Hereafter (2010)

Speaking to the dead, returning from the dead, all too common in current films and television. Clint Eastwood wanted to freshen our perspective, treat the subject 'seriously' and make it new again. He failed.

"Your wrong its not a gift, its a curse" says retired psychic Matt Damon to his brother Jay Mohr. That's the most cliche line possible about 'supernatural abilities', and the casting of Jay Mohr as the money hungry brother is a cliche as well. The movie is three different 'short stories' about death that eventully come together at the end, the basic Babel-type story structure that I think works a hell of a lot better in books then in movies.

The first story concerns a french journalist (the pretty and mostly unknown Cecile de France) who has a near death experience during the 2004 Asian tsunami. After being caught up in a large CG wave Cecile has a brief stay in a vague and fuzzy looking afterlife before coming too among a couple of locals. She becomes obsessed with her experience, it affects her work, she takes a leave to write a book about former French president Francois Mitterrand but instead begins research on a book about near death experiences. When she submits the first three chapters to her publishers they are upset, she loses her contract (both there and with her old TV station) and at the publishers suggestion begins to write the book in English for an American or British audience.

The second story is about young twin English boys, one of the boys is killed in a tragic accident, and the survivor is taken away from his unfit mother and put into foster care. He becomes obsessed with contacting his dead brother and tries a number of avenues including psychics, and some guy with a special recording machine, but to no avail.

The final story concerns Damons San Fransisco based psychic. He has come to the determination that he can never have a life of his own if he spends it talking to the dead, so he quits the business and works a $2,000 a month job at a factory. He takes an Italian cooking class at a local community center and there he meets Bryce Dallas Howard who is putting on the adorable. They hover at the edge of a relationship in what is probably the most successful part of the film. She however finds out he used to be a psychic, and in this capacity he finds out she was sexually abused by her father and the budding relationship ends suddenly. Despite importuning by his brother to go back into the psychic business after Damon is downsized, our reluctant psychic instead decides to take a trip to England to visit the home of his favorite author Charles Dickens. This of course is when our three stories come to intersect, and each character finds what they truly most want in life.

It's a little hard to understand the point of this movie. Its a sober treatment, not flashy or explotive, in fact its maddeningly dull throughout. Eastwood makes a point of showing how psychics and others who claim to be able to contact the dead are con artists and frauds, so you wonder what his point is in giving us one psychic who isn't? A node towards hope? 'It's a great mystery what happens hereafter and who knows, maybe somebody can actually contact the dead?' The message felt mixed, I don't really know what he was trying to say. None of the stories were as affective to me as I suppose they were suppose to be, even the ten year old kid with the dead brother rang contrived and hollow. I don't know, its well executed as you'd expect from an Eastwood directed film, but it was also a bore and sold out for the trite. I'm sorry Clint but only my respect for you keeps this above an F. Grade: D.