In the vast and varied filmographies of Hollywood legends, few are as lengthy and fruitful as Clint Eastwood’s. In a career spanning over six decades, Eastwood has established himself as a titan of cinema, moving effortlessly between acting, directing, and producing. However, within such a monumental body of work, it is inevitable that certain titles will be less known than others, sometimes slipping into obscurity or even being forgotten, despite possessing strong casts or unusual and intriguing subject matter. One such example is the 2010 drama Hereafter. While Eastwood is rightly celebrated for his muscular Westerns and gritty thrillers, this film represents a significant, if flawed, departure into the metaphysical, a territory that, while ambitious, often struggles to find its footing within his established oeuvre.
The narrative architecture of Hereafter is complex, weaving together the lives of three distinct characters separated by geography, culture, and circumstance. Firstly, there is Marie Lelay (Cecile de France), a prominent French television journalist who survives a devastating encounter with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Thailand. Awakened from death and haunted by paranormal experiences, she becomes obsessed with the possibility of an afterlife. Secondly, we have George Lonegan (Matt Damon), a former psychic in San Francisco who has renounced his abilities to live a normal life, much to the frustration of his brother Billy (Jay Mohr). Finally, there are the 12-year-old twin brothers, Jason and Marcus (Frankie and George McLaren), living in social housing in London with their heroin-addicted mother Jackie (Lyndsey Marshal); they face the imminent possibility of separation due to social services' concerns over their mother's deteriorating condition.
The film meticulously demonstrates how these disparate fates eventually converge in a tapestry of loss and longing. Marie’s brush with death transforms her into an obsession, causing her to abandon a lucrative contract to write about a former president Mitterand and spurning her sceptical boyfriend Didier (Thierry Neuvic). Simultaneously, George’s attempt at normalcy crumbles as he loses his job and his romantic relationship with Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard) unravels when her father's spirit is revealed. George eventually relents to his brother's urging to reopen his psychic practice, impulsively travelling to London to visit the Charles Dickens Museum.
In London, Marcus has suffered a grievous loss when his brother is struck by a car. Despite being placed in a foster home, Marcus is consumed by grief and seeks out mediums, eventually surviving the 7/7 London Underground bombings because he missed his train to retrieve his brother's cap blown off by the wind. The convergence reaches its climax at the London Book Fair, where George, Marcus, and Marie cross paths; George delivers a reading that helps the boy communicate with his deceased brother, allowing him to move on, and sparks a mutual attraction with Marie.
The subject of exploring the concept of the afterlife and humanity's ways of coping with loss constitutes a somewhat unusual venture for Eastwood, a director whose public face has rarely strayed from rugged masculinity and stoicism. Unsurprisingly, the project originated as a spec script by the British writer Peter Morgan, renowned for The Crown, and was originally intended for Steven Spielberg. When Eastwood eventually took the reins, his interest lay primarily in how Morgan had masterfully intertwined recent, highly publicised real-world events—the 2004 tsunami and the 2005 London bombings—into a cohesive narrative. The production was a logistical undertaking of considerable complexity, involving locations on multiple continents and a budget of $50 million. The film is undoubtedly at its most effective in the opening sequence, where Eastwood reconstructs the horror of the tsunami with a degree of technical skill and visceral immediacy that is genuinely impressive.
However, this sequence serves as the film’s primary structural weakness. Because the opening is so overwhelmingly powerful, overwhelming the senses and setting a bar of high drama that is difficult to maintain, everything that follows it inevitably appears lame, banal, and boring by comparison. This disparity does not render the entire production devoid of merit. Matt Damon delivers a solid performance, portraying a character burdened by what many see as a gift but which he views as a source of affliction. Nevertheless, he is slightly overshadowed by Cecile de France, whose performance is more convincing but still failing to anchor the film’s emotional core because of lacking focus.
Like many of Eastwood’s works from the later stages of his career, Hereafter suffers from pacing issues. The storyline tracking George’s financial woes and romantic misadventures feels overlong and riddled with clichés, dragging down the narrative momentum. Furthermore, the subplot involving the twin brothers feels somewhat disconnected from the main threads, lacking the necessary narrative weight to justify its inclusion. Ultimately, despite the film’s attempt to provide a glimmer of light and optimism after subjecting the audience to so much heartbreak and misery, the conclusion is anti-climactic and feels overly simplistic, leaning too heavily into a conventional Hollywood ending that fails to satisfy the emotional build-up established in the preceding hours.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
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