That Clint Eastwood has become a great filmmaker is something few would contest, yet the nature of his greatness is as surprising as it's little understood. You can talk about the pristine technique - the new film, "Hereafter," provides lots of examples. But what's much more fascinating and enriching is Eastwood's Olympian vision, the sympathetic and all-encompassing understanding of the pain and grandeur of life on earth.
This vision is consistent in Eastwood's late work, no matter who is doing the screen writing, and it boggles the mind to realize that this is coming from a guy who, until he was about 60, was best known as an action hero. Make no mistake, Eastwood's directorial output, from "Mystic River" on, constitutes the 21st century's first cinematic marvel, and "Hereafter" is among the best things he has ever done.
Like Alejandro Inarritu's "Babel" and Wayne Kramer's "Crossing Over," "Hereafter" is an attempt to convey the bigness of life though a story involving disparate characters in different parts of the world. All three movies are responses to the interconnectedness of the world, but "Hereafter" is by far the most successful, partly because it has the best screenplay - by Peter Morgan ("The Queen") - and partly because it has a director who understands the difference between important and self-important.
Importance is earned, shot by shot, scene by scene. Self-importance is assumed, and is largely a matter of adopting an attitude and keeping a straight face.
Eastwood takes us into the story from the opening shots. From a hotel, we see a beach resort, filmed with the kind of colour saturation we might see in an old postcard. The effect is reassuring, but misleading. A vacationing French journalist (Cecile De France) goes into the village to buy presents. And suddenly, there's a rumbling, the sight of a rising wave, and within seconds, buildings are washed away, and cars, trucks and people are all caught in a rushing flood.
There have been tidal waves in movies before, but what makes this one so effective (aside from being perfectly realized on the technical end) is that Eastwood stays with De France. He doesn't show us an overview, so that we might get our bearings. Rather, we experience the catastrophe from one person's terrified and completely subjective vantage point. It's as close as you'll ever be to a tidal wave without getting wet.
"Hereafter" features three central characters that have been touched by death. The newswoman drowns and is revived. A construction worker (Matt Damon) in San Francisco is cursed with an ability to talk to the dead. (If he touches someone, he finds himself in communication with that person's dead relatives - so much for his love life.) And a little boy in London develops an all- consuming desire to talk to a recently deceased loved one. These stories play out separately, then gradually move toward one another.
Notice how every shot communicates something precise, whether it's plot detail or a thought or emotion. As an actor, Eastwood is used to breaking up a script into a succession of specific actions, and he does the same as a director. Such meticulousness serves his actors well and allows Eastwood to take his time within scenes and let them expand and feel lived in. He never wastes his audience's time, because he is always feeding it new information.
Eastwood's practical unwillingness to neglect any actor ends up giving "Hereafter" a humane essence: Everybody is important, not just Damon as the tortured psychic or De France as a breezy extrovert deepened by trauma. Thus, the little boy's mother (Lyndsey Marshal), is more than a desperate alcoholic, and Bryce Dallas Howard gets to create a rich character as Melanie, the psychic's partner in a San Francisco cooking class - a young woman masking pain under a superficial facade that has become her personality.
The ironic result of all this meticulous care is that we don't see Eastwood's hand but rather have the illusion that this gallery of humanity is telling the story for him. It's the most self-effacing way to do great work, and it's an approach that couldn't be more suited to this material. The film's notion that people share a common destiny, that they're participating in some overarching order, that they're being watched over by a benevolent all-seeing understanding, doesn't need to be spelled out. It has its analogue and expression in Eastwood's technique.
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