Hereafter: A Journey into the Unknown...In More Ways Than One

Clint Eastwood is a formidable director. When he is on he can make powerful, gripping films like Million Dollar Baby or Unforgiven. When he is off, he makes films that are enjoyable but don’t coalesce in a meaningful way, like Invictus. After watching Hereafter, it is clear that Eastwood is off his game.

Hereafter is being sold as a drama centered around Matt Damon, which isn’t the case. In actuality, the story centers around three protagonists: Marie Lelay (Cécile De France) a wealthy, young, famous French journalist; Marcus (George and Frankie McLaren) a low class kid from London, and George Lonegan (Damon) a blue collar factory worker in San Francisco that gave up a successful life as a psychic. Each one of the characters has been affected by death. Marie nearly drowned during a tsunami that devastated the town she was vacationing in. Marcus lost his twin brother Jason in a car accident. And George can connect with and speak with the dead. Each character searches for a way to deal with death, whether they want to know where we go when we die or speak with someone who has died or try to ignore it altogether. This thread of obsession with death is what unites all the characters’ storylines. That is, until they are all brought together at the same location through a series of contrived events. Although, admittedly, not as contrived as they could have been.

The film sets up a lot of interesting paths and avenues of exploration to explore the topic of death and an afterlife, but ultimately, does pay off any of them. Also, the film moves at a rather slow pace and spends such a long time setting up ideas that the lack of completion on these ideas is all the more disappointing.

For instance, the idea religion plays on an afterlife. Religion is totally dismissed in this movie. In fact, the words heaven and hell are never even uttered. In the few moments that we do see religious figures, they are painted in unfavorable lights. The priest at Marcus’s brother Jason’s funeral gives a rushed service and is brusque and uncaring towards Marcus. He just cares about incinerating the body so he can move the next one through. When Marcus begins to search online for answers, he runs across a series of YouTube videos from different religious leaders preaching their message. Not only do their statements come off as vapid, but flat out stupid. Religion being wrong is an interesting idea. But this is the limit of that exploration. Perhaps this is a good thing. It saves Eastwood having to debate the divinity of the afterlife and running afoul by choosing one religion over the other. Instead the film treats the idea in a more scientific manner.

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