to understand the point of the scenes with the boy and the woman, or where they’re leading, or why we should care. The screenplay does try so shamelessly hard to make you sympathize, though, with some graceless exploitation of real world events (the Boxing Day tsunami, and London underground bombing) which don’t amount to anything, and look as if they had walked out of a chintzy Roland Emmerich disaster film. It seems awfully backward for a screenwriter as acclaimed as Peter Morgan

The exception and highlight is the bulk of Matt Damon’s story, exempt of any manipulative exploitation. His dilemma is compelling from the outset. Building his career as a communicator with the dead brings up obvious existential stress. Is a man who talks more with the dead than the alive truly alive? Or a ghost? He is established as not very social, which seems to make sense. His only co-worker at his previous job was his brother, and the glimpse we get of his construction job has him working with relatively older looking men.  He has an awkward disposition and a cute fascination with Charles Dickens, both of which traits that Damon’s naturally plain honesty is suited to. He joins an Italian cooking class, and gets paired with an attractive and single woman (Just like always) Sure it has the air of a silly sitcom, but the lightness and humour is appreciated when the rest of the film is so indulgently lugubrious. It gets appropriately darker when Damon brings the girl home so they can cook dinner for themselves. There’s a growing sense of escalation in how Damon constantly tries evading any discussion about his past life, which makes for some healthy tension. Eventually she finds out (thanks to the omnipresent film entity known as the ‘automatic answering machine’) and begins to politely press him to show her. Again, Damon’s natural honesty is suited to when he eventually does. We learn that the girl had a complicated past with her father (alluding to sexual abuse) after finding out how real Damon’s powers were, she politely leaves. She isn’t at the next cooking class, nor in the rest of the film. The story is poignant on its own, but it also works as a tragedy on a symbolic level.  In order to commune with the dead, Damon must hold hands, which triggers a rush of that person’s mourning-related anxiety. Both in fiction and real-life, the reaching out of hands (particularly when in joining with another hand) is a universal sign of intimacy, and is used marvellously in a film like ‘Moon’, in which the extension of the hand marks the characters blind attempt to search for any sense of emotional attachment. Through this we learn, that symbolically Damon has been cursed to find a rush of cold emotions every time he would try to reach out and forge his own warm emotions. Despite this, his story is of too much paucity to make the film worth recommending, especially since Damon also has a disappointing conclusion. (His story ends on a romantic note, but it’s even more contrived and underdeveloped than the earlier cooking class dynamic)

Most disappointing though, is that this is a Clint Eastwood film. As with the most popular directors, Eastwood has achieved ‘auteur’ status, with his own idiosyncrasy; which is often a merger of the traditional iconic heroes he played, and his own original sensibility as a director. (See: Unforgiven, Gran Torino) That kind of unique filmmaking voice combined with a wide philosophical subject matter like the afterlife should amount to more. Eastwood instead distances himself stylistically from the film, much the same way its version of the afterlife is from any profound cultural or philosophical implications.

 - Taha