Hereafter

TedFlicks Rating:

$8 ticket on a scale of $0 to $13.50.

A PARANORMAL LOVE STORY, TEMPO LENTISSIMO

“Hereafter,” the latest effort from Clint Eastwood in his second career as director, has everything going for it. The cast is fabulous, the writing, byPeter Morgan is to the point, and the story ought to tug at the heartstrings. Heck, we have ten-year-old twins in London (Frankie McLaren and George McLaren as Marcus and Jason), covering for their alcoholic, drug addicted mother (Lyndsey Marshal) only to be separated by Jason’s tragic death, a stunningly beautiful French TV news anchor (Cécile De France as Marie LeLay) who suffers a near death experience in the devastating Tsunami of a few years back and embarks on a quest to discover just what happened to her, and Matt Damon lending his star-power to the role of George Lonegan, a former psychic and Charles Dickens fanatic who finds that his “gift” is a curse.  He can’t connect with people — even shake hands — because he gets visions, and the visions are accurate. It’s a case of psychic TMI which makes connecting with a woman beyond difficult.  The last is made clear by George’s budding romance with Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard). Her curiosity, sparked by a phone message from George’s brother Billy (Jay Mohr) which she overhears, kills their romance almost before it starts. She begs for a reading, and George hits too close for comfort.

Welcome comic relief in this melodrama is provided by Mohr,Richard Kind in a very short appearance as a Greek-American businessman anxious to reconnect with his late wife, and Steven R. Schirripa of “Sopranos” fame as a chef and cooking class instructor, a part which he was born to play.  De Franceis riveting.  She owns her every frame.  A straight man cannot take his eyes off her.  Finely nuanced performances, as Eastwood coaxes them, are beyond reproach.  Even Damon, whose roles tend toward broadly played action characters, shows remarkable range in playing a mildly shy, troubled, withdrawn guy. His and De France’s close-ups speak volumes.  Individual scenes soar, but the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

So what’s wrong?  It’s pacing.  Pic feels far longer than its 129 minutes. Your critic suffered from restless leg syndrome throughout.  By the half-hour mark he was squirming in his seat.  Jack Warner would have sent it back to the cutting room — ironic sinceSteven Spielberg is an executive producer and the deals were cut on the Warner Bros. lot.

Plot is actually three stories set continents apart, which converge. Pulling this off requires enormous coincidences to happen at exactly the right moment, and Morgan’s screenplay provides them in spades. Pic gets off to a good start.  Marie’s boyfriend (and producer) Didier played by Thierry Neuvic, would rather sleep an extra half-hour than go buy presents for his kids to bring home from vacation.  Marie goes shopping for him and ends up in the Tsunami that devastated much of Asia’s coastal areas.  Knocked out and nearly drowned she has visions of an afterlife, which she remembers on regaining consciousness.  Marcus asks his twin Jason to run an errand for Mum to the chemist while he looks up her prescription on the Internet. Jason is accosted on his way home by bullies and runs to his death in front of a moving truck trying to escape. George is pressured into doing a reading for an important client (Richard Kind) of brother Billy.  So far so good.  The paranormal plane is reached amid compelling action.

Then things slide slowly downhill. The three seemingly unconnected plotlines take until the final reel to connect despite the obvious need for them to do so — courtesy mostly of the precocious Marcus who stalks George after an accidental meeting at the London Book Fair.  Pic’s action takes place over about a year.  Auds will feel as if they had sat in the theater at least that long.  Part of the problem is Clint Eastwood’s score.  His musical contribution consists mostly of a languorous leitmotif which is repeatedad nauseam. “Oh, the power of cheap music!” exclaims Eliot in Private Lives.  There is something to be said for not biting off more than one can chew.  This sort of subject matter has been handled before and better — most notably in Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit,” by Spielberg himself inAlways,” in the Bruce Willis vehicleThe Sixth Sense, and in the Timothy Hutton - Kelly McGillis pairing, “Made in Heaven,” which “Hereafter’s” storyline most closely resembles in that the principals in the love story (George and Marie in “Hereafter”) do not meet until the end.  That, at least, provides suspense.  Another part of the problem may be the editing.  Your critic thinks that ten minutes could be cut without damaging plot continuity. Pic’s middle, however, is not entirely without moments.  A sequence in which Marcus visits a bunch of phony psychics in order to reconnect with Jason is pricelessly funny.  Marie, distracted by trauma, is advised by boyfriend/producer to take a leave of absence to recover, perhaps by writing the book she has long talked about.  He then sticks her the shiv in a way those who have worked in TV can understand.  Marie’s proposal to her publisher to write a critical biography of the late French President Francois Mitterand is both politically and historically on target and brilliantly written.  When instead she turns in three chapters on the afterlife, it is as if the sky has fallen.  And Derek Jacobi’s florid public reading of Dickens approaches farce.

So it is not all bumps on the way from a strong opening reel to a very satisfying conclusion.  But Clint Eastwood would do well to do less. This is the second of his recent directorial efforts that your critic wishes had run shorter.  The first is 2008’s Changeling.

Technical credits, save for sound recording, excel.  A few lines of dialogue set in London are impossible to understand.  Pic’s French company did a far better job working than their English speaking counterparts in their native tongue.  The subtitled scenes are easily understood by French speakers.  Special note goes to cinematographer Tom Stern.  Shots are beautifully framed.  Pic is rated PG-13.  Your critic thinks that it is a tad too conservative.  There is no sex, except what runs wild in one’s imagination every time Cécile De France appears on screen.  There is little, if any, bad language.  And Marc’s mother’s addictions are handled discreetly.

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