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Hereafter starts off with one helluva opening scene that, with recent events devastating Japan, is horrifying. We are taken to Some-Such resort town located in a non-descript Latin country that is situated near the sea. A beautiful French woman named Marie (Cecile De France) leaves her lover in bed to do some last minute shopping before they head back home. While browsing the local jewelry found in the street market near her hotel, an enormous tsunami slams into the city, sweeping Marie and many of the locals up in its fury.
The moment is exhilarating and frightening as it realistically places you in the midst of the chaos. Director Clint Eastwood knows how to start his movie off with a powerful burst to grasp the viewer’s attention. (Speculation: This film is Executive Produced by Steven Spielberg and it is easy to guess that he did more than just help with the storyboards on this scene. The footage has his fingerprints all over it.)
What follows this breathtaking introduction (the rest of the film), however, is a lot of slow moving, plodding storytelling that never lives up the promise hinted at in the first handful of minutes. This makes Hereafter a very off kilter movie-going experience that frustrates more than anything else.
The supernatural drama follows three seemingly unrelated characters as they all struggle with mortality and what is waiting once we are gone from this world. There is Marie, who decides to write a book after her near-death experience in Some-Such, Mexico and nearly loses everything in the process. In London we meet young Marcus (Frankie and George McLaren) who has lost his twin brother in a terrible accident and can’t seem to find a way to move on. Finally there is sad George (Matt Damon) who is the most psychic person ever to read a palm or say a sooth. This guy talks to the dead just by touching your hand. His gift (curse) is unwanted and he goes through life alone and searching for that special someone who will accept him for who and what he is.
Is there something waiting after us after we die? This is the important question that Eastwood tackles here with Hereafter. And the conclusion is: Yes. What the film doesn’t do is define it or explore it. The answer is definitive, we see it as some place filled with blinding white light and populated with spirits that seem to spend there time standing in place. But why it is there is and what is there goes unrealized.
There is also a major issue with pacing. The movie bogs and sloths along with very little to do or say. To illustrate: much of the film takes place in cooking classes and book reading expos and they are boring ones at that. Also, of the three plotlines, only the storyline about George the Mega-Physic offers any intrigue. This is mostly due to Damon’s performance as he inhabits George completely and gives us a character that we haven’t seen him play before. Anytime the film leaves him, it drops all momentum.
To be fair, Eastwood’s cinematic output is awe-inspiring as he is able to produce one or two films a year. With that sort of turnout his material can be hit (Gran Turino, Mystic River) or miss (The Changeling, Blood Work) as the quantity affects the quality. He definitely fares better than his weaker counterpart, Woody Allen, who works at the same clip and nearly always misses the mark. Hereafter isn’t one of his best films but that’s fine. Eastwood will be coming out with another one in a couple of months.