Hereafter

Just today an airplane carrying some Czech ice hockey players crashed in Russia. So Hereafter seemed to suit this sad day. Clint hasn’t got soft, just older and so he said to himself that he would film the requisite pensioner’s ruminations about death and throw it to an audience hungry for his movies. A stylish opening with a tidal wave (that ingenious scene must have swallowed most of the budget) turns into a conversational drama of three people whose destiny becomes (unexpectedly) entwined and everything ends up sort of ok. The picture is overflowing with excellent acting performances, just the screenplay is sometimes too blabbermouth. (07/09/2011)

An extremely interesting idea alone can't hold an entire film together. The impressive start is soon displaced by an unusually long and uninteresting story that, by Eastwood’s standards, teeters on the edge of massive kitsch. The attempt to incorporate as many fantasy elements into the plot as possible is understandable, because without them everyone would probably get bored. The performances are also top notch and save what they can, but none of this has the power to plug the huge hole of untapped potential that mars this otherwise very unconventional movie. (30/06/2012)

Hereafter is certainly not a film for everyone (not that Clint Eastwood has made such films before). It is a quietly dramatic story full of emotion, it’s civil, human, comforting... Somehow it seems to me that the afterlife and contacting the other side is one of the very last things it’s concerned with. In fact, I'm tempted to compare it to Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, only with aliens swapped for the undead. There are a number of extremely impressive scenes of all kinds in the film (hiding from the social services, tasting food with blindfolds on, bypassing the media - the impostors, and of course the opening wave...) and each of the three stories manages to captivate and intrigue. The ending is absolutely beautiful. And I don't mind that it's a pure happy ending without any question marks. (14/12/2014)

Don't be swayed by the negative critical response from individuals who didn't understand it, this is a great film. Eastwood deals with the autumn of his life, when one must unwillingly be confronted with the inevitability of death, and he does it the way he does it best: very sensitively and empathetically. It outlines Moody's view on death and life after life, but in a non-violent way, he does not impose his opinion and through the fate of three people marked by the loss of a loved one, or the life experience of clinical death, he sensitively tells his story. And I have to say, I've never been so pleased with Matt Damon's acting, his subdued performance as a mature man surprised and delighted me. (03/03/2011)

This film can be seen in various ways. It's not an exciting story with manipulative facts, as we often witness in films of a similar type, nor is it a gripping masterpiece that keeps us glued to the screen. I understand that this may deter many modern viewers, but if you look at the director’s name, you’ll find Clint Eastwood. As has been customary in recent years, he takes his time as a filmmaker, and this piece is carried in a very slow, suggestive atmosphere with very natural performances from the leading actors. The thrilling sequences in the first minutes and the incredibly stylised romantic scenes in the final part of the film are surprising; Eastwood is a profound melancholic and romantic, otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to precisely highlight the right details at the exact second so ingeniously. Unfortunately, my impression is spoiled by the middle part, which moves forward perhaps too slowly, but mainly lacks points of interest, which the progression of the storyline is quite unexciting. Excellent beginning and ending. Eastwood, however, still has the skills, and Cécile De France is apparently an absolutely captivating personality. (17/07/2011)