Film review: Hereafter (Director: Clint Eastwood)

Clint Eastwood has made a career as a director dealing with the big issues of humanity: hope, despair, life, death, grief and loss have never been far from his films. They depict individual destinies opening the perspectiv on something bigger, more general, universal even. So it does not come as a surprise that death is at the heart of Eastwood's latest film. Hereafter asks a question few allow themselves to talk aboutbut which an 80-year-old filmmaker may be forgiven to deal with: Is there anything that comes after death and if so what is it?

There are three storylines, each focussing on one protagonist: the successful French journalist who has a near-death experience when she almost drowns during the tsunami; the young English boy who loses his twin brother who gets hit by a car while being chased by a gang of teenager; the American psychic who can talk to the dead but considers this "gift" as a curse. Three people searching for answers and who destiny pulls into brief encounters at the London Book Fair.

The most remarkable quality of the film is the ease with which Eastwood counters the scepticism towards the subject most of us probably have. In the lives of the protagonists, this hereafter is so natural an aspect that the viewer cannot helfp to accept it.

The problems of the film lie elsewhere. First, all three protagonists are rather one-dimensional as Eastwood allows them to focus on little more than the topic of the film. However, while all three are depicted as rather single-minded, non appeare driven in any significant way as they pursue their quests with a little too much calmness and rational certainty. Boredom follows. Not all twists of the story makes sense and especially the coming together of the three threads appears quite artificially constructed.

In general, the film lacks rhythm and structure, too little happens for its length of over two hours. Mostly all is said and done early on and Eastwood fails in finding new aspects or angles, resulting in a repetitive narrative that is characterised by a sloppiness unusual of Eastwood. There is a feeling that Eastwood did not want to tell stories - he wanted to make a point. Once it is made, he seems lost as to where to go from there.

Even aethetically, there is a sense of arbitrariness, Eastwood and his director of photography Tom Stern fail to give it a specific look and feel, any detectable concept is absent.

There is, however, a ray of light. Everytime the boy appears, the intensity picks up. It's his quiet suffering, his speechlessness, his wide sad eyes that tell more than all the wordiness of this rather chatty film could. His grieving is more real than all talk about an afterlife could be. For him, the illusion of his brother's still being there is part of his fight to stay alive. Whether or not there is something beyond our world, loses signifcance as we watch his struggle trying to make sense of this world he finds himself lost in.