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T O P I C R E V I E W
BaftaBaby
Posted - 12/19/2010 : 01:24:41 What's so careful about Clint Eastwood's latest, transcends any saccharine notion of whether or not there's an afterlife or any of the trappings that accompany such an unimaginative question.
Instead what we get is an acceptance that plenty of people all over the world have opinions and beliefs around such a complex aspect of our curious selves. I mean curious in the sense of our curiosity, whatever it lands on, to try to make sense of the chaos, the inexplicable, the moments of coincidence and connection that feed our lives.
Screenwriter Peter Morgan has openly stated, and Eastwood more reticently implied that neither believes in an afterlife. And that seems just fine to me. Both Beethoven and Berlioz were atheists who composed sublime religious music. That's art for ya - weaving with heart and skill all the stuff that connects us.
Perfect in Morgan's unsentimental intelligent script is the introduction of Dickens as a template for Hereafter's themes, his novels being so dependent on them, whatever the tale. And the introduction of the great dead author feels wholly organic to the plot.
Eastwood is among only a handful of directors who could so confidently open a film with the iconic tsunami horror still vivid, still evocative of a power whose force we can only begin to quantify, let alone understand.
When a film kicks off with such sheer chaos we know we're not in for some innocuous special fx vehicle culminating in such a tragic event. And we're sure not going to get the all-too common laughable attempts at characterization, or endings of moments of pre-fab hope. Gee, I wonder if I could be thinking of Roland Emmerich ...
No, what Eastwood does is whip you from that wave into a tripartite tale of three minds connected by their attempts to understand not just events but their lasting consequences. I say three, but one of those is shared by a pair of twins.
The way the individual stories are so separate is part of the pattern, epitomised in much of Dickens. So when the strands do converge, however unlikely, it doesn't feel so contrived we can't accept and welcome it.
Because, Eastwood seems to be saying, life is like that sometimes. Stop asking the questions that can never have answers and just live. Life will smack you in the chops one minute and kiss your boo-boos the next, and no one knows what's coming round the corner.
In such an ensemble piece it's invidious to single anyone out and only the inexperienced twins don't quite measure up. I forgive them.
