Hereafter (2010)

Despite critics' (except Roger Ebert) bashing of Clint Eastwood's movie about the afterlife from the points of view of people affected by death in three countries, we thought it was pretty good. Matt Damon is the American, Cécile De France the Frenchwoman, and Frankie and George McLaren the 12-year-old English identical twins. I must admit I have a certain fondness for this kind of movie. Before I started film school in 1982, I had a ready answer when I was asked my favorite movies (though, now, like Damon's character George says frequently, I don't do that any more): A Thousand Clowns (1965), Resurrection (1980), and The Dead Zone (1983). The latter two have in common with Hereafter that the main characters have supernatural powers enhanced by touching a person, and I will say that David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone was much more dramatic in the touch sequences than Eastwood's Hereafter. (A Thousand Clowns, a comedy set in what people tend to think of now as Mad Men New York, has no similarities to the others.)

I wrote about Eastwood in my post on Invictus, and Damon in The Informant, and they have a good thing going here. Damon, as in Good Will Hunting (1997) makes us believe that he works a blue-collar job and that he has great inner turmoil. The lovely De France has a fabulous tousled haircut in this, unlike her pixie cut in two movies in which she starred that I've seen and liked enormously: L'auberge espagnole (2002) and Avenue Montaigne (2007). Her character Marie is bilingual but most of her scenes are in French with subtitles. I don't think it's a spoiler to reveal that the opening sequence contains the 2004 Indonesian tsunami with convincing computer-generated special effects. The McLaren boys are adorable in their screen debut (I have reason to believe from the way the credits are written that they interchanged the roles of Jason and Marcus). Ron's daughter Bryce Dallas Howard (Spider-Man 3 (2007), others) has a good turn as Melanie, whom George meets in a cooking class where the teacher is played by Steven Schirripa (better known as Tony Soprano's brother-in-law Bobby Bacala) who provides some of the movie's only laughs. Funny man Jay Mohr (TV series Gary Unmarried on CBS now, Action (it's hilarious) on DVD) as George's brother Billy, plays it straight. George is obsessed with Charles Dickens, and my Jack, a retired high school English teacher, recognized the passages long before the author was identified verbally. Derek Jacobi, who starred in a documentary called Charles Dickens's England (2009), the movie Little Dorrit (1988), and The Old Curiosity Shop (2007) for TV, plays himself, reading Dickens at a book fair. A Dickens blogger (now there's a niche!) has listed the references in the movie as well as the "Hereafter Dickens connection."

One of my first professors at film school taught us the rule of coincidences: people will not believe a happy coincidence as much as an unhappy one. Writer Peter Morgan (I wrote about him in both Frost/Nixon and The Damned United) clearly had a different teacher and, for the record, Jack and I both thought the major coincidence at the book fair was necessary for the story. In this spoiler-free interview Morgan talks about writing the script on spec (for himself and not for a specific buyer) and how it came into Eastwood's hands.

As usual, Eastwood composes his own music and, as usual, it's nice (I can't find any clips for you but it's available on CD and download from the usual sources, but be warned! I found two spoilers in the NAMES of the tracks. It's so lonely being a spoiler hater). This is a very different take on paranormal activity than the comedy of You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. I can't make a blanket recommendation for all my readers because only about half of everyone who has seen it and written about it liked it. Basically humor-free, though, it still was worth our time.