Hereafter

Clint Eastwood is a big time director. He is not only commercially successful (he makes a shitton of money, especially with 2008's Gran Torino) and critically successful (his movies are of quality). Eastwood used to just be an actor, making spaghetti Westerns and playing the toughest, meanest son-of-a-bitch possible. It was around the 1980's when he started to direct, and he's good at it. This new film, Hereafter, ventures after the idea of the afterlife. It does it very well, without attempting to convince you one way or another how the Great Question should be answered. It is also a sublimely moving film. Six or seven times in it, I was deeply moved, writhing in my front-row seat and unable to eat my snacks. Hereafter begins with a woman having a near-death experience in the Tsunami of several years ago in Indonesia. She is one of the triptych of characters. The other two being a twin who has lost his other half and Matt Damon playing a reluctant psychic (seeing the dead is too much for him). What happens in this film is of little interest. For it's director of gritty realism--Eastwood, making a personal and contemplative film is an oddity. But there is a sort of gritty realism in death, as Eastwood displays. It is incomprehensible, the film argues to lose someone and have lost them forever. All of the characters in this film hope for an afterlife and try to seek it. Enough summary, if you're looking for summary IMDB is fine for that. But this a film of great power, it's one of the best of the year (so far). It might take you aback, how should you react to something so horrid, so empty of answers? The acting in this film is excellent, the direction obviously well done. It is merely a film that attacks how we look at movies, it attacks our original perceptions of them and forces us to think about the meaning in a film--which can be hard to encounter these days.
Hereafter: ★★★★