Eastwood looks at life and death
– and the connection between them
The opening sequence of Clint Eastwood’s latest film
”
Hereafter
”
is the most dramatic in the movie, in many ways. The film is a
quiet one, where the scenery and the actions of the actors often
reveal more about them than their words.
Eastwood looks at life and death – and the connection between them
The opening sequence of Clint Eastwood’s latest film “Hereafter” is the most dramatic in the movie, in many ways. The film is a quiet one, where the scenery and the actions of the actors often reveal more about them than their words.
The story by Peter Morgan starts with Marie LeLay (Cecile De France), a well-known French journalist, who is in Sri Lanka for a story on child labor in Southeast Asia. It’s 2004. The actors speak in French, with English captions on the screen.
Marie heads out from her oceanfront hotel to buy gifts for her boyfriend’s kids. Didier (Thierry Neuvic) stays behind in bed, waiting for room service. While she is out looking at handmade bracelets, she and the vendor keepers realize something is wrong as trees in the distance start to topple. Marie is experiencing the infamous tsunami that hit the island in 2004. At first she tries to hold on to a young local girl’s hand, but they are separated in the rushing water. The water flattens trees and sends cars rushing downstream. Marie’s head is hit between a wooden balcony and a vehicle. She loses consciousness and goes under.
Rescue workers pull Marie from the water and perform mouth to mouth on her. They think she is dead, but then she coughs up some water. She wanders the dry highlands of the island and finds Didier has also survived.
From there, Eastwood divides his screen time between Marie, George Lonegan (Matt Damon) and twins Marcus and Jason (played by Frankie and George McLaren.) George has a gift, or so his brother Billy (Jay Mohr), keeps telling him. To George, it is a curse. George is a psychic who when he touches someone’s hand can connect to their dead loved ones. He used to use his talent to earn a living, but has since given it up.
He makes an exception for Christos (Richard Kind), a client of Billy’s whose wife has passed after a long illness. George asks Christos to keep his answers to yes or no, as he describes the dead person he is seeing and shares information with him. Christos’ wife gives him the OK to fall in love again and apologizes for her long illness. George is visibly uncomfortable with the situation.
George goes to sleep listening to books on tape, as though he is trying to block something out in order to get to sleep.
In London, twin brothers Marcus and Jason are having their portrait taken by a photographer. They pay with a pile of coins and return to their flat. This is one of the scenes were Eastwood reveals plenty without the boys saying a word. The apartment is dingy. The boys eat at a small kitchen table. There is little in the cupboards or the refrigerator. There is no sign of an adult in the house. So when their mother Jackie (Lyndsey Marshal) comes home intoxicated, it’s expected.
The boys cover for their mother when social workers show up at their home for a visit. They get her acting sober enough that the social workers don’t immediately remove them from the home. After they go, Jackie wants to send one of the boys to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for her. She tells Marcus to go, but Jason, who is the older of the boys by a few minutes, says he will go because Marcus has homework to finish.
While out, Jason is chased into the street by bullies and he is hit by a car. It is the kind of happenstance that leaves his surviving brother wracked with guilt.
For all three characters, the crux of the movie is that they are trying to return to normal despite what has happened to them. George works at a C&H sugar factory and starts a cooking class at night, in hopes of having a normal life. Marie returns to work on her broadcast show. Marcus moves in with a foster family as his mother goes into rehabilitation. For all of the characters, finding that normal setting is not so easy.
George meets a girl in his cooking class, Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard.) He tries to keep his ability secret from her, though she is quite open with him about her past. Just when it seems like he has a chance of something with her, she finds out he is a psychic and begs him for a reading. He tells her that if he does the reading it will ruin any chance they have. He knows from experience. And when he touches her hand, as honest and open as she has been, he learns a secret about her that she doesn’t want him to know.
Marie, in the meantime, is having trouble concentrating at work. She can’t stop thinking about her near-death experience and becomes obsessed with it despite the damage it could do to her career. Marcus, too, has become obsessed with finding a way to talk to his dead brother.
It takes a while to get there, but circumstances will eventually bring the three together in a way that seems a lot like destiny. The only problem with the movie is that with the dramatic opening, I wanted something more dramatic at the end. Though the ending is satisfying, it ends a bit too softly.
