So uh...yeah, school has obviously slowed me down, which is why I haven't posted in a billion years. (It also doesn't help that I'm about five films behind on writing about the Shameless list; it's been around two months since I saw Chinatown, the film I was going to write about next.) Instead, have the closest thing I can write to a film review!
Hereafter, if you didn't know, is the new Clint Eastwood film starring Matt Damon. It's about the afterlife and Damon plays a character who's a former psychic, but has stopped practicing. Despite what the commercials might tell you, it's also an ensemble piece; the other two characters are a French reporter who has a near-death experience in the 2004 tsunami and a British boy whose twin is struck by a car and dies. Of course, they all have to meet at the end, as is par for ensemble films. Their stories don't dovetail until the end of the film though; the film spends most of the time switching between the three characters. I have to admit, I wasn't really going to see this movie. At first I thought it seemed kind of sentimental in that annoying oscar film way, but it got good reviews from both Roger Ebert (who I was a little skeptical about), and A.O. Scott (who I usually trust), and so when my friend said she wanted to see it (she's a huge fan of Matt Damon), I agreed.
I'm really glad I saw this film now, because if I had paid New York prices to see it, I would have been livid. This was simply not good, to the extent that it baffles me that both Ebert and Scott loved it. First of all, the film focuses on three characters, and only one of them is really charming. The French woman, Marie, spends half of her part of the movie daydreaming off in the distance before she figures out that her new life calling is to tell everyone about the afterlife, and her story is lackluster. The boy, Marcus, would probably be more relatable if the actor wasn't so lifeless; he's supposed to be shell-shocked by his environment at first (he's also put in a foster home because his mother has to go to rehab), but he just can't deliver the emotion needed for the heavier scenes. Even Matt Damon, who has the most likable character, George, is lackluster; he doesn't really have that much to do. His arc involves his brother trying to get him back in the business and a woman who he meets at a night class that's both incredibly annoying and completely predictable. He's also given cliches like the old "it's not a gift, it's a cuuurse" line, which, really? Really?
That's the main problem I had with this film: really? There were so many moments that were almost painfully cliche, culminating in a sudden turn of genre at the very end that leads to a stupendously ridiculous ending shot. The lighting was really off too; I'd almost think it was accidental, but a lot of the weirdness is too deliberate to be anything but choice. Is there a reason that Marie's face has a perfect line of shadow cutting her face in half in a scene where nothing sinister or interesting is going on? I know that Eastwood knows his lighting; it had to have been intentional, but why? The decisions made about this film are completely baffling, and I was honestly stunned that the two critics I mentioned above both loved in. In particular, A. O. Scott seems to love everything I hated about Hereafter! I will admit that, if he's not gone crazy, my theater might have gotten a bad print; he compliments the lighting and "saturated colors", and in the film I saw, those colors were anything but saturated, but that still doesn't change the cringe-worthy writing.
Yeah...so...don't fucking see Hereafter. Go see The Social Network, or Jackass 3D or something.
