Dear Reader:
I like to think of a motion picture as an amusement park ride. The great ones just carry you away emotionally and intellectually. Like riding a roller coaster you are rocked and shaken out of your senses. In a true spellbinder one becomes so engrossed by the characters and their dilemma you are afraid to blink for fear of missing a clue, a look, or a nuanced gesture. A viewer must be intrigued by the circumstances surrounding the hero; the tension building until the storm breaks overwhelming the viewer by the sound and fury flashing before them. Without realizing it, the viewer becomes concerned for his own safety, anxious for the danger to pass and their nerves restored. It’s a fantastic ride with a safe landing.
Hereafter started with sound and fury but, never mounted the second or third wave of excitement equaled to the first. There were attempts, but they were predictable accidents or occurrences as the film meandered down the road of mystical intrigue and mundane romance. In short, the movie became a psychic soap opera. After the terrifying plunge of the roller coaster, the car careened through the lives of three unrelated morbid people to a cozy and comforting end shared by all. The story takes place simultaneously in exotic Asia, upscale Paris, “blue-collar” San Francisco, grimy London, and a quick detour to the Alps for spectacular scenery. The London scenes in particular reminded me of the EastEnders, the cockney British serial, as the scenes rotated between the story lines without any real connection.
If we are to believe studio publicity, Hereafter is “[a] drama centered on three people who are haunted by mortality in different ways. George (Damon) is a blue-collar American who has a special connection to the afterlife. On the other side of the world, Marie (de France), a French journalist, has a near-death experience that shakes her reality. And when Marcus (Frankie/George McLaren), a London schoolboy, loses the person closest to him, he desperately needs answers. Each on a path in search of the truth, their lives will intersect, forever changed by what they believe might-or must-exist in the hereafter. Written by Warner Bros. Pictures” [tortured prose, theirs].
As if death and the afterlife were not enough, there were other compelling emotional issues to amuse oneself along the way: pain, loss, loneliness, separation, drug addition, professional crisis, child molestation, incest, identical twins, a book deal, and a cooking competition. (I thought they would never stop chopping tomatoes.) It seemed a long road to get to boy meets girl (in this case psychic meets near-death survivor) in front of Pizza Express with Clint Eastwood’s ersatz music in the background. A haunting original score could have moved the story along and added atmosphere. What we got was an occasional classic: Puccini, Chopin, Eastwood.
Matt Damon was Matt Damon in the movie. You could tell he was blue-collar because he sometimes wore a construction helmet. Otherwise, one might have confused him for a handsome, middle-aged, Harvard-educated bachelor in San Francisco wearing construction boots, taking cooking classes, and listening to Dickens. “Stella!” Cecile de France, is a French actress who portrayed a French (dead) woman convincingly. Warning: most of Mlle. de France’s scenes are subtitled, as in “foreign film.” The tsunami scene with her bobbing about was a computerized special effects tour-de-force. I know I was carried away.
From the vault: Vertigo, (1958), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak. Like Hereafter, it too, takes place in San Francisco and deals with death and the afterlife. No tsunami, but there are other ways to kill a co-star, although Novak and Stewart do take an overdressed plunge into San Francisco Bay. This film even has a young Miss Ellie and a younger Grandma Walton, “you know?”
Best of luck in your movie selection, your faithful friend,
Dwight Dekeyser
© 2010 Dwight Dekeyser, Esq. All rights reserved.
© 2010 Dwight Dekeyser, Esq. All rights reserved.
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