Here After

Directed by Clint Eastwood
Produced by Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy Frank Marshall

How does a spaghetti western actor evolve to one of the greatest and most sensitive story tellers of our time? In most of his movies, I have been left touched and fulfilled. He broke my heart in Bridges of Madison County, he continued to do so even more with Million Dollar Baby and now Here After. Even when he goes back to the genre that lifted him to fame, he weaves a tale that even a non-western fan can identify and be touched by.

Here After is a beautiful movie about the here after and even as a non believer, I accept, for the two hours, that this place exists. If you’ve ever lost someone close, you have no choice but to be drawn in and accept the possibility that there is that place. This is what movies are about and this is why we love watching them, to be enveloped by the possibility the film presents and to just let it take us there.

I love the way this movie is put together. It reminded me a little of M. Night Shyamalan in his earlier days when you were not quite sure where the movie was taking you. The tragedy about Shyamalan is that you now do, and the triumph of Eastwood is that you still don’t know what to expect and are happy to sit back and let the story unfold because at the end, you know it is something profound that you are going to come away with.

In this one, you have seemingly unrelated characters that you know and hope have to converge somewhere but not quite sure how or when. And when they eventually do, they fit in perfectly together. It is kind of like the peeled onion being put together, layer by layer, and the emotion also goes in reverse as the onion goes back to it’s original form. Ultimately no tears, and the world is as it should be.

I also love the way in which real life events help form significant moments in the movie. To reveal what they are would be to spoil the enjoyment so let’s just say these moments are heart wrenching.

What a wonderful story. I still think that psychics are master statisticians, but that did not take away from my enjoyment of this most beautiful movie.

Four spoons

Note: Matt Damon looks nothing like the poster image. Dude has aged, and he's allowed.
Another note: Incase you are still wondering whether to rent the dvd, the writer (Robert Morgan) also did screenplays for: Frost/Nixon, The Queen, The Last King of Scotland, and many others…
And yet another note: Clint Eastwood did the beautiful and haunting music for the movie as well.